Speaker 1: So much big stuff happened over the course of the
Speaker 1: last twenty four I guess thirty six hours. That really
Speaker 1: forty eight hours, with the Monday morning pardons from President Biden,
Speaker 1: the enormous flurry of executive orders signed by President Trump.
Speaker 1: I'm not even really sure where to start. I think, though,
Speaker 1: I want to go through some of the pardons, both
Speaker 1: the pardons on the Biden side and the pardons on
Speaker 1: the Trump side. Now, let's let's go into it. The
Speaker 1: pardons starting on the Biden side. So President Biden early
Speaker 1: yesterday morning pardons and has a big to do about it,
Speaker 1: has a big public statement on Twitter about it, declares
Speaker 1: that he's going to pardon Anthony Fauci and then all
Speaker 1: the members of the January sixth Committee, and make this
Speaker 1: big deal about what wonderful, heroic and dedicated public servants
Speaker 1: they all are. And it's a shame that he has
Speaker 1: to issue this pardon. But there were threats against them
Speaker 1: that he's just trying to protect them from, you know,
Speaker 1: politicized prosecutions from the Trump side, And you know, these
Speaker 1: were wonderful, heroic public servants who I don't think committed
Speaker 1: any crimes whatsoever. But this is to provide them with protection.
Speaker 1: Now you have all that, but then later on in
Speaker 1: the day, you have with with far less fanfare, far
Speaker 1: more sheepishly, without a lot of stirmin drong and no
Speaker 1: trumpets blaring, a pardon issued for a bunch of Joe
Speaker 1: Biden's family members for any criminal activities that may or
Speaker 1: not any federal offense that may have taken place from
Speaker 1: January first onward January first of twenty fourteen onward. And
Speaker 1: yet again, this date, January first, twenty fourteen, very specifically
Speaker 1: chosen lines up perfectly with the Hunter Biden pardon. I
Speaker 1: feel sure that Hunter's pardon would have happened today except
Speaker 1: for the fact that Hunter was looking at you know,
Speaker 1: his sentencing was coming up in one of his criminal
Speaker 1: cases in December, so President Biden gave him his pardon,
Speaker 1: you know, as a nice little early Christmas president. Now,
Speaker 1: what's going on with the Biden family. Well, let's clarify
Speaker 1: what's going on. We've done this segment a lot on
Speaker 1: the show, and probably this is the last time we're
Speaker 1: going to do it because Biden is now the ex president.
Speaker 1: He is now a very old old man. I'm betting
Speaker 1: the next time we see Biden, He's going to look
Speaker 1: so horrible that we're all going to guess if we
Speaker 1: see him, and this is his last shot to kind
Speaker 1: of protect his family on the way out, his family
Speaker 1: who was very very possibly involved with criminal activity, or
Speaker 1: if not criminal, at the very least incredibly sleazy and
Speaker 1: shady activity. What was the business. The business that Hunter
Speaker 1: and Jim were involved in was getting foreign companies to
Speaker 1: give them money, with the understanding being that they would
Speaker 1: get positive American foreign policy advantages to those companies by
Speaker 1: virtue of the fact that Hunter's last name is Biden,
Speaker 1: Jim's last name is Biden. They were selling access and
Speaker 1: political favor from Joe Biden. That's what they were selling.
Speaker 1: It's impossible that Joe didn't know that's what they were doing.
Speaker 1: There's no way Joe met clients of Hunters. Joe was.
Speaker 1: He clearly knew that there was money stuff going on.
Speaker 1: We have checks written from Jim Biden to Joe Biden,
Speaker 1: like two hundred thousand dollars checks for loan repayment. Loan
Speaker 1: repayment allegedly a scheme so unsophisticated that basically it's just
Speaker 1: Jim giving Joe Biden two hundred thousand dollars just writing
Speaker 1: on the bottom of the check in the memo line
Speaker 1: loan repayment, because then it's not weird. So that was
Speaker 1: the business. That was the deal. That was the long
Speaker 1: and short of it. Sell access to Joe Biden at best,
Speaker 1: sell the appearance of access in the best case scenario.
