Trump said he would consider pre-emptive pardons to protect Elon Musk and other close aides should Democrats take control of Congress
Donald Trump said he would be willing to protect Elon Musk and his staff if Democrats take control of Congress after the midterm elections this week.
In an interview for the “Pod Force One” podcast published Monday, Trump said he would move to “protect” the billionaire SpaceX and Tesla CEO if Congressional investigators targeted him.
Trump also indicated that he was weighing pre-emptive pardons for his close aides and others around him should the Democrats pursue investigations, according to Axios. It is a notion that the president has floated before to keep his team from facing prosecution for actions during the first two years of his term.
oh, I think that even if he premptively pardons the entire gang, Congress should investigate anyway. Just so that the record of what they did is made public and Trump doesn’t get to revise the historical record.
I think we need an amendment to rescind the pardon. Reduce it to a stay of execution only. Why is it even a thing? Did they really think giving this power to a sitting president would ONLY be used to right injustices? It’s a friggin unlimited commit crimes and get out of jail free card.
Kings had the power of pardon and they were creating a replacement for a king.
Pardons from criminal presidents should not be allowed.
Let the investigations happen and let the facts speak for themselves. Everyone else has to answer for their actions, so why should Musk or Trump’s staffers be any different? Wealth, power, and political connections shouldn’t shield anyone from accountability. No one is above the law, period.
Great. Then they can’t plead the fifth when questioned by Congress.
A pardon won’t keep him from being de-naturalized & deported.
I like your thinking.
So he knows Elon and his staffers have committed crimes then. How is this legal??
It isn’t. That’s the whole point of the pardon. It was just never imagined that pardons would be used the way they are today. Oh and SCOTUS’ godawful ruling on executive immunity.
Goose: Protect them from what, Donald?
Preemptive pardon should not even be a thing.
And if it is, the executive should list explicitly what crimes, on what days, against which individuals, cannot be brought to trial.
This is the real crux of the issue. Blanket pardons shouldn’t be a thing. If you want to pardon someone, it should be specific. Which crimes? Where? When? Who was victimized? Who else was involved? What was the outcome of the crime?
The SCOTUS has already ruled in
Burdick v. USthat accepting a pardon requires admitting guilt of the crime you’re being pardoned of. The wording of the ruling was that a pardon carries “an imputation of guilt and acceptance of a confession of it.” The SCOTUS has consistently held that a pardon does not overturn a guilty conviction. Instead, it removes the punishment for the crime. You’re still unequivocally guilty after a pardon.It shouldn’t be some sort of “I pardon you for waves arms in air vaguely” power, because that turns the whole “needing to admit guilt” part into a sly wink wink elbow nudge situation. It puts the person’s crimes in a quantum Schrödinger state. The person accepting a vague pardon is inarguably guilty of something, because they admitted guilt when they accepted the pardon. But the court doesn’t know what they’ve admitted to until a prosecutor tries to indict them, and they go “oh no you can’t prosecute me, I was pardoned.”
Doesn’t accepting a pardon, especially a blanket pardon, also mean that you lose your Fifth Amendment protection to not incriminate yourself? You can not be punished for what you did, that means you have nothing to fear and can be made to confess everything and incriminate accomplices. Wouldn’t that be some way to have a go at Trump?
Effect of a Pardon
The Fifth Amendment privilege exists to protect the witness from providing self-incriminating testimony so long as, and only so long as, the danger of prosecution persists. As a result, according to at least one Supreme Court case, when a “witness has already received a pardon, he cannot longer set up his [Fifth Amendment] privilege, since he stands, with respect to such offense, as if it had never been committed.”
It reminds me a little of popes selling indulgences. “Donate money and/or go on crusade, and I’ll absolve you of any sins you’ve already commited or will commit in the future.” That sort of thing eventually resulted in a rather significant schism.
They aren’t a thing. You can only pardon a crime that’s already been commited, not for future crimes.
Also Trump violated his oath of office within 72 hours of this term beginning, so technically none of his pardons mean anything from this term and can just be reversed.
He wasn’t legitimately serving in capacity of the president since he abdicated his office by violating his oath.
"I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
scRotus says anything dipshit does is just part of his doing the job and he can’t be prosecuted for it at all.
‘to the best of my ability’ is also doing some heavy work here. he has no qualifications for office and he’s dumb as bricks. he’s doing the ‘best’ he can, doing the only thing he knows how to: lie, cheat, steal.
The crimes have already been committed, they just haven’t been charged for it yet.
That would be interesting - if he could pardon the crimes but he’d first have to specifically detail them.
I don’t think he would need to specifcy them?
I pardon Elon Musk and all DOGE staff for anything and everything they did while working for DOGE.
Pardon should only be possible under very narrow circumstances. For example if laws got loosened after conviction or when convoction WAS obviously politically motivated. But neither can logically handed out before a judge read the verdict.
What if trump pardons himself and friends for any sex crimes now, maybe even murder?
Why would any judge honor this? Ooo now i’m thinking dems kept heads low regarding epstein convictions to use that very argumentation and they can’t pardon themselves anymore. A man can have hope right?
