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  1. #1
    Senior Member lorrie's Avatar
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    Should Obama just pardon Hillary?

    November 03, 2016, 10:10 am

    Should Obama just pardon Hillary?





    "Lock her up!" has become a perpetual chant at Donald Trump rallies. At the same time, aggressive elements within the FBI are apparently resisting career prosecutors, who have determined that evidence does not warrant new criminal investigations of Hillary Clinton. There are even disturbing hints at congressional pressure for the FBI to keep investigations going.

    It does not take much clairvoyance to predict that Clinton's most strident opponents may seek to extend the use criminal investigations as a political tactic to undermine her presidency if she wins the election next week. That prospect triggers a startling idea: Should President Barack Obama simply pardon Clinton if she wins the election?

    The pardon power is typically used to extend mercy to individuals who have been convicted of crimes, but there is also a tradition of using the power as a tool of political reconciliation. President Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon for Watergate crimes is probably the highest profile example. But there have been other instances.As he left office, George Washington pardoned the men who had led the Whiskey Rebellion, an armed revolt against the federal government's power to tax. President Andrew Johnson also issued thousands of pardons to ex-Confederates after the Civil War. A more modern example is President Jimmy Carter's grant of amnesty for draft-evasion during the Vietnam War. The rationale has been to move forward and not remain mired in retrospective criminal proceedings.

    That attitude is not alien to President Obama. In two instances he has exhibited it. He resisted pressure to prosecute Bush Administration officials for war crimes or human rights abuses stemming from torture, and he resisted pressure to prosecute bankers for any unlawful activity relating to the 2008 financial collapse. In neither case did Obama use the pardon power, but the result in both instances was an effective pardon in an effort to move on.

    The allegations against Clinton seem minute compared to the subjects of previous efforts at reconciliation. Although FBI Director James Comey called Clinton's handling of classified information "extremely careless," he determined that it did not remotely rise to the level of a prosecutable violation. The endless carping about "Benghazi" has produced virtually nothing of moment, and neither formal nor media inquiries into the Clinton Foundation have uncovered any clear example of a "pay-to-play" scheme. Some Clinton opponents are now predictably grasping at the last resort: an attempted charge of perjury. Historians may ultimately see this as little more than an effort to criminalize political animosity.

    A presidential pardon could short circuit some of this maneuvering. The Constitution gives the president the power "to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States," and it could be used here. The public is aware of the allegations against Clinton, yet she has continued to lead in election polls. If voters choose her for the presidency, their decision that the allegations are not disqualifying deserves respect. A presidential pardon could ratify that assessment.
    But what if a "smoking gun" eventually emerged? The president's pardon power has a major exception. He cannot immunize anyone from impeachment or removal from office. Congress has the exclusive power over those important proceedings. They would remain options in the event that compelling evidence of a crime ultimately did emerge against Clinton, however unlikely that may seem.

    Frankly, Congress is where these matters belong anyway. The criminal inquiries have been proceeded from the start in the shadow of intense political objectives. Rhetoric to the contrary, the political goal of Clinton opponents has not really been to "Lock her up!" It has been hobbling her as president or even removing her from office. Those are political considerations. Relegating this fight to Congress where it belongs could extricate the Justice Department and FBI from what may now be a hopelessly politicized process and relieve them from more crossfire, pressure, and intrigue.

    Obviously, there are major disincentives to the issuance of a pardon here. Obama surely has little desire to have such an intensely controversial act become part of his legacy. Clinton would also have little interest in kicking off a presidency with a pardon, particularly since a pardon is an admission of guilt.

    There seems to be no real evidence of a prosecutable crime here, but it is worth considering whether a prophylactic pardon might not be in the best interests of the nation. It could restrict future fights over these matters to the political venue, where they probably belong.
    J. Stephen Clark is a professor of law at Albany Law School in New York.

    http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-bl...pardon-hillary

  2. #2
    Senior Member lorrie's Avatar
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    Pardon me: The Hillary scandals are just getting started

    November 02, 2016, 08:34 am

    Pardon me: The Hillary scandals are just getting started




    If you think you have scandal fatigue now, just wait. Should Hillary Clinton win the presidency on Nov. 8, you can expect an endless stream of Hillary scandals, even if President Obama issues a pre-emptive pardon for her before the election.

    Yes, the president has the power to issue pardons before an offender has been charged with a crime. That precedent was established when the Supreme Court ruled in 1866 that a presidential pardon "extends to every offence known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken, or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment."

    Discussion of the Supreme Court ruling in Ex parte Garland sprouted up on Democrat-leaning websites and blogs at the end of the Bush 43 presidency, when the liberal establishment convinced itself that only by pardoning intelligence officials involved in extraordinary renditions and the enhanced interrogation of terrorists could they escape jail sentences. Of course, President George W. Bush didn’t need to pardon torturers, because U.S. intelligence officials had not committed torture. Rather, they had acted within a set of strict constitutional guidelines set out by then Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo (derisively referred to by Wikipedia as the “Torture Memos”).