Speaker 1: What can you say about this, Well, the very best
Speaker 1: case scenario that you can say about all this is
Speaker 1: that it was shady and sleazy and corrupt. The best
Speaker 1: case you can say is that they were selling the
Speaker 1: appearance of access even though they couldn't actually get Biden
Speaker 1: to do anything. Except for this, Joe Biden was often
Speaker 1: the head of Obama administration foreign policy. The time frame
Speaker 1: when these pardons run it covers twenty fourteen to January.
Speaker 1: It includes in its ambit January of twenty fourteen through
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, the end of Biden's second term as Vice president,
Speaker 1: when he was overseeing foreign policy for countries like Ukraine.
Speaker 1: One of the big things the Obama administration was trying
Speaker 1: to promote through its European and especially it's Eastern European
Speaker 1: foreign policy was various kinds of anti corruption effort. Hey
Speaker 1: Eastern Europe, you get American foreign aide, you benefit from
Speaker 1: the United States or any of you countries that are
Speaker 1: not directly in the ambit of Russia. You need to
Speaker 1: clean up your government corruption, clean up your government practices,
Speaker 1: et cetera. So what seems to have happened, and the
Speaker 1: Barisma case with Hunter Biden seems to be the classic
Speaker 1: example of this. You had these countries where anti corruption
Speaker 1: efforts were taking place. Sorry sounding like OURFKA junior right now,
Speaker 1: you have these countries where anti corruption efforts are taking place.
Speaker 1: The Biden administration, the Obama administration rather is pushing these
Speaker 1: anti corruption efforts. These individual companies that maybe they are corrupt,
Speaker 1: maybe they're not, want to keep themselves protected from crackdowns
Speaker 1: pushed by the Obama administration and directed by the government,
Speaker 1: so they give money to Hunter, they give money to
Speaker 1: Jim so that their companies aren't subject to various kinds
Speaker 1: of anti corruption investigations. And that's precisely what happened with Barisma,
Speaker 1: the Ukrainian energy company that Hunter Biden was on the
Speaker 1: board of. So it's very it's a very clear setup. Now,
Speaker 1: were crimes committed in all of this, I think so
Speaker 1: I think there is very good evidence that money laundering
Speaker 1: took place. These different Biden family members, Hunter, Jim, etcetera.
Speaker 1: Were setting up all these different companies and corporations and
Speaker 1: lcs and this and that to shift the money around
Speaker 1: to this to this, to this to this to this,
Speaker 1: to make the trail of money extremely difficult to track.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I've never had to do that for
Speaker 1: any of my employment. Just hey, direk deposit there, we
Speaker 1: go easypsy have a salary. The likelihood that Jim and
Speaker 1: Hunter Biden were in violation of what's called farah, the
Speaker 1: federal registration of the Foreign Agent Registration Act. That's what
Speaker 1: it is, Foreign Agent Registration Act. Basically, if you are
Speaker 1: an American citizen and you are working, your work is
Speaker 1: being done as an advocate, as a lobbyist basically on
Speaker 1: behalf of another country. That's okay to do, but you
Speaker 1: have to register as a foreign agent. Jim and Joe A,
Speaker 1: Jim and Hunter never did. I think it's very likely
Speaker 1: that they committed crimes in that regard. They were working
Speaker 1: on behalf of all these different companies, in all these
Speaker 1: different companies in foreign countries. So and a lot of
Speaker 1: this activity was happening from twenty fourteen to twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: So Joe, I think knew one hundred percent that this
Speaker 1: was going on. He had to have known the whole
Speaker 1: basis for this business, that this whole business scheme that
Speaker 1: Hunter and Jim were doing, Joe was the essential linchpin
Speaker 1: of it all. Without Joe as the product to be sold,
Speaker 1: the business doesn't work, It doesn't happen these other because
Speaker 1: basically what was happening. You had clear money going one
Speaker 1: way towards the bidens. You did not have a clear
Speaker 1: and obvious good or service going back the other way
Speaker 1: to those companies. So, as a result, Gym's off the hook.
