After investing a lot of time researching & questioning the law of pardons, I think the left is too worked up about the validity of Trump pardons:

1. Of the concrete issues facing the US in 2021, it's not even close to the top 100.
2. State crim law covers the worst conduct.
3. Pardon panic is producing too many unforced errors by journalists and legal commentators.
For example, accepting a pardon is NOT an admission of guilt according to American law & practice, no matter what you've read on this website:
4. The eagerness to interpret accepting a pardon as evidence of guilt runs roughshod over the presumption of innocence, doubts about prosecutorial power, the value of mercy, and years of work using DNA exonerations for pardons:
5. Trump may actually be doing Biden and the Democrats a huge favor with these pardons:
Trump is expending a lot of political capital for his co-conspirators, when they nevertheless face state prosecutors & fed investigation of pardons as felony bribery/quid pro quo...
6. But the favor to Biden is that his DOJ would otherwise face thorny questions about the use of political capital - and questions about DOJ independence - if all the Russia/Ukraine/Turkey investigations were on the table.

Thankfully, state AGs and local DAs are independent.

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More from @jedshug

1 Dec
In other words, Trump Org’s 2020 business plan:
Pardon Club for Men:
“I’m not only the president. I’m also a client!”

8 pages are completely back-out redacted, but it does say “over 50 devices” like phones and laptops were seized.
Pardon me?
That’s a lot of warrants.
Read 4 tweets
30 Nov
A great irony of the Trump era:
Trump’s most significant legacy - entrenching a @FedSoc judiciary- depends on the institution he attacked most relentlessly:
The rule of law and the courts.

The Trump judges have power only if the people believe the rule of law matters.
1/
2/ Republicans coddling Trump and his attacks on all legal institutions after the election are jeopardizing their one big win for which they sold their souls:
The enduring power of the courts and the law.
Trump will burn down his @FedSoc courts, and the GOP is enabling him.
Dumb.
3/ The left now views what Trump and McConnell have done to the courts as illegitimate (some but not all of that conclusion is right).
The Court seems to be moving in a direction that will alienate moderates.
And now Trump is openly delegitimizing the courts for his base...
Read 4 tweets
25 Nov
Pardon thread:
I've seen many people, including legal experts, claim that accepting a pardon means admitting guilt.
This simply is not the American practice.

Here is a thread on Burdick dicta and pardons for innocent people (DNA exonerations, etc.) 1/
2/
See @ProfBrianKalt's op-ed explaining the oft-cited case Burdick (1915) as dicta:
"Burdick was about a different issue: the ability to turn down a pardon. The language about imputing and confessing guilt was just an aside — what lawyers call dicta..."
washingtonpost.com/outlook/five-m…
3/ "The court meant that, as a practical matter, because pardons make people look guilty, a recipient might not want to accept one. But pardons have no formal, legal effect of declaring guilt." - @ProfBrianKalt
Read 7 tweets
24 Nov
My hot historical take is that the truly dangerous electoral "road map" is not Trump's from 2020.
It's Madison's from 1787.

The Electoral College is a more inevitable danger to democracy. It has invited partisan disenfranchising litigation long before 2020, and it will again.
By "hot," I mean "old."
And ironic for Madison:
The electoral college will always turn a national election into a battle over a few swing states, localizing a heated factional democracy.

But Madison in Federalist No. 10 argued for a national republic to diffuse such heat.
3/ The irony of Federalist No. 10:

Yes, the republic would be huge, but none of its officers would be elected *nationally.*
The Electoral College was a localist twist.
The only truly national institution would be the Supreme Court, the unelected "least dangerous branch."
Read 4 tweets
21 Nov
I’ve seen enough.
We have a new realigned two-party system:

The Democratic Party and QAnon.
In all historical seriousness, we have had massive party disruptions by conspiracy theories in America, some legit, some insane:
The Anti-Masons
The Know-Nothings American Party
The Republicans (anti-slave power conspiracy - legit!)
KKK surge 1920s...
I was listening to a CBC podcast on the “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s: mass delusions about Day Care ritual sexual child abuse, in reaction to working mothers, the sexual revolution, suburbanization, and cultural change.

We are experiencing an even more severe reaction today.
Read 6 tweets
19 Nov
I understand why people are anxious. But Biden will be president on January 20th.

Any worst-case scenario falls short.
The conservative Justices are not insane, nor are they bad at math.
They already have a 6-3 arch-conservative majority locked it. Why burn it down now?
1/
2/ Let’s start with one worst-case scenario: Non-certification.
Even if Trump blocks the certification of ALL five close states, Biden still have a lead of 233-232 among appointed electors, and wins the electoral college under the 12th Amendment:
3/ Let me add that this isn't going to happen. Michigan has a Democrat as Sec of State (see below) and is going to certify its electors. So will the other states...
But let's play this out anyway...
Read 14 tweets

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