Here’s what will happen when Donald Trump starts pardoning everyone
When Donald Trump starts pardoning everyone – and he will in the end – I hope you all won’t start nervously fretting about how it means he’s somehow magically winning. It’ll be the end of him. His pardon spree will be his concession speech, because after that he’ll be toast. And it won’t keep him or his family out of prison on state charges.
The media has spent the past four years breathlessly hyping the notion that Trump was going to pardon everyone at any minute, so you can be excused if you’re not aware that Trump hasn’t ever pardoned a single one of his co-conspirators. Trump did commute Roger Stone’s sentence, but that’s not a pardon. The pardon spree never did happen. But now it will.
Trump’s pardon spree will be the absolute end of his fading political viability. Even some fraction of the dummies who just voted for him will decide they’ve seen enough. He knows it too. It’ll be a reminder that he’s not actually going to run in 2024, no matter what he claims.
No president has ever tried to pardon himself, his family members, or his criminal co-conspirators. So these pardons will all be challenged in court, and there’s no precedent for how it’ll play out. Anyone who claims to know is just guessing. It’ll take years to play out.
But the point is that pardons aren’t magic wands. They won’t protect anyone on state charges. They may get thrown out in court anyway. And since pardons are admissions of guilt, they’ll open Trump and his people up to all kinds of litigation going forward. In fact, if any of Trump’s underlings accept a pardon, they’ll no longer have any Fifth Amendment protections, and they’ll be required to testify against Trump at trial. It’s a sticky mess that won’t go well for Trump’s side.
And yes, there’s a hypothetical scenario in which Trump resigns and has Pence pardon him, in the hope that it’ll have a better chance of holding up in court. But even that wouldn’t protect Trump from state charges, which is why he’s going to prison no matter what.
In any case, only two things matter when it comes to whatever Trump does with pardons: 1) They’ll be a surrender, not a secret magic plan to politically win. 2) They can be worked around with state charges, which can’t be pardoned by any president. He’s still going to prison.