Speaker 1: Biden's other siblings are off the hook. And it's also
Speaker 1: a question of like, were these other siblings, like other
Speaker 1: family members were in receipt of this money, so are
Speaker 1: they now part of a chain of the sort of
Speaker 1: the chain length of money being passed on that was
Speaker 1: basically money laundering. Well, at this point, I wonder if
Speaker 1: we're ever gonna really know all these Biden family members
Speaker 1: get pardoned and as a result, none of them are
Speaker 1: going to go to jail, None of them are gonna
Speaker 1: get it prosecuted. Probably a lot of these crimes were
Speaker 1: past the statute of limitations anyway. You know, a lot
Speaker 1: of this stuff was happening in twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen. You got to bring your charges for some
Speaker 1: of these things with in you know, five or six years,
Speaker 1: and probably the statute of limitations had passed already for
Speaker 1: a lot of this stuff. So we may be pasts that.
Speaker 1: And it's kind of the cherry on top of the
Speaker 1: Sunday of the Biden era. I think the Left really, really,
Speaker 1: really wanted to have this sense of moral superiority about
Speaker 1: its governance, to say that Trump was a bad guy,
Speaker 1: Trump was sleazy, Trump was corrupt, Trump did bad things,
Speaker 1: and January sixth being the worst thing of all, and
Speaker 1: they wanted to be able to point to Biden as
Speaker 1: let's have a return to normalcy, let's have a return
Speaker 1: to responsible, good, decent Obamaian government. And what better way
Speaker 1: to return to the Obama model than by electing his
Speaker 1: vice president Joe Biden. What a good guy, what a
Speaker 1: good solid man. And everyone bought into this idea that
Speaker 1: Joe Biden was a good guy because everyone felt sorry
Speaker 1: for him after the death of his son Bo. And
Speaker 1: it turns out Biden is what he always was. A mediocrity,
Speaker 1: a moral mediocrity, an intellectual mediocrity, a governing mediocrity. In fact,
Speaker 1: when you and then when you elevate someone who's a
Speaker 1: mediocrity like that into these extremely high positions, he becomes
Speaker 1: far less, far worse than a mediocrity. He was a
Speaker 1: train wreck. He was a train wreck, he was corrupt,
Speaker 1: he was venal, he was a jerk, and the simple
Speaker 1: venality of wanting money. Now he has to do this
Speaker 1: embarrassing thing. And apparently their Democrat senators really ticked off
Speaker 1: at this. I don't know why they're ticked off, as
Speaker 1: if that like the only reason you'd be ticked off
Speaker 1: is if you were surprised. I was not surprised at
Speaker 1: this pardon of the family members. I was sure it
Speaker 1: was going to happen all along. It doesn't make any
Speaker 1: sense to pardon Hunter and not pardon Jim. Jim was
Speaker 1: doing the same stuff Hunter was doing. It's all the
Speaker 1: same stuff. Now when we return two things, One the
Speaker 1: benefits of being immune from prosecution. Two, how this could
Speaker 1: actually help facilitate a real investigation into what were the
Speaker 1: Bidens actually doing all this time. That's next on the
Speaker 1: John Girardi Show. Two things I want to point out
Speaker 1: after these Hunter Biden pardons, and now President Trump has
Speaker 1: issued similar partons to all the January sixth defendants. But
Speaker 1: I want to talk about these two things with the
Speaker 1: Hunter Biden partons. One with the Hunter Biden parton, well,
Speaker 1: actually the rest of the Biden family, excuse me, the
Speaker 1: rest of the Biden family pardons at least to two things. One,
Speaker 1: what does criminal immunity mean? The good and the bad?
Speaker 1: So let's talk about what criminal immunity means that's good
Speaker 1: and bad or maybe that's good for the person receiving
Speaker 1: it and bad as far as for them that they
Speaker 1: might have to now testify about stuff. So the left
Speaker 1: refuse the left has been so angry about the idea
Speaker 1: of immunity in the context of President Trump. Okay here,
Speaker 1: So President Trump's been going through this Manhattan Deal, his
Speaker 1: prosecution in man for falsification of business records in furtherance
Speaker 1: of some felony that we don't actually define with regards
Speaker 1: to the non disclosure agreement he got Stormy Daniels to sign,
Speaker 1: which I still don't think he violated the law at
Speaker 1: all with regards to it. I don't think it was.
