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Comment by didroe | Hacker News Reader

It blows my mind further that the presidental pardon exists, and he will face zero consequences for any of this.

It's strange to me, as it appears that in the US it apparently doesn't matter if any charges have already been filed. In my country a pardon can only be given to someone, who was already sentenced - there was even some controversy when a couple of years ago the president gave out a pardon before the legal process concluded. As a PhD in law he should have known this made no sense.

You could certainly argue US pardons are supposed to work the same way too, it's just no one has standing to challenge the blanket pardons, but I don't think anyone has tried recently. And the current regime is happy to keep such things around so they can use it on the way out the door.

Correct - it's even weirder, pardons can be given for a categories or even just a blanket pardon for any crimes that might have been committed. There aren't a lot of limits on it.

Andrzej Duda?

The same, yes.

Fortunately, the presidential pardon does not extend to the states who can still prosecute crimes. It only works for federal prosecution.

America will need a number of constitutional amendments to counter the last 40+ years, which I hope is peaking this administration.

Nor does it cover extradition.

USA won't extradite their war criminals. Look how desperately Trump tries to fight down The Hague criminal court. They have a LOT of dirt to cover up here. I mean, just take the bombing of a school with girls in Iran - is that not a war crime? And that's just one of many more examples one could give; Trump denying data to Ukrainians via Starlink means he supports Putin's genocide.

Disapointing to see your factually correct post downvoted.

Somebody must have a very thin skin!

Iran is actually fair game since it doesn't want to be part of the ICC. The same was true for Iraq and Afghanistan. There are no rights without obligations.

However, this isn't the case with Palestine, which is why Netanyahu has problems - and obviously Putin as well.

> Iran is actually fair game since it doesn't want to be part of the ICC.

The current American regime is hardly friendly to the ICC. Are they fair game too? (I'd likely say yes, they would strongly disagree!)

Israel and the US are also not part of the ICC. Yet they still call out "violations" of international law all the time. The ICC is just a colonialist tool used to beat down any trend towards sovereignty.

On paper, this "check" for this is that people this corrupt don't get voted in. But alas.

Kushner may not, but the excerpt indicates that Kushner’s lawyers only performed actions with approval of the president and in the interests of the United States.

So… the President is in pretty hot water if any senators decide to ask a few questions here.

Ah yes ... looks at calendar ... it's a Friday ... whooo boy, the President is in some pretty hot water today! Like yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that, and all the tomorrows until he's not the president any more.

Seriously, there is absolutely nothing the current US president could do that could constitute a "hot water" situation for him give the willingness of the Republican party and the SCOTUS to support him unconditionally.

Clear, extrajudicial funding outside of the law seems like one of those things? Iran/Contra comes to mind as a point of comparison but at least that had some tacit bureaucratic process to it.

We could just ignore Trump's pardons as inherently corrupt.

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