Let's get it. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the bullpen. She's back in the bullpen today. We have Miss Alexandria Jacobson, investigative journalist with Raw Story. [00:00:17] Award winning journalist. Great track record. And she deals with, well, politics, government, money, things like that. We're going to talk about this new, I guess, movement for Biden to consider making a pardon for Trump. [00:00:36] Hell of a day. Alright. Welcome back. How are you? Hi, doctor Richie. I'm well. Thanks. - How about you? - I'm doing quite well, I gotta tell you. I've seen everything in politics, just like you. If you would have told me a few years back that we would be discussing if Biden will consider pardoning Trump, [00:00:55] who is now the incoming president of the United States, I would have said, no way, but here we are. So what's what's the report and what's the 411? Do Dems have an appetite for this. So this really started this came from Senator Joe Manchin, former Democrat turned independent senator who is on his way out. [00:01:12] But he came up with this. He really kind of popularized this idea of Joe Biden should consider pardoning Donald Trump if he was going to pardon his son, Hunter Biden, which, of course, he gave his son a a full and complete unconditional pardon. [00:01:28] So this is something that we at Raw Story, we have our congressional correspondent Matt Laslo. He went and talked to about ten senators and ten Democratic senators to see what they thought of this idea, and certainly some are considering it, but most kind of laughed off the idea [00:01:44] or tried to kind of dodge the question. So yeah, this is something that though has been presented and is being considered. Is it not quite, let's say ceremonial if if this happens, if Biden decides to pardon Trump, would it [00:02:01] not be a ceremonial pardon, given the fact that Trump can pardon himself? There's nothing in the Constitution barring it, and he's the kind of guy that will do it. Why would Biden be the person to engage in that kind of pardon in the first place? Yeah. So the legal experts that we talked to for this story said that the concept [00:02:19] of President Biden pardoning Trump would really be more, more symbolic or an effort towards unity. You know, having a having an incoming president with, you know, all these legal cases hanging over his head. The idea would be of kind of a clean slate. [00:02:35] But you're right. Honestly, Donald Trump doesn't need it. He could the the concept of him pardoning himself is certainly up for debate among the academic legal scholar community. But technically in the Constitution, nothing is barring it. So a lot of legal scholars think that certainly would disrupt [00:02:52] the checks and balances process, but that so that's a component also Donald Trump, he's already started trying to make moves to dismiss the cases against him. He most certainly would likely tell the the Department of Justice to drop the current cases against him. And it's very well established List that a sitting president cannot be indicted. [00:03:12] So all these cases over the next four years would be paused. And by the time Donald Trump leaves office in January 2029, it's, you know, the speedy trial component of our justice system would not be in play anymore. And it seems unlikely he'd, these cases would go forward. [00:03:30] There are multiple nuances, as you mentioned, even the speedy trial nuance. If you can't take a case successfully against an individual due to precedent, which I disagree with the precedent, by the way, but due to precedent from the DOJ, you then have a, well, motion to dismiss because you're violating his right to a speedy trial. [00:03:47] And now you have a constitutional right to dismiss. You also have the, the the discriminatory dynamic of prosecution. They have the right to basically, kind of weigh what they prosecute and decide not to prosecute. Well, the DOJ will be squarely under the leadership of Donald Trump. [00:04:03] Again. They could just summarily dismiss it, and claim whatever bogus claim they decide to. But at the end of this argument, I think is is a point that that many of us feel. But because we're polarized and and we have this kind of tribal way [00:04:20] to look at politics today, we're not saying and that's there's probably something inherently wrong with the fact that one man gets to make this decision without a check and balance at all. That's that's probably fundamentally not okay. And then in a situation like this where you have an incoming president [00:04:37] who is on record for attempting to get the guy who's currently incarcerated, investigated by a foreign entity, you may not want your son to be under that regime. If you got a if you got some power to do something about it. [00:04:52] I know I damn sure would do that for my daughter, regardless of what anybody would say. Period. And so I get it on a personal level. But once again, we're back to this professional dynamic in our politics known as this universal, non, under this unchecked power called a pardon. [00:05:09] Does anyone have a problem with the pardon system yet? Well, certainly. I think, there are a lot of legal scholars that are certainly critical of how all of this has been going