Speaker 1: I know it was not illegal to ask someone to
Speaker 1: sign a non disclosure agreement. I know it was not
Speaker 1: illegal for him not to report it as a campaign expense.
Speaker 1: It's not a campaign expense. I'm not sure that it
Speaker 1: was even unlawful to characterize, basically, to characterize his payment
Speaker 1: of money to Michael Cohen. So Stormy Daniels signs the
Speaker 1: non disclosure agreement, she says, I won't talk about this
Speaker 1: affair that we allegedly had in exchange for money, Michael
Speaker 1: Cohen pays her. Trump pays back Michael Cohen. Trump characterizes
Speaker 1: the payments to Michael Cohen as attorney's fees rather than
Speaker 1: load repayment. That is the crime. Allegedly, It wasn't hush
Speaker 1: money was the crime. No, it was characterizing his repayment
Speaker 1: to Michael Cohen as attorney's fees rather than loan repayment.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that it's even inaccurate to call it
Speaker 1: attorney's fees, let alone to say that it's falsification of
Speaker 1: business records and furtherance of a felony. Now, in all
Speaker 1: of that, in the midst of this, in the midst
Speaker 1: of Trump being found guilty by a jury in Manhattan
Speaker 1: over this, after the judge one Merchon, who was himself
Speaker 1: a was he a Biden or a Harris donor? I
Speaker 1: believe he was a Biden donor, like a small dollar donor,
Speaker 1: which why a judge would do that seems beyond me.
Speaker 1: Just to give a little bit of money seems ridiculous.
Speaker 1: And whose daughter, Judge Murchon's daughter was like a campaign
Speaker 1: fundraiser for Kamala Harris. Judge Murchon ruled against Trump every
Speaker 1: single step of the way and the whole trial. He
Speaker 1: was ridiculous in ways that I think genuinely disadvantaged Trump
Speaker 1: and led to his conviction. Allowed in evidence that was
Speaker 1: not pertinent to the case, that was highly prejudicial against
Speaker 1: Trump without really being probative towards the actual charge, Like
Speaker 1: that he brought Stormy. He allowed the prosecution to bring
Speaker 1: Stormy Daniels in to testify about their relationship. That wasn't
Speaker 1: the crime. The crime was did you falsify the business records?
Speaker 1: Did you miss characterize it as loan repayment versus legal fees?
Speaker 1: Her testifying about the nature of their relationship and then
Speaker 1: dropping all of a sudden without ever telling anyone before
Speaker 1: this new version of what their relationship was like, and
Speaker 1: then saying that, oh, it was non consensual, which she
Speaker 1: had never claimed at any point up to then. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the jury finds Trump guilty. Trump's not actually convicted until
Speaker 1: a sentence is entered against him. And between the jury
Speaker 1: finding him guilty and the sentencing, what do you know?
Speaker 1: The Supreme Court issues a new ruling on the immunity
Speaker 1: that a president enjoys after leaving office. Basically, you cannot
Speaker 1: prosecute a president for his official acts, and you cannot
Speaker 1: use evidence of his official acts against him. You cannot
Speaker 1: use his official acts as evidence in a subsequent proceeding
Speaker 1: against the president. What's official acts? Well, that's not one
Speaker 1: hundred percent clear one hundred percent of the time, But
Speaker 1: discussions with his cabinet, those are official acts. He is
Speaker 1: immune from prosecution. And when we say immune from prosecution,
Speaker 1: that the benefit of that is not just the benefit
Speaker 1: of you're not going to get convicted. The benefit of
Speaker 1: immunity is a benefit of you don't even have to
Speaker 1: face a trial. You don't even have to face an indictment.
Speaker 1: You're not going to be subjected to any legal action whatsoever.
Speaker 1: You don't have to go through the stress, the worry,
Speaker 1: the anxiety, the difficulty of a trial. You don't have to.
Speaker 1: So that's the beneficial side. That's the benefit of immunity.
