"Ms. Maxwell cannot risk further criminal exposure in a politically charged environment without formal immunity."

"Nor is a prison setting conducive to eliciting truthful and complete testimony. Of course, in the alternative, if Ms. Maxwell were to receive clemency, she would be willing — and eager — to testify openly and honestly, in public, before Congress in Washington, D.C. She welcomes the opportunity to share the truth and to dispel the many misconceptions and misstatements that have plagued this case from the beginning."

Said David Oscar Markus, Ghislaine Maxwell’s attorney,  quoted in "Ghislaine Maxwell quietly moved from Florida to Texas prison as lawyers seek Trump pardon" (Independent).

And there's this from Trump: "Well, I’m allowed to give her a pardon, but nobody’s approached me with it. Nobody’s asked me about it."

"It’s something I haven’t thought about."

Said Trump, quoted in "Trump says he has no plans to pardon Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell" (WaPo).

It's not believable that he hasn't thought about it. Just to hear the question Have you thought about it? is to think about it... depending on the meaning of "thought." I think he means to assert that these current discussions his Justice Department is having with Maxwell are not about making some sort of deal with her to give them useful testimony in exchange for a pardon. But how can that not be implicit? How can he not have thought of it... he who has portrayed his whole existence as endless, ongoing dealmaking?

***

"Deals are my art form. Other people paint beautifully or write poetry. I like making deals, preferably big deals. That’s how I get my kicks" — Donald Trump, "The Art of the Deal."

"Legally, the lifetime ban is over. His lifetime is over."

Said Jeffrey Lenkov, Pete Rose's lawyer, quoted in an ESPN report that says, "Commissioner Rob Manfred is considering a petition filed on Jan. 8 by Pete Rose's family to have Major League Baseball's all-time hit leader posthumously removed from baseball's ineligible list...."

Here's yesterday's post about Trump's plan to pardon Rose and his statement that "Baseball, which is dying all over the place, should get off its fat, lazy ass, and elect Pete Rose, even though far too late, into the Baseball Hall of Fame!"

"Baseball, which is dying all over the place, should get off its fat, lazy ass, and elect Pete Rose, even though far too late, into the Baseball Hall of Fame!"

Writes Donald Trump (on Truth Social):

Major League Baseball didn’t have the courage or decency to put the late, great, Pete Rose, also known as “Charlie Hustle,” into the Baseball Hall of fame. Now he is dead, will never experience the thrill of being selected, even though he was a FAR BETTER PLAYER than most of those who made it, and can only be named posthumously. WHAT A SHAME! Anyway, over the next few weeks I will be signing a complete PARDON of Pete Rose, who shouldn’t have been gambling on baseball, but only bet on HIS TEAM WINNING. He never betted against himself, or the other team. He had the most hits, by far, in baseball history, and won more games than anyone in sports history. Baseball, which is dying all over the place, should get off its fat, lazy ass, and elect Pete Rose, even though far too late, into the Baseball Hall of Fame!

I'm disconcerted that the President of the United States wrote "betted," but I'm amused at the metaphorical flourish of "dying all over the place" and "fat, lazy ass." 

To me, "betted" is embarrassingly wrong, but I see Shakespeare used it. From the OED:

1600 Iohn a Gaunt loued him well, and betted much money on his head. W. Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2 iii. ii. 44

If you use "fat, lazy ass" metaphorically — baseball doesn't even have an ass — you do flout the niceties of the body acceptance movement, but Trump is well aware that his own ass is fat and thus presents a big target for his antagonists. He doesn't care. It's a fat ass, but emphatically not a lazy ass.

"Attorneys for the defendants called them peaceful demonstrators emulating sit-ins from the civil rights era."

"Federal prosecutors in court documents described their efforts as 'organized invasions' carried out with physical force, chains, ropes and locks — all of it carefully planned and live-streamed.... In a letter lobbying Trump for the pardons this month, the antiabortion Thomas More Society called them a group of 'peaceful pro-life Americans' that included 'grandparents, pastors, a Holocaust survivor, and a Catholic priest.' They argued to Trump that the [Freedom of Access to Clinics Entrances] Act was unconstitutional and that part of prosecutors’ reasoning for bringing the charges was to protect the right to abortion, which no longer existed in 2023 because of the Supreme Court’s ruling the year before overturning Roe v. Wade."

