An NPR review of social media posts, speeches and interviews found that Trump has made calls to “free” Jan. 6 defendants or promised to issue them presidential pardons more than a dozen times. Trump has said he would issue those pardons on “day one” of his presidency, as part of a broader agenda to use presidential power to exact “retribution” against his opponents and deliver “justice” for his supporters.
“We’ll be looking very, very seriously at full pardons,” Trump told an interviewer in 2022. “I mean full pardons with an apology to many.”
“LET THE JANUARY 6 PRISONERS GO,” Trump posted on his social media site, Truth Social, in March 2023.
Later that year, Trump re-posted a Truth Social post stating, “The cops should be charged and the protesters should be freed.”
In the immediate term, a pardon for Jan. 6 defendants would free them from prison as well as other court-ordered supervision, and end ongoing prosecutions. The pardon would also allow the hundreds of defendants convicted of felonies to legally own guns again.
It’s a legal document, so we really do need to look deeply into it. You can’t just interpret the law based on feel, it needs to be based on something as objective as possible.
Does pardoning someone who is wrongfully convicted of insurrection count? Who decides whether it’s wrongful? Surely the President of the US, the head of state, should be someone who can accurately decide what an enemy of the state looks like since that’s their job. What about someone who is charged but not convicted? They’re prisoners too. What about someone who was an accomplice to an insurrectionist, but they didn’t actually qualify under the legal terminology.
That section hasn’t been tried much in court, so there isn’t a ton of legal precedent to go on aside from the civil war aftermath.
Yes, traitors shouldn’t be in public office, but we need an objective definition of that based on legal precedent, and there’s still a lot of gaps in that precedent. I want to see Trump’s trials complete quickly so we can get some precedent established before getting into a likely messy election.
The remedy is clearly spelled out in the amendment. Let Congress lift the disability by a vote or find a new candidate — case closed. No citizen has a constitutional right to hold a government office, especially the highest office in the land. Please stop making excuses for disgraceful and illegal behavior like treason.
I’m not making excuses, I’m just not jumping on the bandwagon. I think there are legitimat. e constitutional questions that haven’t been sufficiently resolved with legal precedent. We’re a nation based on rule of law, not rule of feels.
Trump hasn’t been convicted of insurrection or treason AFAIK. I think he should be, and I think the Jan 6 commission agrees, but that needs to go through a formal legal process.
Legal ruling, not feels.
Yes, but that’s at the state level and doesn’t apply to the federal election. That ruling could be overturned (in which case Trump is allowed on the ballot in Colorado) or sustained (Trump is not allowed to take office federally). Trump isn’t going to win Colorado regardless, so it doesn’t really matter without a nationwide ruling.