Speaker 1: That's precisely what Biden is wanting with all these pardons
Speaker 1: he's issuing. Even for Anthony Fauci and Lynn Cheney and
Speaker 1: the January sixth Committee, a lot of people were trying
Speaker 1: to make the argument and had some decent arguments that
Speaker 1: Lynn Cheney engaged in witness tampering, which would be a crime,
Speaker 1: witness tampering for her work on the January sixth Committee
Speaker 1: to get people to change their stories to make them
Speaker 1: more negative against Trump, which if true, could be criminal. Well,
Speaker 1: Lynn Cheney doesn't have to worry about any of that
Speaker 1: crap now she received a pardon from Biden, and that
Speaker 1: pardon gives her immunity. Not just like if she she'll
Speaker 1: go to trial and during the trial they'll say, well,
Speaker 1: President Trump partoned her, so she's not going to get convicted. No,
Speaker 1: the pardon prevents her from ever having to face an
Speaker 1: indictment to begin with. It prevents her the same with
Speaker 1: Anthony Fauci. That's the benefit of immunity. So here's President
Speaker 1: Trump who actually has who has immunity from these things,
Speaker 1: and Judge murch On just, eh, I ignore it. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna continue with the sentencing in spite of the fact
Speaker 1: that a bunch of the evidence from your Manhattan trial
Speaker 1: came from official acts or very arguably came from official acts. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna keep up. You can just carry on
Speaker 1: with our sentencing hearing. No, No, that's ridiculous. Trump is
Speaker 1: being subjected to all these harms when he has immunity,
Speaker 1: including by the way, now that a sentence of no
Speaker 1: time has been entered against President Trump, he is a
Speaker 1: convicted felon, and that puts limits on like there are
Speaker 1: a bunch of foreign countries that don't let him travel
Speaker 1: that a lot of foreign countries will not let someone
Speaker 1: into the country if they have a felony conviction in
Speaker 1: their home country. So Trump's gonna have to go through
Speaker 1: all this like rigmarole through the State Department, all this
Speaker 1: diplomatic rigmarole for these different countries to grant an exception
Speaker 1: so that he can come travel to their countries. So anyway,
Speaker 1: the Biden pardons are ridiculous. I think they in some
Speaker 1: cases they were needed because these people committed a bunch
Speaker 1: of crimes. Now, when we return, I want to talk
Speaker 1: about is the power. Is the pardon power out of control?
Speaker 1: Should we amend the constitution to stop it or limit it?
Speaker 1: That's next on the John Girardi Show. We had a
Speaker 1: flurry of pardons yesterday. President Trump issued pardons for I
Speaker 1: believe it was all of the January sixth defendants. President
Speaker 1: Biden issued pardons for the members of the January sixth
Speaker 1: Committee and Lynn Cheney. He also issued pardons for a
Speaker 1: bunch of his family members. And I've gotten a lot
Speaker 1: of sort of common questions, and I'll give some common answers.
Speaker 1: I guess to the pardon power, and I want to
Speaker 1: sort of publicly sort of speculate, roll around in my
Speaker 1: mind if the pardon power has gone too far so
Speaker 1: and should there be some amending of the Constitution with
Speaker 1: regards to the pardon power. Now, some people have asked me,
Speaker 1: how can President Biden pardon his family members who when
Speaker 1: they haven't even been charged for any crimes yet, just
Speaker 1: just for anything they possibly could have done. That doesn't
Speaker 1: seem right, That doesn't seem fair. And the answer is, well, yes,
Speaker 1: that you can do that. You can pardon people for
Speaker 1: stuff they haven't been charged with yet. The most famous
Speaker 1: instance of this probably was Gerald Ford pardoning Richard Nixon
Speaker 1: for anything having to do with Watergate. Nixon had been
Speaker 1: investigated for Watergate. There had been an impeachment inquiry about Watergate.
Speaker 1: The impeachment committee, I guess it was the House Shary Committee.
Speaker 1: The House committee investigating it had found a lot of evidence,
Speaker 1: but he hadn't been subject to any criminal action whatsoever yet, right,
Speaker 1: no one had, you know, there was no prosecutors involved.
Speaker 1: Nixon was not subject to any kind of criminal action
Speaker 1: for Watergate as of yet. And Ford I think very wisely.