From "Trump pardons antiabortion activists who blocked access to clinics/The pardons came the evening before thousands of activists are expected to march to the U.S. Capitol in the 52nd annual March for Life" (WaPo)(free-access link).

"I was doing life without parole."

pic.twitter.com/pbqRh9spnk

— Ross Ulbricht (@RealRossU) January 24, 2025

"They said, 'Sir, would you like to pardon everybody including yourself?' I said, 'I'm not going to pardon anybody. We didn't do anything wrong!'"

"And we had people that suffered, they're incredible patriots. We had people that suffered. We had Bannon put in jail, we had Peter Navarro put in jail. You had people that suffered, and far worse than that, they have lost their fortunes and whatever their nest egg — paying it to lawyers. People have said they wouldn't have even taken a pardon. This guy went around giving everyone pardons. And, you know, the funny thing (maybe the sad thing) is he didn't give himself a pardon — and if you look at it, it all had to do with him."

Said Trump, in a clip from an interview with Sean Hannity that will air tonight. Video at link.

"My guess is that regardless of what happens in Tom’s criminal case, SCOTUSblog will endure."

"Tom scaled down his involvement with the site years ago—if the indictment is to be believed, he had a lot of other things on his plate—and today SCOTUSblog is really run by Amy Howe, its main courtroom reporter, and Ellena Erskine, its editor. I see no reason why Amy, Ellena, and SCOTUSblog’s nine regular contributors can’t continue their excellent and invaluable work. I don’t know—and can’t imagine—what’s going on in Tom and Amy’s marriage right now... If Tom and Amy go their separate ways (or even if they don’t), they should squarely place all ownership and control of SCOTUSblog in Amy’s hands.... And as a loyal reader of SCOTUSblog pretty much since its inception, I hereby volunteer to do anything in my power to keep it up and running...."

Writes David Lat, in "SCOTUSblog Founder Tom Goldstein Hit With 22-Count Federal Indictment/A lengthy indictment accuses the once high-flying Supreme Court lawyer of massive tax evasion—tied to multimillion-dollar poker losses and multiple affairs" (Substack).

Lat thinks Goldstein's future is not all used up: "He’s only 54, and he still has the intelligence, hard work, and hustle that allowed him to launch a leading Supreme Court website and become one of the nation’s top SCOTUS advocates, even though he never clerked for the Court or graduated from an elite law school. And if the allegations are true, Tom has an unimaginable amount of energy: he was somehow able to argue before the Supreme Court, run a law firm, win and lose tens of millions in high-stakes poker, juggle a dozen women, oversee SCOTUSblog, and raise two kids... He also helped develop a pitch for a television show based on his life and career, which got picked up for development by NBC in 2009. The program, tentatively called Tommy Supreme, never made it to the screen...."

But now the story is far more exciting — especially if he's guilty. Lat sketches out possible futures for Goldstein — including "a pardon from Trump." And, interestingly, Goldstein published "End the Criminal Cases Against Trump" in the NYT (last November, just after the election). But if the idea is to produce a great redemption story —  worthy of that TV show — it can't end with a presidential pardon.

"I think it's very simple. Look, if you protested peacefully on January 6th, and you've had Merrick Garland's Department of Justice treat you like a gang member..."

"... you should be pardoned. If you committed violence on that day, obviously, you shouldn't be pardoned. And there's a little bit of a gray area there. We're very much committed to seeing the equal administration of law, and there are a lot of people, we think, in the wake of January 6th, who were prosecuted unfairly. We need to rectify that."

Said JD Vance.

On X, there are quite a few people objecting to this line-drawing and saying that every January 6th protester should be pardoned. 

Tomorrow is January 6th, and we're seeing efforts to frame the occasion.