down. I think what you bring up about Hunter Biden is, as President Biden himself said, [00:05:27] you know, a lot of the reason behind him going forward with this, this pardon was because of the politicalization of the justice process and how he feels like Hunter was unfairly targeted. And but then Donald Trump has gone and turned that around, [00:05:43] taken those words and turned it back. And he's claiming the same thing. So it's interesting that, you know, as all these pardon hypotheticals and scenarios are really playing out this, this time around, for instance, as we've, we've started to see, there's calls for President Biden to potentially consider preemptive, [00:06:01] pardons for those that Donald Trump's, future administration and his allies have been very public about potential retribution of, of Democrats. So it's really getting into a point right now where we haven't seen [00:06:17] in the past of these hypotheticals being considered and but yeah, but the pardon power is pretty pretty absolute at the federal level as it stands. And you bring another nuance to the conversation that I think is important and probably more noble than the pardon gesture of Trump. [00:06:34] And that is looking at what people who are going to be in his administration have said, looking at what Trump has said about certain individuals who are politically disaligned to him and providing a preemptive pardon for those individuals just in case there is political retribution. [00:06:51] I can think of a couple of individuals, da Fani Willis for one prosecutor down in Fulton County, you have the attorney general of New York. The list goes on and on. People, Alvin Bragg's people that have tried to prosecute Trump, some have done so successfully. I don't think they're going to simply not have ripples from this Justice Department. [00:07:12] Yes. So Donald Trump's nominee for the FBI, director, Kash Patel, has put out in a book a list of 60, Democrats that he thinks deserve political retribution. And so those are the types of people that President Biden seemingly would [00:07:30] consider issuing preemptive pardons. Alejandro Mayorkas is a name. Anthony Fauci, those sorts of folks who have been publicly, they have said that they would pursue potential retribution, that that kind of has fallen into this, into this debate. And some of the senators we talked about said, I don't think that's a great idea, [00:07:48] that it sets a precedence. Others have said, well, you know, if they're going to face this political prosecution, that maybe, maybe it is something that President Biden should consider. I know a lot of people make the slippery slope argument, and I used to be one of those naive individuals myself. [00:08:04] The slope is already where it's at. The slope is already slippery. It doesn't create a slippery slope. It's it's in effect, trying to stop a slippery slope. But I mean, good luck on that. But what are you going to do? [00:08:20] Just keep not doing things because you don't want a slippery slope scenario when you're already on the slope that's slipping. It doesn't make sense. I get it. I we want to be noble. We we want to play by these very, transparent and fair rules. [00:08:37] But it's clear to me that there is a side who understands proximity to power, and they're utilizing it to the maximum. Even willing to break the law. Bend it for sure. Then you have the other side who's trying to say everything measured and within [00:08:52] a realm of nobility, but at the same time, they're supposed to advocate for people, and the people that are advocating for can't get good advocacy because they are not willing to fight the fight that's in front of them. That's just my opinion. I definitely understand what you're saying. [00:09:08] And I think that, we've definitely at least the Democrats that we spoke with have have kind of continued to try to be on that non-committal, angle of, you know, the slippery slope, as you said, and, you know, trying to go with what is the what's seemingly the, you know, the most unbiased or best way to proceed. [00:09:27] But but yeah, I think just given the political climate we are in right now, it certainly is a is a different ball game when we're considering these, these types of situations. Yeah I agree. It's almost as if we're playing a baseball game and one side has golf clubs and the other side has bats. [00:09:43] And the side with golf clubs says, you know what? We really believe everybody should use a golf club. And the other side says, well, we're going to continue to use our bat. So do you start using bats also to even the odds, hopefully win a few games and then you can make decisions and change the rules later. [00:09:59] But at this point, you have no way to win this game based on the power dynamics at play here, unless you start playing at the speed that the game is designed. That simply me. Alright, tell people how they can check out your great investigative article here and all your work at Raw Story. [00:10:16] Yeah, absolutely. Our, our viewers could go ahead and take a look at our, our stories on w WW dot Rawstory.com. And that's where we have our latest investigations including this one about pardons. Thanks for all you do. Really appreciate you. - Thanks for having me. - Absolutely.