Speaker 1: I think this was a very wise decision on his part.
Speaker 1: Ford basically said, we need to turn the page on
Speaker 1: this episode of history as a country, and he just
Speaker 1: flat out pardoned Nixon for anything having to do with Watergate.
Speaker 1: And that was that. Jimmy Carter had a similarly famous pardon.
Speaker 1: He pardoned all the Vietnam War draft dodgers. He said, listen,
Speaker 1: we need to turn the page on Vietnam. I'm just
Speaker 1: partoning everyone who you know, dodged the draft during the
Speaker 1: Vietnam War, and this includes people who were not yet
Speaker 1: charged with anything. Okay, Nixon was not charged with anything
Speaker 1: for Watergate. Most of the Vietnam Draft dodgers had not
Speaker 1: yet been subject to any kind of criminal action. They
Speaker 1: were pardoned, and that gives them immunity from prosecution. The
Speaker 1: pardon power is this kind of awesome thing that the
Speaker 1: presidency has. It's actually, in fact a holdover from the
Speaker 1: British monarchy. Okay, let's recall here in the United States,
Speaker 1: we used to be a British possession. The crown had
Speaker 1: the prerogative to pardon people for criminal offenses. The King
Speaker 1: of England, King Charles, can grant acts of clemency for
Speaker 1: people who commit crimes, and the monarch has done this
Speaker 1: for centuries. In fact, I remember learning about this law school.
Speaker 1: One kind of pardon that the Crown would very often
Speaker 1: give was for voluntary manslaughter. So voluntary manslaughter basically was
Speaker 1: you come home, you find your wife sleeping with another man,
Speaker 1: and you're so overcome with fury that you you shoot him,
Speaker 1: and you're struck by some immediate sort of traumatic like
Speaker 1: emotional thing that triggers you. You don't have a cooling
Speaker 1: down period. You kill somebody. Queen Victoria was often called
Speaker 1: upon to pardon people and so that that's called voluntary manslaughter. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it's not quite murder because there's no premeditation. And
Speaker 1: Queen Victoria eventually said, I'm not gonna do these kinds
Speaker 1: of pardons because very often it's women getting killed in them,
Speaker 1: and like, what, I'm sorry, Like maybe these women did
Speaker 1: a bad thing, maybe they were subjected to someone else
Speaker 1: doing a bad thing or something. I don't think these
Speaker 1: people deserve to be killed, and I think it's okay
Speaker 1: to prosecute these people who engage in that kind of
Speaker 1: a violent reaction with some kind of criminal proceeding. So
Speaker 1: Queen Victoria actually didn't like pardoning people for certain kinds
Speaker 1: of things. Anyway, the pardon power was this royal prerogative,
Speaker 1: and in the American Constitution they discussed the idea of
Speaker 1: having the president wield this power for people who committed
Speaker 1: federal crimes, and the governors of the various state also
Speaker 1: have the pardon power. All the various state constitutions give
Speaker 1: their state governors the pardon to power people for violations
Speaker 1: of state crimes. So that's an important distinction. The president
Speaker 1: only has pardon power over people who commit federal offenses.
Speaker 1: So a crime in the District of Columbia or some
Speaker 1: interstate crime a violation of a federal statue. Governors can
Speaker 1: pardon people for state crimes. Now beyond pardoning, sort of
Speaker 1: a logical corollary of the pardon power. If you can
Speaker 1: completely wipe away someone's criminal conviction and sentence, then you
Speaker 1: can also partially wipe away someone's criminal sentence or conviction. Obviously,
Speaker 1: if you have the power to do this really large
Speaker 1: scale thing, you can. You clearly would have the power
Speaker 1: to do something on a smaller scale as well, So
Speaker 1: a president can, as President Biden did, declare, Okay, your
Speaker 1: sentence to death, I'm going to commute your sentence to
Speaker 1: life imprisonment. President Biden did this in a completely ethically
Speaker 1: incoherent way with regards to all of the people on
Speaker 1: the federal death penalty, all the people on federal death
Speaker 1: row except for three people who are just really bad guys,
Speaker 1: the Boston marathon bomber and then a couple people involved
Speaker 1: in race related shootings. Well, because terrorism and race related
Speaker 1: shootings are really bad, Okay, Well, then clearly Biden does.