    But while a presidential pardon might avoid the sorry spectacle of a national security investigation by the FBI of an incoming president for her reckless mishandling of classified information while secretary of State, it would in no way deter Republicans in Congress from conducting their own investigations of Mrs. Clinton, up to and including impeachment proceedings.

    For example, we now know that four separate FBI field offices have been conducting a corruption investigation of the Clinton Foundation for well over a year.
    Imagine for a moment how Congress would react if Obama were to pardon Mrs. Clinton not just for her email woes but for her past corruption, even for corruption not yet discovered? Do you really think Republicans, even if they were in the minority, would let that one go?

    I recall the tenacity of Rep. Henry González, a long-time Democrat back-bencher from Texas who rose to become chairman of the House Banking Committee in 1989. González used all the wiles of his congressional office to prosecute President George H.W. Bush for arming Saddam Hussein in the lead-up to the first Gulf War.

    González was so successful in his efforts that they contributed to Bill Clinton’s 1992 victory over an incumbent president who, at his peak, had a 90 percent approval rating.

    Here are just a few of the Hillary scandals Congress could pursue:

    The Loretta Lynch meeting with Bill Clinton on the tarmac of the Phoenix airport, just as the FBI was getting ready to make public its conclusions on the Hillary Clinton private email server. Did Bill Clinton promise Lynch that Hillary, if elected president, would reappoint her as Attorney General?

    Pay for play at the Clinton Foundation. I can imagine several committee chairmen exploring whether the actions of the Clinton Foundation violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). While a presidential pardon might clear Mrs. Clinton of RICO charges, it wouldn’t cover Bill Clinton, Chelsea Clinton, Doug Band, Huma Abedin, or a host of other Clinton Foundation officials who solicited donations from foreign corporations and foreign governments in exchange for official favors while Mrs. Clinton was Secretary of State.

    Will they all go to the mat (or jail) to protect Mrs. Clinton and her scandal-plagued presidency?



    GOP senator: Clinton Foundation one of world's largest money laundering schemes http://hill.cm/JMgPRGX

    Pay-to-play schemes that violated RICO could lead to multiple federal prosecutions to disgorge illicit profits through civil forfeiture proceedings. Imagine the Clinton Foundation having to repay the Governments of Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Algeria and Qatar tens of millions of dollars for having essentially traded payoffs for U.S. government favors or for the promise of favors to come?

    What about the Varkey Foundation and its GEMS education initiative, which paid Bill Clinton more than $56 million to serve as front man for a gigantic fund-raising scheme? “Upon funding and implementation, these commitments will have a total value of over $70 billion,” the foundation website boasts.
    Are they waiting for Mrs. Clinton to be sworn into office before those “commitments” can be banked? Are donors expecting future favors from a Clinton administration in return for their money? I can’t imagine Congress not wanting to know answers to those questions.

    Or what about contributions to the Clinton Global Initiative from the Abraaj Group, a UAE private equity company partly-owned by the family of Jaafar Dhia Jaafar, the mastermind of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons program? Congressional investigators will want to know if those donations influenced a decision made by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to award the Abraaj Group hundreds of millions of dollars in investment management contracts through the State Department’s Overseas Private Investment Corporation.

    Illegal coordination between Hillary’s presidential campaign, her super Pac, and the Democratic National Committee. Allegations of illegal collusion stemmed from undercover video shot by Project Veritas that captured DNC self-styled “undercover” operatives boasting of carrying out dirty tricks in coordination with the Clinton presidential campaign. Congress will want to hear testimony from the DNC operatives, and will undoubtedly demand that the DNC provide financial records detailing their relationship to these “consultants.”

    The Iran nuclear deal. Congress will surely want to investigate Mrs. Clinton’s role in establishing a secret back-channel with Iran that led to the worst diplomatic deal in U.S. history, a deal that rewarded a terrorist and terror-sponsor regime with $150 billion and a sure path to nuclear weapons.
    Did Mrs. Clinton meet with Iranian officials or regime intermediaries before official talks began? Did she make promises to Clinton Foundation donors that she would “open up” Iran for U.S. business once she became president?

    Oh, the scandals will be rich, and they will be unending. And they are all of the Clintons’ making. They will not only further weaken our hand in foreign relations, but will distract us from what needs to be done domestically to make this country great again.
    Is that what you want, America?

    Timmerman is a Donald Trump supporter. He was the 2012 Republican Congressional nominee for MD-8 and is the author of Deception: The Making of the YouTube Video Hillary & Obama Blamed for Benghazi, published by Post Hill Press.

    http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/303921-pardon-me-the-hillary-scandals-are-just-getting

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