It is weird having the corruption so in-your-face.
this post was submitted on 30 May 2025
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There's a weird reverse ethical principle about it, as if it's somehow more honest this way.
Less theater around it
Murder is only a crime if you are not rich, a politician or a policeman.
Its Luigi Time!
It must suck to be a conspiracy theorist when The Powers That Be don't even bother hiding anything
I think most conspiracists are MAGA, tbh. They probably think all this is fine because it happened before or something.
Wait, the pardon can invalidate having to pay restitution too‽
Looks like it. So that guy just made a profit of 3.4 million (1 mil for the bribe out of 4.4 mil he had to pay back).
That's not even the part I'm shocked about. Cancelling prison or even fines for the perp is one thing, but it's fucking absurd that Trump can just unilaterally decide the victims don't get their money back!
The current system doesn't have more vigilante justice, because people still believe that it's better as a whole to have justice be impartial and not take things into their own hands. Acts like these destroy this illusion. These people who got screwed over now see there is no justice to be had by trusting the system, so why not go all green Mario to see justice done? Each of these acts is like a hammer to the dam of popular sentiment.
Yeah this is the reason there's so much violence in the drug trade. If someone robs a drug dealer, they can't go to the police. If someone encroaches on a gang's territory, they can't sue. If a cartel budges out a rival cartel through shady business practices, there's no legal recourse. So the result of all the situations is extreme violence.
That's the end road here if the justice system continues to be corrupted. There will eventually become a point where people see the rich getting richer off the suffering of others, and with no legal recourse, will resort to violence.
The 2nd Amendment exists as a remedy when all the other Amendments fail.
Yet I fear that the second amendment mostly exists as a pacifier to keep people clinging to the perceived security of "having the 2nd amendment after all".
Keeping something as a last resort is meaningless if you are never willing to actually tap it.
Then it is just comfort.
His pardon gets him off the hook for Federal criminal charges, but I wonder if he could still be found liable in a civil lawsuit.
Yes, he can. Further, Burdick v. US basically says that accepting a pardon is evidence of guilt. The conviction and pardon can be used as evidence in the civil suit.
It's a dangerous game tho.
It can very well invalidate the life of the pardoned as well, if one of the aggrieved party has nothing left to lose because of that wage theft.
I wonder how long Donvict can continue before he gets stopped for good.
CEO decides to FA with his cancer-stricken employee's pay, FO's what a knife to the neck feels like.
I wish I was on that jury, I'd never vote to convict.
Nice.
The judge wasn't technically wrong though. This was a "get out of jail for $1M card".
Creed always said it best, but he undersold them.
"You don't go by Monopoly, man. That game is nuts. Nobody just picks up Get Out of Jail Free cards. Those things cost thousands." - Creed
No get out of jail free card, but apparently a get out of jail for $1mil card.
Get out of jail and out of paying $4.4 million for $1 million. So it's a "get out of jail and here take this $3.4 million" card.
Can someone explain again how this isn’t criminal corruption?
"If the president does it it's not illegal. - Richard M. Nixon" - The Supreme Court
I'm so fucking pissed that this is literarily true. Worse yet, wasn't it just some fucking memo they pushed out? The equivalent of scribbling get out of jail on a napkin and the cops going, ah he's got documentation, nothing we can do.
One of the biggest failures of Biden is doing NOTHING to limit the presidents powers or to increase accountability, because he himself didn't want to be held accountable for anything.
Actually it was the job of Congress to do that. Any Executive Order Biden signed could be reversed (and most were) by the next CIC in the WH.
Yea that's a fair point. I just wish he'd have made a precedence of Presidents being held accountable and anyone else in power. But he avoided that because he was afraid of it being used on him.
It is, they just don't care
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I'm often asking this: how can presidential pardons be defended as acceptable at all, even outside Trump?
This was bound to happen at some point. Presidential pardons were just waiting to be abused.
They're not a thing in many other counties. And thank Christ for that.
Being able to personally just overturn the courts is bar shit insane.
I bet you, there will be political assassinations coming that Trump will simply pardon.
The thing is, if he has no involvement, was this even illegal before the supreme court gave Trump their get-out-of-jail-free card?
Not a laywer, but I could imagine it wouldn't have been.
Trump aside, y'all need to get rid of executive pardons.
Oh, and electronic voting.
Sincerely, from the provinces. Please.
So, ostensibly, pardons are meant to be a way to override the Justice system where it has failed to provide justice. If the law is unjust or it's application was unjust, a pardon can correct that. And ideally it is used sparingly and by a President that that can be trusted to be an arbiter of wisdom and morality. So there's just about no limitations on the power. And the other branches are meant to give consequences for unethical applications of it, like quid pro quo pardons/bribery. But obviously that is not how it works in practice.
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The theoretical argument is that any justice system no matter how well thought out and well intentioned, will eventually result in edge cases where justice fails to be done. Especially when implemented on a large scale. There are already appeals, and those can fail too. Plenty of examples of people actually being railroaded.
You can just accept that , or you turn to democracy to try alleviate the most egregious cases. Thats what the pardon is for - no process, no more appeals. Just the president, the people's highest representative, and a pen.
It sometimes works (as in, is probably a net benefit) when the person wielding this power fears the people and will pay (at least) a political price for misusing it. Pardoning someone he knows is a complete of the power. Enriching himself by essentially selling pardons throws the whole thing into the world of comedy. Any talk of the theoretical merits of it is laughable.
You can argue that this was inevitable. Maybe you're right. But that was the intent, and it's failure is another symptom of the American democracy degenerating towards failure. Trump won't pay a price for this. Even on conservative forums where they hangwring about "not getting why he's doing this" (as they stare straight at the naked corruption), none of them will change their votes. Nobody is interested in holding him accountable.
This democratic failure has widespread consequences. The open corruption of the pardons process is actually one of the smaller symptoms of it.
I mean even if you're not explicitly selling pardons you don't have to worry about the political consequences of a pardon if it's your last term in office and can't run anymore due to being term limited. So the system is broke from the very start and just allows presidents to override enforcement of laws they don't like at the federal level.
Now That's What I Call ~~Bribery~~ two completely unrelated events 84!
When Indulgences return, where is our modern day Jan Hus or Martin Luther?
Probably already illegally detained and shipped off to a torture prison in one of americas vassal states
It's more of a time for a Mexican Joker anyway.
This is nothing new. He did this at the end of his first term too.
Further proof that Trump is a shrewd businessman. Joe Biden gave his pardons away for free, like a sucker.
I would have thought that restitution is not a criminal, but a civil matter and can't be subject to presidential pardon.
Maybe the Luigi Brothers should stop by and "un-pardon" him?
i love this. US laws regarding bribery are barely a notch above the honor system already.
the rules are basically "hey, you can take bribes in return for favors, but please make sure that your briber doesn't say 'I'm giving you this sack of money, conviently labeled "bribes", as a bribe so you can do favors for me in exchange' and you don't say 'understood, i will abuse my power to do favors for you in exchange for this bribe'—and as long as you don't both say these things on record and label the money as ’bribes’ you're good"...
... and this motherfucker's like "let's just do it anyway, we'll get away with it so who cares"
This will just make the GOP more loyal to Trump now that they know they don't have to follow rules.
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