Speaker 1: This was the thing Biden had said for his whole
Speaker 1: career that he didn't believe in the death penalty, that
Speaker 1: he opposed the death penalty, And now he's saying, well,
Speaker 1: I oppose the death penalty, but I think we need
Speaker 1: to keep the death penalty in place for really really
Speaker 1: bad cases like race related shootings and terrorism. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: then you don't oppose the death penalty. Then either you
Speaker 1: oppose the death penalty or you don't oppose the death penalty.
Speaker 1: You don't really oppose the death penalty if you just say, oh,
Speaker 1: I oppose the death penalty except for these really really
Speaker 1: rare cases, and then you don't oppose the death penalty.
Speaker 1: What kind of silliness is this? Anyway, So that's the
Speaker 1: pardon power, and it's really enormous, and people have started
Speaker 1: to look at the fact that, well, there's kind of
Speaker 1: a flaw there if you use the pardon power in
Speaker 1: a corrupt way, If you use the pardon power and in
Speaker 1: the kind of blanket way, could a president just have
Speaker 1: somebody like a member of his family or something committing
Speaker 1: all sorts of crimes, just crime after crime after crime
Speaker 1: after crime after crime, for his entire presidency, and then
Speaker 1: just at the end of the presidency just say, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm pardoning you could a president just on an ongoing
Speaker 1: basis just keep pardoning his wayward family member. Oh well,
Speaker 1: I'm missuing another. Here's my January pardon for my brother
Speaker 1: for all of his violations of federal drug crimes. Here's
Speaker 1: my February pardon for my brother for all of his
Speaker 1: violations of federal drug crimes. No, we don't have an agreement.
Speaker 1: I just keep pardoning him. Where does it stop? Where
Speaker 1: does it really? It's a pretty open ended power. It's
Speaker 1: pretty limited, and it calls for assumes, begs for demands
Speaker 1: good faith on the part of the partner. Now, in America,
Speaker 1: we hate the idea of something being left to good faith.
Speaker 1: We are distrustful of the idea that any government. This
Speaker 1: is an assumption that's really kind of baked into the
Speaker 1: federalist papers, the anti federalist papers, and as a result,
Speaker 1: kind of baked into the Constitution. We assume public officials
Speaker 1: won't exercise good faith. We put in place mechanisms to
Speaker 1: safeguard us from government officials not exercising good faith. This
Speaker 1: is a frequent feature that's what the whole system of
Speaker 1: checks and balances is for. You have the various ways
Speaker 1: in which the legislature can check the executive, the judicial branch,
Speaker 1: cantect both, and blah blah blah blah blah, because you
Speaker 1: don't want any one of those three powers to get
Speaker 1: too big to start acting in an oppressive fashion. So
Speaker 1: we have a really underdeveloped idea of good faith on
Speaker 1: the part of people who wield political power. So this
Speaker 1: leads me to ask the question that I've heard other
Speaker 1: conservative commentators ask, is this an area where maybe the
Speaker 1: Constitution could or should be amended? Because you'd have to
Speaker 1: amend the constitution. This part power to pardon is in
Speaker 1: the Constitution. You can't change it. You can't limit the
Speaker 1: president's pardon power by means of a statute. Is there
Speaker 1: a way you limit it? Or do you just accept, well,
Speaker 1: we're gonna get some bad with some good, and the
Speaker 1: ability of a president to sort of right wrongs through
Speaker 1: the pardon power is so much more beneficial than the
Speaker 1: ability to absolve people who did bad things could be.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's the position most Americans are going to take.
Speaker 1: I don't know, to amend the Constitution in order to
Speaker 1: limit the pardon power, Like any amending of the Constitution
Speaker 1: would be really extremely difficult. You need two thirds majorities
Speaker 1: in both houses and three quarters of all the state
Speaker 1: legislators to do it. I don't know. Maybe after this
Speaker 1: round of Biden partons you could get some Republicans on board.
