John Kasich is on CNN right now saying presidents have a right to pardon. Lets just move on. nt

[doc03]

[Drahthaardogs]

1. They do. It sucks but we can't do anything about it

It is rotten

[DrToast]

2. He's right

The only recourse is how history will judge it.

[Demsrule86]

3. He is right.

[PTWB]

4. He's absolutely right.

There is no check on a President’s power to pardon - the only limitation is that a President cannot restore someone to a position from which they’ve been impeached and removed.

[bluestarone]

5. Did they ask him about self pardons?

I bet not!

[doc03]

14. I just turned it on don't know if that came up. But if a president can pardon himself he has a free

hand to break any law he wants and get away with it. But I look for him to pardon himself and the SCOTUS to let him. If that don't work he will resign and have Pence pardon him.

[TheRealNorth]

6. They have a right....

but that doesn't mean we shouldn't criticize it, especially when it is used to reward a lackey for obstructing an investigation of presidential wrongdoing.

[mtnsnake]

9. Don't worry

I'm sure whoever he pardons will be highly criticized across the board and deservedly so.

[a kennedy]

7. ALL I WAS DOING WAS YELLING AT HIM THE WHOLE TIME HE WAS ON....

FLynn pleaded guilty, HE PLEADED GUILTY!!!!!!!! 🤬 🤬 🤬 🤬 🤬

[doc03]

11. The SOB should be tried for treason both of them nt

[madaboutharry]

8. He is right.

There is nothing anyone can do about it.

One thing that the Trump presidency has shown us is that The Constitution and our democracy have many weaknesses.

[Tanuki]

10. When you're a star, they let you do it.

[helpisontheway]

12. He is right. Trump wants us to talk about this. He is proyd

of his actions. We can’t do anything about it (unless he ties to pardon himself) so I think we should ignore him.

[rurallib]

13. And we have the right of free speech with which we can criticize fucking idiot leaders

who use their powers wrongly to pardon FUCKING TRAITORS!

Kasich is just the same as every other Republican underneath his human exterior.

[Meowmee]

15. It is one of the powers that needs to go away

Or to be curtailed in that you can’t pardon people for helping you obstruct justice and similar things. No harm to discuss it. Dump himself needs to be held to account as do others, there will be no “moving on” without this, only more fascism, possibly in the near future. It is time for some major changes in the structure of the government.

[dware]

17. It would take a Constitutional Amendment to change the Presidential pardon powers,

which, in this highly partisan age, would be nigh unto impossible.

[Meowmee]

18. I am aware of that

The doesn't change the fact that it needs to happen in order to stop the same thing from happening again. Pretending there is no problem with the system is not the answer.

[dware]

20. You're right,

I'm just pointing out how unlikely that's going to happen, at least not in my lifetime.

[Meowmee]

25. Yes but I hope attempts are made to try

To do something. I see others in other countries fighting authoritarianism with much worse consequences and still not giving up. Here it is now like watching a slow train wreck which we know will happen again but almost no on will lift a finger to try to prevent it because it is deemed unpopular and or impossible in advance.

[Ms. Toad]

23. The presidential pardon power is the "court" of last resort

when the justice system fails - for example when Scalia (RIP) says it is not unconstitutional to execute an innocent person as long as we have given them their due process, or when racism results in an unfair judgment.

I don't know that it has ever been abused, as it has here. (Same thing can be said about lots of institutions). Some need to be fixed, some don't. I'd have to think about this one - from the perspective of the president actually being able to correct injustices.

[Meowmee]

26. Yes I think it can be kept but altered

To not allow something like this.

[empedocles]

16. traitortrump cannot pardon himself. No 'moving on' from that.

'The Presidential Pardon Power: What Are Its Limits?
''July 27, 20174:30 PM ET
Heard on All Things Considered
Nina Totenberg at NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C., May 21, 2019. (photo by Allison Shelley)
NINA TOTENBERG


In a recent tweet, President Trump stated that he has the "complete power to pardon." NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg explores what the possible limits of that power might be.

KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:

President Trump recently tweeted an unusual suggestion - all agree the U.S. president has the complete power to pardon. Which raised the question, can the president pardon himself? Legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg went to find that out.

NINA TOTENBERG, BYLINE: No president in the history of this country has ever pardoned himself, though President Nixon and perhaps others may have contemplated it. Presidents Clinton and George H.W. Bush were each under investigation by a special prosecutor as their terms drew to a close, but neither chose to pardon himself.