I'm seeing this at Politico: "Donald Trump’s quiet Jan. 6/Monday’s certification of Trump’s victory will be the antithesis of the carnage at the Capitol four years ago." Oh! The first part of the headline changed while I was in the middle of writing this post. It's now "Donald Trump is about to get the Jan. 6 that he denied Joe Biden." Excerpt:

It’s the utter antithesis of the carnage unleashed four years ago, under clear blue skies, by thousands of Trump supporters, goaded by lies about a stolen election. Hundreds of them bludgeoned police officers guarding the Capitol as the mob fought to stop Congress from counting the electoral votes that would make Joe Biden president.

I asked Grok if that last sentence was factually correct and it said that the "essence" is "supported by substantial evidence" but "the precise quantification of 'hundreds' as attackers specifically 'bludgeoning' officers might be an oversimplification or exaggeration of the exact actions...."

Over at The New York Times, there's: "'A Day of Love’: How Trump Inverted the Violent History of Jan. 6/The president-elect and his allies have spent four years reinventing the Capitol attack — spreading conspiracy theories and weaving a tale of martyrdom to their ultimate political gain." Excerpt:

Succinct perfection in hypocrisy.

The most overpaid actress ever. pic.twitter.com/2tx3PqdA8c

— MAZE (@mazemoore) December 6, 2024

Democrats need to figure out if they ought to trash Biden for pardoning Hunter and build the strongest foundation for attacking Trump over the pardoning spree he's about to launch.

Yes, yes, of course, you Democrats can pose fussily and piously making distinctions between all the crimes Hunter may have done in the last 10 years and anything attributable to Trump's pardonees. Go ahead. Try. I see your efforts. They're so self-serving they underscore the essential problem: political favoritism.

Fine distinctions are confusing and hypocritical. You're going to say violating gun laws doesn't really matter? Then how are you going to pull off the call for more gun laws, which you know you're going to need for your usual political theater on the occasion of the next massacre? You're going to say a rich man's tax evasion is a measly offense and still hope to see us to respond to your cries for severe taxing of the rich?

No, no, your best move is to trash Biden. You already kicked him to the curb last July. No one remembers the show of honoring his statesmanship you staged at the Democratic National Convention. You've already lost the election and suffered a complete breakdown of confidence in your party. You need to rebuild the foundation. There's nothing to keep. Your party is a teardown.

Trump is about to take over and make a show out of throwing light on the deep state. Don't condemn yourself to defending every awful thing that may come out — which may include corrupt dealings with Ukraine and China that were blithely swept into Biden's pardon of Hunter. Trash Joe Biden now to position yourself to seem to welcome all this forthcoming bad news and to offer yourself as the staunch new party of reform. 

"I think it’s very unlikely. What, what did I do wrong? I didn’t do anything wrong. You mean because I challenge an election, they want to put me in jail."

Said Donald Trump, quoted in "Trump says it's 'very unlikely' he'd pardon himself if elected/In an interview with NBC's 'Meet the Press' former President Donald Trump said that in his final days in office, he told people, 'The last thing I’d ever do is give myself a pardon'" (NBC News).

"People said, 'Would you like to pardon yourself?' I had a couple of attorneys that said, 'You can do it if you want.'... I had some people that said, 'It would look bad if you do it, because I think it would look terrible.'... Let me just tell you. I said, 'The last thing I’d ever do is give myself a pardon.'... I could have had a pardon done that would have saved me all of these lawyers and all of this — these fake charges, these Biden indictments."

Very unlikely ≠ impossible.

The last thing ≠ a thing that will never happen.

Of course, Trump is reserving the option of pardoning himself. But for now, running for office — for the position that will be necessary if he is ever to pardon himself — he asserts his innocence. 

Kellyanne Conway "depicts Trump as a feminist who repeatedly supported and promoted her, allowing her to make history as the first woman..."

"... to manage a winning presidential campaign. 'Donald Trump had elevated and empowered me to the top of his campaign, helping me crack glass ceilings that had never even been dinged before,' she writes, adding that 'angry feminists' should “have at least once in their lives a "girl boss" as generous, respectful, engaging, and empowering as Donald Trump was to me and my other female colleagues.'"