Speaker 1: Maybe after Trump pardoning all the January sixth defendants you
Speaker 1: get some Democrats on board. I think it's an interesting
Speaker 1: question though, like, is this too much of an unchecked power,
Speaker 1: a power within the Constitution that relies too much on
Speaker 1: good faith on the part of the office wield or
Speaker 1: someone exercising restraint if you want. I hate using the
Speaker 1: word common sense, but if you want common sense, is
Speaker 1: this something that should be reviewed now? When we return,
Speaker 1: I almost didn't even talk about this, the insane Biden
Speaker 1: effort to just amend the Constitution by FIAT. Why the
Speaker 1: Equal Rights Amendment is not part of the Constitution. Next
Speaker 1: on the John Jruardy Show, I can't believe I went
Speaker 1: the whole show without talking about President Biden trying to
Speaker 1: amend the Constitution via tweet. So President Biden said, I recognized,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna express my long held view that the Equal
Speaker 1: Rights Amendment part of the Constitution of the United States.
Speaker 1: This is the twentieth Amendment. So Biden just says, I
Speaker 1: think that the Equal Rights Amendment should now be considered
Speaker 1: part of the Constitution. Let me explain what this is
Speaker 1: for those who don't know. In the seventies, this effort
Speaker 1: to introduce a new constitutional amendment got off the ground
Speaker 1: called the Equal Rights Amendment. It's very short. It just says,
Speaker 1: equality of rights under the law shall not be denied
Speaker 1: or abridged by the United States or by any state
Speaker 1: on account of sex. The Congress shall have the power
Speaker 1: to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Speaker 1: The Amendment shall take effect two years after the date
Speaker 1: of ratification. Now, at first, when this was introduced, it
Speaker 1: was like a slam dunk that it was going to
Speaker 1: be adopted into the Constitution. All these states were the
Speaker 1: two thirds majorities in both houses of Congress. Democrats Republicans
Speaker 1: supported it. Then Phyllis Schlafley came along and said, hey,
Speaker 1: you guys, realize how this is going to be interpreted
Speaker 1: in the courts. It's going to be interpreted to say
Speaker 1: legal abortion is now right there inside the Constitution. Even
Speaker 1: more so than Row it's going to be interpreted to
Speaker 1: eliminate differences between men and women, to eliminate women's only spaces.
Speaker 1: It's going to say separate but equal for accommodations for
Speaker 1: men and women are no good. It's going to eliminate
Speaker 1: womens sports. Blah blah blah blah blah. And she was
Speaker 1: sort of mocked. But in fact, a lot of these
Speaker 1: cultural changes did in fact happen as Phylischlafley called them,
Speaker 1: and as a result, conservatives were like, whoa why are
Speaker 1: we rushing to pass this era? Conservatives all flipped to
Speaker 1: be against it, and so to be ratified as part
Speaker 1: of the constitution, a proposed constitutional amendment needs again two
Speaker 1: thirds majorities in both houses three quarters of the state legislatures,
Speaker 1: so you need thirty eight of the state legislatures. It
Speaker 1: never got to thirty eight. In fact, the preamble of
Speaker 1: this proposed constitutional amendment said we need to get three
Speaker 1: quarters of the states to ratify this within seven years.
Speaker 1: It didn't get it. Now, after that seven year ratification window,
Speaker 1: a bunch of liberals tried to argue, well, the seven
Speaker 1: year ratification window doesn't matter, and so they kept having
Speaker 1: states ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. Some states had de
Speaker 1: ratified their prior ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. Also said, wait,
Speaker 1: we had ratified it before, but now we realize this
Speaker 1: as bats, we're unratifying ourselves. So in twenty twenty, Virginia
Speaker 1: ratified it and became the thirty eighth state to do so.
Speaker 1: Unless you think that the seven year ratification window is
Speaker 1: belogne and that states can't unratify that, that's the only
Speaker 1: way it could become the law of the land, and
Speaker 1: there's no way the super Court would agree. So here's
Speaker 1: Biden saying, I think it's the law of the land.
Speaker 1: He's not forcing it to be published by the National Archivist.
Speaker 1: It's total bologney. It's not part of the constitution that'll
Speaker 1: do it. Johns already show see next time on Power Talk.