Thread by @AkivaMCohen

Oh, for fuck's sake, Seth. Can't you take like two weeks off from misinforming people about the law?

Almost every word of this thread is wrong, starting from its fundamental premise. The Pardon Clause does NOT the PARDON power that way

https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1341998976799797248

Here's what the Pardon Clause says: the President "shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment."

It does NOT say "except where the offense is relevant to the impeachment of someone else" or "except where the pardon will obstruct someone else's impeachment"

What this means is very very straightforward. If Judge Totallyno Taracist is being impeached for stealing from Black litigants and lawyers in his court, the president can't pardon him and thereby prevent impeachment & removal

That's it

Yes, at some level you could describe "trying to prevent an impeachment by pardoning the person being impeached for the offense they are being impeached for" as "obstructing an impeachment". But pretending that limits a broader category of "obstruction" is stupid & dishonest

Thread will continue shortly, I can't do this next part from my phone

*does not limit the pardon power.

Sorry, this is what happens when I try to use Swype with Littler Girl sitting on my lap

This is authentic frontier gibberish, Seth. I tweeted the full text of the Pardon Clause there - folks, can you see anything in there that "explicitly" give Congress standing to challenge pardons?

https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1341999409610059776

(Spoiler, it does not). Nor does it give Congress standing *implicitly*. All it does is say "Pardons don't apply when someone is being impeached" - which means that if some official being impeached comes running in saying "stop! Stop! I have a pardon" Congress gets to say

The Congress doesn't have to (or get to) go to court and file a suit to have the pardon declared void. It just continues on its merry way, impeaching the now-pardoned official with all the joy it can muster

And if the guy who took the pardon runs to Court and says "stop them, I have a pardon" the Court just goes

Back in a few, client work calls

Anyway, so his conclusion that "the [pardon] power is definitionally reviewable by the courts" is just GIGO; start with a wrong premise and you'll get to a wrong conclusion

This, too, is nonsense. There's no conflict here. If the grant of a pardon is itself a high crime or misdemeanor - say the President pardoning someone as a quid pro quo - then the pardon is valid and the President can be impeached for granting it

https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1341999908627378177

There's no tension or conflict here, except in Seth's head

And what in god's name is this nonsense? I can't even with this, Seth. You've basically descended to kraken levels of incoherence with this one

https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1342000357761802242

"A pardon that's an abuse of power is non-justiciable if it's too late in his term" - what?

"As a practical matter, a lame duck second term president isn't going to be impeached by Congress for an offense committed at this point" does not magically make the validity of the pardon an issue the courts can question.

This is the fucking underpants gnomes theory of law: I have a premise I dislike ("as a practical matter, there won't be consequences") and a conclusion I want to reach ("there WILL be consequences"), so I can just ignore the question mark at step two and say "this'll work"

This is gobbledygook. A pardon can NEVER pardon an "ongoing crime" - whether the pardon is part of the crime or not - because a pardon has no effect on future criminal behavior, just past crimes

https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1342000995237302272

So if I'm in the process of robbing a bank, and the President walks in and hands me a pardon, and I immediately stop, then cool, I've been pardoned (ignore that bank robbery is likely a state crime, k?)

BUT

If the President hands me a pardon and I say "thanks" and leave the bank with the money (which the pardon didn't magically make mine), I can be prosecuted for bank robbery based on the post-pardon conduct, which - and this is important - I wasn't pardoned for

Throwing in latin law words like "actus reus" doesn't make Seth's asininity any better.

Bottom line: the pardon wipes the slate clean from PRIOR conduct/crimes that is/are the subject of the pardon. That's it, the end

I can't believe I'm saying this but his thread gets worse.

https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1342001264364806144

Seth, did you hit your head repeatedly as a child? Were you black-out drunk when you typed this?

You think a subsequent Justice Department can try to convict Paul Manafort for the crimes he was pardoned for?

Which HE WAS ALREADY TRIED AND MOSTLY CONVICTED ON?

Have you never fucking heard of the concept of double jeopardy?

Yes, this applies to the blackwater assholes, too, and anyone else in this pardon swamp ... except maybe Flynn, since his trial was dismissed

But even if you could get around double jeopardy for Flynn, you STILL can't just "try him again" because the validity of his pardon was settled in that prior litigation. He presented it to the court. The court accepted it (because it had to). The. End.

And by the way, even if it hadn't been, you saying "then it gets litigated" goes over EXACTLY as well as the idiotic Amistad folks filing their steaming pile of crap in DC and saying "now it gets litigated". It "gets litigated" for precisely as long as it takes to get bounced

Hey, @artemis_nieves did you know we were conservative lawyers? Pretty cool ... maybe the Federalist Society can get us a spot on the bench in the next GOP administration

https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1342001735246688257

Seth, it didn't take you five minutes to "establish 5 scenarios in which that's untrue"

It took you 5 minutes to shit out a thread of legally frivolous nonsense that will misinform people who are relying on your presumably greater knowledge of the law

You didn't bother dealing with any of the various SCOTUS cases that absolutely torpedo your random speculation. Just, ya know, said stuff.

That's not how it works.

Here, Seth, let me help you

https://twitter.com/artemis_nieves/status/1332456684980203523

I mean, just look at these next two tweets from Seth. Gonna save the commentary for the follow up since it's the coup de grace

https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1342002613882146818

I'd ArGuE a PaRdOn FoR tReAsOn Is InVaLiD

https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1342003488423862273

When your argument can be summed up as "I think the pardon power has limits the Framers expressly considered and rejected and which rejection SCOTUS has expressly discussed" we can safely say that your argument is wrong and you need to stay away from the topic area

"If a completely uninformed person can come up with 6 legal theories off the top of their head, imagine what someone who knows can do" is a line that really cannot be topped. I'm not even gonna comment on it. Just let it marinate

https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1342004022362968064

No, you doofus, THIS is something that would get litigated. They would have to show that there is a conceivable state-law crime that could apply to the conduct in question

https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1342004291104489472

This, though, is a great summary of Seth's argument: "I really really want to be right about this. It would be much better if I was right about this. Therefore, I must be right about this

https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1342004742294269953

Go read the precedents. Go read the Federalist Papers and the relevant Constitutional Convention notes. You're wrong, and you're no better in spreading misinformation than yesterday's PenceCard idiots.

Stop it.

/end

https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1342005861967933440

BTW, if you want an actual, practicing lawyer to walk you through that, Diana has you covered

https://twitter.com/artemis_nieves/status/1332834514276638720