President Trump's tweet responded to a Washington Post story reporting that he had discussed with his lawyers whether he could pardon himself. His tweet said, while all agree the U.S. president has complete power to pardon, why think about that when only crime so far is leaks against us? His new communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, appearing on CBS's "Face The Nation," confirmed that the president had discussed the pardon question.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "FACE THE NATION&quot

ANTHONY SCARAMUCCI: He just doesn't like the fact that he has a two-minute conversation in the Oval Office or in his study and that people are running out and leaking that.

TOTENBERG: The president does indeed have broad, but not unlimited, pardoning power. The Constitution gives the president the power to grant pardons, quote, "for offenses against the United States except in cases of impeachment." So he can't pardon himself from impeachment, can't pardon anyone from state charges. And most, but not all, constitutional law experts believe he cannot pardon himself on federal charges either.

BRIAN KALT: A self pardon would be politically a disaster. The main check on the pardon power is political accountability.

TOTENBERG: Brian Kalt, author of "Constitutional Cliffhangers," says that President Nixon decided against pardoning himself because he feared his reputation would be left in tatters. In the end, Nixon was prepared to keep fighting, but his base in Congress was not.

KALT: It was when the Republicans in Congress told Nixon that he had to go that he knew that his time was up.

TOTENBERG: But Kalt, who's been writing about presidential pardons since 1996, knows that when Nixon faced impeachment neither Congress nor the electorate was so dug into partisanship as they are today. And he worries that those Republicans willing to defy Trump, if there were to be an impeachment proceeding, could pay a political price. The framers of the Constitution put the presidential pardoning power into the founding document in order to correct unjust prosecutions or convictions, both of which had occurred frequently in England.

At the Constitutional Convention there was a proposal to exempt treason from the president's pardoning power, the notion being that if a president conspired with subordinates to commit treason he should not be able to protect himself by pardoning fellow conspirators. But Professor Kalt of Michigan State University notes that the founders rejected the proposal because they said there were and are other remedies.

KALT: If he does that, we impeach him and we prosecute him. Now, that last bit - and we prosecute him - is one of my pieces of evidence that the president can't pardon himself.

TOTENBERG: The Justice Department did issue a legal opinion during the Nixon administration saying that the president could not pardon himself because under long-established legal principles no person can be the judge of his own case. On some pardon questions there is no dissent. A president can issue a pardon for past actions but not for future actions. He can pardon a person pre-emptively for past actions even if there's no charge or conviction. That's what President Ford did when he pardoned Nixon. It's what President Carter did when he pardoned all Vietnam War draft evaders, even though few had been charged.

And it's what the first President Bush did when he pardoned his former defense secretary on Christmas Eve, 10 days before his trial was to start, in connection with the Iran-Contra affair. In the current circumstance, President Trump could pardon any of the individuals under scrutiny in the Russia investigation. And that would make life very difficult for investigators, depriving them of their leverage to get at the truth. Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington.'

[JI7]

19. That doesn't mean we can't investigate and expose everything that happened

I think Flynn has something on Trump.

[Kaleva]

21. He is right. We might not like a particular pardon but a president has the legal right to do so.

[Botany]

22. it has been years since I have spoken to John but i used to know him.

Kasich comes across as a "nice guy" but he is a weasel. When he worked for Lehman he sold the
State of Ohio's employee retirement fund something like $400 million of junk paper and when he
became Governor he pointed out that the State's public employee retirement fund does not have
enough money in it.

BTW John is the son of a union mailman in Mckees Rocks, PA and the roof over his head, the
food on his plate, the benefits he got after his parents death, and some of the payments for his
college @ OSU came from union benefits and later on John tried to kill those unions.

[JDC]

24. He's a Turnip, but he's right. Best to ignore the Pardon BS

[mcar]

27. He got a lot of pushback

and got obviously defensive.

I think this is positive. The usual would have been to give the R the benefit of the doubt.

[Greybnk48]

28. He's a hard-core woman hater.

He comes across as the friendly, good natured neighbor, but you need to "know your place." I can't stand him.

[Indykatie]

29. Kasich is Right. We Have Plenty of Crimes to Attack Trump On and Shouldn't Waste Energy on This

[Beaverhausen]

30. Yeah, don't look at Obama's or Clinton's pardons

You won’t like it. Unfortunately this is something they all do.