From "In new book, Kellyanne Conway takes aim at many targets — except Trump Part personal chronicle and part political journey, the book is filled with the sorts of barbed one-liners and bon mots that she dispensed on cable news" by Ashley Parker (WaPo). 

Also:

In the waning days of his presidency, Conway also writes that, during a discussion with Trump on pardons and clemency, he turned to her and asked, “Do you want one?” 

“Do you know something I don’t?” Kellyanne asked Trump, she writes. “Why would I need a pardon?” 

“Because they go after everyone, honey. It doesn’t matter,” Trump replied, according the book.

They go after everyone....

The top-rated comment over there is:

"Why would anyone care what this lying harpy has to say? An admitted dispenser of 'alternative facts' her screechy voice made her an assault on both eyes and ears."

That gets some feminist pushback: 

"I detest her but your comment reeks of ugly misogyny. The term harpy and pointing out her voice for special loathing. It's possible to find someone detestable without venting sexism." 

And:

"Logged on to say the same thing. Harpy and screechy voice are sexist as hell. Men do this often. I’m no fan of hers, but it’s because of her placating TFG and being a phenomenal hypocrite. Stay away from physical attributes next time."

I had to google "TFG." The first hit is a Gail Collins column in the NYT, published February 17, 2021 — "Trump’s Dreaded Nickname": 

Sitting in disgraced, double-impeached political purgatory, Trump has been trying to retrain the world to refer to him as “the 45th president” during his unwelcome retirement. (If you are lucky enough to get a mass email from him, the return address will be “45 office.”) How cool would it be if he had to sit in front of the TV listening to people talk about “the former guy?” 

D.J.T. = T.F.G.

Perhaps the "dreaded nickname" caught on in some quarters, but I don't remember hearing it before. Collins's dream of what would be cool was not to be. We still hear Trump, Trump, Trump, and it's only going to get louder as we move into the 2024 election season which the disgraced, double-impeached Trump already dominates.

2 almost-promises candidate Trump made at his rally yesterday in Conroe, Texas.

The one that's getting press is pardons for at least some of "those people from January 6th":

"Another thing we'll do, and so many people have been asking me about it, if I run and if I win, we will treat those people from Jan. 6 fairly," Trump said to applause. "We will treat them fairly. And if it requires pardons we will give them pardons. Because they are being treated so unfairly."

The one I'm not seeing, but I heard and would quote if I had a transcript, is that he will rehire all the military people who were let go because they were not vaccinated. And he supports backpay.

Here's the whole rally. Maybe you can find it: 

"So why is it clear that the president lacks the power to pardon himself? There are three reasons."

"The language of the pardon power itself is ambiguous in the face of a constitutional expectation of clarity if the Framers intended to invest the president with such extraordinary power.... Second, the Framers clearly contemplated in the impeachment provisions of the Constitution that the president would not be able to violate the criminal laws with impunity.... And last, but not least, a power in the president to pardon himself for any and all crimes against the United States he committed would grievously offend the animating constitutional principle that no man, not even the president, is above and beyond the law. In contemporary constitutional parlance, the Framers more likely would have regarded a self-pardon not as an act of justice, grace, mercy and forgiveness, as they did presidential pardons of others. They would have viewed a self-pardon as a presidential act more akin to an obstruction of justice for criminal offenses against the United States by a president, the prosecution for which can be brought, at least according to the Justice Department, only after a president leaves office."

From "No, President Trump can’t pardon himself" by the former federal judge J. Michael Luttig (WaPo). 

Luttig has a strong conservative reputation. He was a law clerk to Justice Scalia, appointed to the the 4th Circuit by George H.W. Bush, and often mentioned as a potential Supreme Court nominee when George W. Bush was President. Per Wikipedia: "Luttig was the leading feeder judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals, with virtually all of his law clerks having gone on to clerk with conservative justices on the Supreme Court, a total of 40, 33 of whom clerked for either Justice Thomas or Justice Scalia."