Gonna need them
Democrats’ next move: round up the pardoned traitors and execute them. Then pardon the executioner. Problem solved?
Even though this would never happen, it’s a very good argument against this power. Well done sir.
Sir we need big thinkers like you running for office.
Let’s just take all of his money instead.
he’s used his money to commit crimes, he’ll do it again. the fact he has so fucking much of it is too great a temptation.
civil forfeiture of all of it should definitely be on-the-table.
if a redneck sheriff can take a black guy’s cash (it might have come from drugs) that he was takin’ to pay ma’s rent… muskrat’s money… hell, all those fukfaces’ money… should be fair game for the taking.
Hit him where it really hurts.
Let’s make him count it as he hands it over, any mistake and he gets a portion of his flesh removed and has to start over
Why stop there? Take his head off while you’re at it.
ALL of it.
Every last penny.
In the near future American school children will respond to being told about Nixon with “wait, that’s it?!”
Assuming they aren’t too busy sheltering in place, of course.
You know Vance said that openly, right?
“I think that his historical legacy is enjoying a bit of a renaissance — but I think deservedly so,” Vance said of Nixon. “As I joked … backstage, if Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story. Like, the idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy.”
https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/26/politics/jd-vance-richard-nixon-corruption
Nixon was surpassed by Iran/Contra.
Ronnie Raygun had the largest number in history (138) for the number of people in an administration that were investigated, indicted or convicted. And the conservatives spent most of the 90s and beyond agitating to have stuff named after him, and to put that asshole on our money and on Mt. Rushmore…
They would have had the country built shrines to the guy if they had their way. They have zero shame.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandals_of_the_Reagan_administration
In the near future American children will not be told about the crap Nixon did at all.
As if we werent saying “thats it?” to Clintons blowjob
That blowjob demonstrated that he could be easily compromised. Ridiculously easy, really. Granted this administration has proven that corruption and kompramat is actually a rite of passage rather than being truly scandal-worthy, so yeah. We screwed
The blowjob wasn’t really the issue.
The problem was he lied under oath.
At the time, I thought he shouldn’t be removed for that, but in the intervening years I’ve realized I was wrong. You could argue that there was no reason to be questioning him about it, and you could argue that he had a right to privacy.
However, once he’s under oath, he should have to tell the truth.
He should have been removed, because it would have made it clear that presidents need to obey the law.
He didn’t lie though. They didn’t ask him if he got a blowjob, they asked him if he’d had sex.
The problem was he lied under oath.
That depends on what your definition of ‘is’ is
LOL, as if that would have changed right wing behavior. Sure, they would have gladly removed Clinton, for “reasons of principle” (fucking LOL) and then went right on to be as awful as always.
They were trying to get Clinton pretty much all of the 90s and were ecstatic that they got a…stain on a dress. Fucking embarrassing.
I don’t know about his guilt. GOP kept changing the goalposts. It was fraud they were trying to get him for and weren’t able. Then they framed the sex as intercourse not blow job and then decided since he didn’t own up to the affair in general that he had lied. Legalese is always in play leaving denial that plain language would capture. He was a cheater in his marriage but he had that in common with almost every other president, VP, Senator, Congressman, on down the line of politicians, including those who were prosecuting him.
“Trump floats” means nothing. Stop reporting on his idiocy as if it’s news. It’s been ten years of this doofus, and this is Lemmy, there’s nobody here left to convince that he’ll do anything but whatever he can, while his word means nothing.
Report on what he does, not what he says.
Let me know when he floats face down in the reflecting pool
He’s saying the quiet part out loud. He will do it. Once the cat is out of the bag, that’s it.
Don’t feed the trolls. When you argue with a troll, you are entering a competition to see who has more free time. You will lose, because you have a life and the troll does not. Do not EVER respond to trolls.
I’ve been saying this about Trump since 2014. Shame nobody followed that advice up to this point, and likely never will.
Let me know when he floats face down in the reflecting pool
You’re gonna be really sad when you miss that headline…
The headline would probably read ‘found floating’ anyway.
Step 1: fix the reflecting pool.
Pardons are not protection against testifying, that’s pretty much all they can do for 2 years: get their words under oath and build cases for perjury if they get pardoned. Or get evidence for state crimes and bypass the executive pardons.
Accepting a pardon is admittance of guilt which can be used to force testimony without the 5th amendment protection.
That’s very obviously not true based on what we saw with Fauci. He had a presidential pardon and plead the 5th for his entire questioning.
That’s more because they were obviously fishing for something new or different to catch him on. There was no reason to bring him back before congress at this point. It was pure theater.
If he purjures himself, intentionally or not, by saying anything that conflicts with previous statements, they’d try to charge him. There was zero benefit to Fauci to testify in that hearing, only legal peril.
You can be compelled to testify legally. In practice it’s much more difficult and a more arduous process, which doesn’t play well for tv and all fauci was subpoenaed for was to try to create compelling clips on social media and cable news for Trump and his sycophants. Fauci definitely could have been compelled but it would have been pointless and potentially could have created more sympathy for him or exposed things republicans wouldn’t have wanted. That’s why he wasn’t compelled, not because you can’t.
