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PaperclipPerfector  16d ago (text post)   30766 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 2, 2024

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That hasn't just been forgiven, though, has it? The President can pardon federal crimes, but not state/local crimes or civil torts.

It's a bit unclear to me because allegedly he used or tried to use the Secret Service to avoid paying him. I don't know if that's a separate federal crime or part of the same thing or how exactly any of that works.

I sure hope that guy still has legal recourse.

I'm not even sure if that's a federal crime. The Secret Service generally won't commit crimes, and they aren't generally treated as co-conspirators or anything if they witness crimes and decline to intervene, although in theory they're at least required to report on it after the fact and testify about it if subpoenaed. This doesn't come up much for obvious reasons, but IIRC when one of GW Bush's daughters was drinking underage there was a Secret Service guard witnessing it without stopping it, and the justification was basically "if we interfere she's just going to decline or ditch protection and then she's neither sober nor safe".

But even if they couldn't turn the situation into some "manipulating the Secret Service for X" charge before and definitely can't do so now, it still can't be thrown out of civil court due to a criminal pardon, and a civil judgement could still be enforced.

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