Of course, the issue whether the President can pardon himself is an open question. We will only get the answer if and when a President pardons himself and there's a case that a court has to decide. Is prosecution more likely or less likely if there is a pardon to be presented as a defense? Luttig's argument should have influence with Trump, and there were already good political and legal reasons why Trump should resist pardoning himself. 

Will Trump pardon himself? Should he? Would the pardon hold up in court?

Yes, yes, yes.

No, no, no.

No, yes, yes.

No, no, yes.

Yes, no, no.

Yes, no, yes.

Yes, yes, no.

No, yes, no.

 

pollcode.com free polls

POLL RESULTS (preserved 1/26/21):

The elegance of Edward Snowden.

Mr. President, if you grant only one act of clemency during your time in office, please: free Julian Assange. You alone can save his life. @realDonaldTrump

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) December 3, 2020

"Like so many presidential flocks this one started in the great state of Iowa, in what can only be described as an act of blatant pandering and by the way..."

"... I love the state of Iowa. These two turkeys sought to win the support of Iowans across the state, by naming themselves Corn and Cob.... Look at that beautiful, beautiful bird. Oh, so lucky. That is a lucky bird. Corn, I hereby grant you a full pardon. Thank you, Corn. Iowa farm. I knew I liked you. Happy Thanksgiving to everybody. Thank you very much."

Said President Donald Trump, dealing with the turkey business for the last time and ignoring the shouted-out question: "Any pardons before you leave office? Will you be issuing a pardon for yourself?" (Transcript.)

I excerpted the humorous material, but there was also some serious talk about thanking God and the perseverance of the pilgrims. And something that completely surprised me: "This year our nation commemorates the 400th anniversary of the pilgrims landing on Plymouth Rock." 

What?! That's a gigantic anniversary — a centennial mark — and I'd heard absolutely nothing about it.

I found this op-ed by Tom Cotton from a few days ago, "It's the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrims' arrival. Why haven't we heard more about it?" I'm guessing the reason is that we are not proud of American history anymore. The pilgrims have been problematized. Senator Tom says: 

[T]he Pilgrims have fallen out of fashion in elite circles. Just this week, The New York Times food section published an article that called the Pilgrim story, including the First Thanksgiving, a “myth” and a “caricature.” In place of these so-called “myths,” the liberal newspaper seeks to substitute its own, claiming the history of our nation is an unbroken tale of conflict, oppression and misery...  

Least surprising scoop.

"Scoop: Trump tells confidants he plans to pardon Michael Flynn" (Axios).

"President Trump and the Republican Party placed the powers of the federal government in service to Trump’s reelection on Tuesday..."

"... staging pardoning and naturalization ceremonies as part of the GOP’s official nominating convention and using the White House Rose Garden for a speech by the first lady.... The format bucked traditional norms of diplomacy and launched a House investigation into whether Pompeo violated the Hatch Act, a federal law that separates government functions from political ones — and a line that Trump and many of his aides have appeared to delight in blurring. Pompeo's address, delivered with the night skyline of Jerusalem behind him, celebrated Trump's relocation of the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to 'this very city of God, Jerusalem.'... The president made an unadvertised appearance less than 15 minutes into Tuesday night's broadcast, where he signed a pardon for Jon Ponder, a convicted criminal who turned his life around with help from a former FBI agent. The two men, both scheduled as speakers Tuesday, appeared alongside Trump at the White House.... Trump has largely bypassed the traditional pardon system, in which convicted people appeal to the Justice Department.... Trump made a second unadvertised appearance Tuesday, to preside over a naturalization ceremony for five immigrants, which also featured acting homeland security secretary Chad Wolf. Speaking at the White House, Trump praised the three women and two men from all corners of the globe for their perseverance. 'You followed the rules, and you obeyed the laws. You learned your history, embraced our values and proved yourselves to be men and women of the highest integrity,' Trump said. Trump has always put gauze over the specifics of his wife’s immigration story...."

From "Trump uses powers of government in service of reelection, with pardoning and naturalization ceremonies" (WaPo).