Criminal Pardons Criminals

All in the name of revisionist history

Donald just took another significant step toward eroding the rule of law in the United States of America. Of course, he’s never had anything but contempt for the rule of law, at least as it applies to him, and one of the most significant examples of this was his trying, on January 2, 2021, to convince Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, to help him steal the election:

So look, all I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more that we have because we won the state.

11,780. That’s an oddly specific number. But it wasn’t a coincidence. 11,779 votes were the margin of Donald’s loss in Georgia, and he wanted Raffensperger to “find” just enough votes to change the results of the election in Donald’s favor.

As we know, in the aftermath of the 2020 election, Joe Biden won the general election by almost 8 million votes. Donald refused to accept the results, and he refused to concede. Then he and several co-conspirators tried to overturn the results of that free and fair election by creating fake slates of electors in states Biden actually won. Instead of certifying the legitimate electors chosen by voters, allies in multiple swing states met secretly and signed documents falsely claiming that they were duly elected electors. These fraudulent certificates were then sent to Congress and the National Archives. As a result of this criminal conspiracy, 19 people were indicted, including Donald.

Over the weekend, Politico reported that Donald issued sweeping unconditional pardons to Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, and dozens of others who helped him attempt to overturn the 2020 election. The pardons cover a broad range of actions related to his fake elector scheme. It also applies to the efforts to pressure state officials to block election certification on January 6th, 2021, the day that the President of the United States incited an insurrection against his own government.

Although many of the recipients of this pardon were never federally charged, the pardon shields them from any future federal prosecution. Several of these cases are still being prosecuted at the state level and, thankfully, Donald cannot pardon state crimes. But the pardons are the continuation of an alarming trend of Donald’s abuse of the pardon power to bail out anyone who commits a crime on his behalf.

Later in his call with Raffensperger, Donald said:

The people of Georgia are angry and these numbers are going to be repeated on Monday night along with others that we’re going to have by that time, which are much more substantially. And the people of Georgia are angry. The people of the country are angry, and there’s nothing wrong with saying that you’ve recalculated because the 2,236 in absentee ballots, I mean, they’re all exact numbers that were done by accounting firms, law firms, etcetera. And even if you cut him in half, cut him in half, and cut him in half, again, it’s more votes than we need.

Simply based on Donald’s feeling that he couldn’t possibly have lost Georgia, he felt justified in pressuring the Secretary of State to manufacture votes for him. I agree with Donald that Georgia voters, specifically, and American voters, in general, were angry in the lead up to the 2020 election, but I disagree as to the reasons. They weren’t angry, as Donald would have it, because Joe Biden “stole” the election; they were angry because of Donald’s horrific mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic which led to hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths, the egregious state of the economy, and his repeated attempts to destroy American democracy. That’s why they voted him out of office.

What’s worth pointing out is something Donald does not mention in his conversation with Raffensperger, or at any time after that—he never once suggests the elections of the Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff were in any way suspect.

It looks like these recent pardons have been in the works for a long time. Back in May, Donald’s Pardon Attorney, Ed Martin, posted this on social media:

No MAGA left behind.

Last week, he replied to that post:

Important pardon of Alternate Electors of 2020!!

followed by a list of those pardoned.

Later, he posted this.

Breaking: [Donald] pardoned the 2020 Alternative Electors. Thank you: @POTUS for allowing me, as U.S. Pardon Attorney, to work with @WhiteHouse, along with @AGPamBondi @DAGToddBlanche & SG John Sauer, to achieve your intent—let their healing begin. #Federalist74

Ed Martin, an unqualified hack, should not be quoting the Federalist papers, especially in celebration of these corrupt pardons. But his post gives the game away. This is all a setup, part of the Trump regime’s over-arching project to rewrite history.

The bottom line is this: Donald doesn’t care if you are a criminal; he doesn’t care what kind of horrific crimes you may or may not have committed as long as you like him, as long as you support him, or as long as you have committed crimes on his behalf. If nothing else, Donald’s continuing abuse of the presidential pardon power should lead to efforts to limit this power.

In the meantime, if we are going to turn things around, Democrats need to stop pretending they can work with Donald or the fascist Republican party. They also need to stop thinking they should work with them because you cannot and should not ever make common cause with fascists.