Our good friends at The New York Daily News have just made my day:
BREAKING:
Steve Bannon, former Trump advisor, in federal custody on charges of defrauding donors in fundraising scheme: US Attorney SDNY
Stephen Bannon and three others “orchestrated a scheme” that raised more than $25 million to build a wall along the southern border according to charges contained in an indictment unsealed in Manhattan federal court.
My “religion” requires me to find joy in every day. It turns out I never need to look very far for it, but some days it gets handed to me on a silver platter.
Of course Mr. “Breitbart” has more claims to infamy than “former Trump advisor. But right now, who even cares? Let’s dance!
Have a joyous day.
Yes! :-)
Good news thas been rare so far this year,
This is late by, oh, 5 years or more but still better that than never.
Federal charges, huh? Expect a presidential pardon in 3…2….
Yay! Good for the DA, taking dangerous criminals off the street, the “Law & order” President must be oh so proud of his attornies at the SDNY…
… I’m just kidding, of course, he has probably already called them “horrible people” on Twitter.
#2 – You’re right of course, that’s exactly what Hair Furor will do – if he can. But if I understand your laws correctly, doesn’t he (I mean Bannon) have to be convicted of the crime first? And wouldn’t that take a while, as in, well past January of 2021? Don’t think even he would try to issue a pardon for a case that hasn’t been tried yet.
I don’t know anything about the case against Bannon, and even less about the inner workings of the S.D.N.Y. AG’s office. There are statutes of limitation in play, as well as competing priorities, both political and practical. But I would not be surprised if the timing is not accidental, in the hope that Trump won’t win in November.
But then there’s this (also via NY Daily News email):
Please resume your regularly scheduled dancing.
quotetheunquote @2:
I don’t think so (‘tho I hope to be wrong), simply from the fact that Nixon got a blanket pardon, and he sure as hell didn’t get tried and convicted.
@5 Some Old Programmer:
Oooo, yeah, I’d forgotten that Ford did that! What a weird world we (well, our neighbours to the south, at least) live in.
I was thinking about so other case in the recent past, I think it was Joe Arpaio – not strictly equivalent, of course – where there was some question (amongst the right-wingers) as to whether a Presidential pardon was really a good idea. I seem to recall that they were saying that the pardon would in some way be an admission of guilt, since only the convicted could be pardoned (unlike an overturn on appeal, which would, I presume, negate the guilty verdict).
IANAL. That said, my understanding is that the acceptance of a pardon entails an admission of guilt.
@mathman85
My law school is north of the border. That said, yes. Everything I understand about US law tells me that acceptance of the pardon is an admission of guilt. That’s actually one reason why Susan B Anthony was very public about NOT wanting a pardon for trying to vote. It was her understanding that accepting a pardon would be an admission that she had committed fraud, when she hadn’t. She used her own name, dressed up in her sunday best, wasn’t trying to fool anyone. She expected to get turned away, but that only shows there was no intent to commit fraud. Not sure of the exact statute under which she was convicted, and it’s possible that the conviction was legit on the facts, but to Anthony it was far from legit and she didn’t want to dignify it by acting as if she needed a pardon. She didn’t even appeal. She just refused to pay the fine.
All of which is to say that when Trump “pardoned” her two days ago, he wasn’t doing her a favor. He was trampling her dignity. But that’s nothing new for Trump and women.
It’s also worth noting, however, that the admission of guilt changes some things but not others. If you are sentenced after another conviction, they can’t use your pardoned crime as a past criminal history to enhanced the sentence. However, if someone calls you a felon or a rapist or a fraudster or whatever you got pardoned for, you can’t sue them for defamation if you’ve been pardoned. Sure, you’re not legally guilty, but you’ve admitted the words are appropriate and whatever reputation you had has already suffered injury from the actual conviction before pardon.
(Sure, you can be pardoned before conviction, but it almost never happens. I don’t know about how defamation cases work work on those facts, but I’d be surprised if the court construed them differently from people pardoned after conviction.)