Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Michael, You'll never guess what I found. I just happened
to be looking in the trunk of my car. I
found a couple of boxes of ballots from the twenty
twenty four presidential election and an entire stack of Joe
Biden presidential pardons.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Imagine that interesting you use or that dragon pulls up
a pardon pardon talk back for the first talk back
of the morning. We talked about pardons extensively.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Yesterday and I wasn't paying attention.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
I know, but what's new? You know, by the way,
we are now focused on broadcasting. I went to a
meeting yesterday. We're going to focus on broadcasting. So whatever
that is, let me know so we can start doing it.
We're focused on broadcasting.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
I didn't mention quality, did they No, No.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
I just I was I was just mumfuzzled by the
meeting because we're a we're a broadcasting company. We're we're
a company of radio stations. Well, I know we do
other things. I mean, I know we stream, but you
know that's just that's just another that's just taking I mean,
to stream, you have to first. You don't have to.
(01:24):
You don't always have to, but normally, like the podcast
is just a recording of the broadcast of the What
the podcast is a recording of the broadcast.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
We're focusing on broadcast. Oh yeah, I'm lost.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
I was totally lost to thought he lost. I was like,
I thought, that's what we were. Yesterday we talked about pardons,
and then I read some of the text messages and
then I realized, I think people are conflating a couple
of issues that maybe I just didn't do a good
(02:08):
enough job explaining the difference. As I said yesterday, Article
two gives the president plinary power to issue pardons. There
is nothing in the Constitution that says a pardon has
to take a particular form. As somebody said on the
(02:30):
text line, you could write a pardon on a cocktail napkin.
You absolutely could. You could other than you know, he
can issue reprieves and pardons. That the verb issue indicates
that you take some affirmative action the president does to
(02:55):
pardon so and so I would say that you could
just orally pardon someone. Now, clearly somebody other than the
pardny has to hear it so that there is a
record somewhere of yes, he pardoned Dragon Redbeard for offenses
(03:17):
against the United States. That might be an extreme example,
but again, just a plain reading of the Constitution. It
doesn't specify a format, it doesn't specify anything about anything,
just the president has the power to do that period.
(03:39):
Then people started talking about future pardons. Well, I went
back and I looked, and there was nothing future in
the pardon for Hunter Biden. It was through December I
think twenty four orst something. Anyway, it was before Biden
(04:00):
left office, So it went back in time to prior
to his earlier convictions up through and don't hold me
to the exact day, but let's just say it was
Christmas Eve, December twenty fourth. It was a Christmas president
a Hunter, but it wasn't somewhere in the future. It
wasn't December twenty fourth of twenty twenty eight, because you
(04:24):
can't pardon someone for something that they have not done
the pardon, if you read the pardon for Hunter Biden,
for any crimes he may have committed during that period.
So I wanted to clear that up. The second thing
is we're conflating the issue of the autopin with whether
(04:50):
or not the old autopin was authorized by the president
to be used. For example, Biden pardoned. I forget I
thought I heard the number four thousand yesterday. I find
that incredulous. But you know, maybe it was four thousand
(05:10):
of people who had been convicted of felonies or misdemeanors
at the federal level that were like certain you know,
drug cases. Remember Polish did the same thing. Polist pardoned
everybody in Colorado during a certain time period that hadn't
been convicted for you know, possession of you know, minute
amounts of marijuana. Biden did the same thing. So let's
(05:35):
think about the mechanics of how he may have done that.
He may have said to a staff member, get the
names of every individual that was convicted of and let's
just use marijuana as an example for a marijuana possession charge.
Not intend to distribute, but let's just say possession and
(05:56):
possession of under you know, an amount that would you know,
preclude or cause a district attorney or a US attorney
to think to themselves, I'm not going to charge this
person with intent to distribute because you can there is
a there is a crime called possession with intent to distribute,
and often that entails that you possess so much marijuana
(06:20):
that because Remember, marijuana is still illegal at the federal level.
So if you possess, you know, twenty five kilos of marijuana,
well that's not for obviously, not for personal consumption. You're
going to sell that.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
It does look like during his entire term, Biden granted
a total of four two hundred and forty five pardons.
Doesn't exactly dive into it to.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Which ones were which, Okay, maybe that's where I got
the four thousand number, but there there was, there was
a large number of drug offenders that were pardoned. Let's
just say it was four hundred, four hundred. That's still
that's that's a big number. And it's a big number
because who wants to sit and sign for high hundred
individual pardons. Not Joe Biden, because he doesn't have the
(07:05):
energy of the time. He can't stay awake long enough
to do it. So he said, to a staff or
find those names. So they came up with the names.
They presented him with a list of names and said
these are the four hundred names that we have found,
and Biden said, okay, issue pardons to all four hundred
of those people. If they then took that list and
(07:27):
they drafted up four hundred pardons, and they used the
autopen to do so. My contention yesterday was and still is,
that is legal, and there's nothing you can do about it. Oh,
you can bitch known about it, but you can't do
anything about it. If Congress wants to investigate the use
of the AUTOPM, now we're moving into a different territory.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
And just for a clarification, the James Biden, Francis Biden,
all the other bidens for any involvement offenses against the
United States which may have been committed or taken part
during the period of time between January one, twenty fourteenth,
through the date of this pardon.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
And you have the date of the pardon for sum reason.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
I think it was on January nineteenth.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Oh, January nineteen was the day before the inauguration, So
January nineteenth, so which he could do because he's still
president until January twentieth, so he could do that. But
those again are not for.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
The Sorry, I got one clarification. The Hunter Biden was
December first, okay, through December December first.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Yeah, okay, so but it's not into the future. It's
not like you know, December first of twenty twenty eight
so again, totally totally legitimate, totally fine. Here's where I
think people are getting a little wrapped around the axle
that I may not have carved out this exception. Let
(08:56):
me give you the most extreme example. Some on the staff.
Let's say one of these staffers that has taken the
Fifth Amendment in their testimony before the US Congress about
the Biden use of the auto pen if they on
their own volition, without approval from the president, without authorization
(09:20):
from the president, with never having talked to the president,
they were just sitting in a meeting in the Roosevelt Room,
you know, that little cadre of four or five people
that were actually running the White House, including doctor Jill.
So doctor Jill and three or four others are sitting
in the Roosevelt Room across from the Oval Office, and
they're like, you know, we've got these twenty five names here.
(09:44):
You know, some of some of them are our friends
of ours or with their friends of big donors, or
perhaps they are a big donor, and you know they've
been convicted of some you know, tax felony or whatever
it might be. Let's just give them pardons. And doctor
Jill says, yes, let's do that, but let's not talk
to the president about it. Let's not let's not say
(10:06):
anything to Joe because Joe's upstairs asleep right now and
he's drooling. And let's not do anything that's not a
presidential pardon. And in fact, that might be a fraud,
that might be a crime, that might even be move it,
move into the territory of a conspiracy to commit a
crime in addition to the crime itself, that is entirely
(10:30):
separate and apart from the format of a actual presidential pardon,
and a president saying I want, for for example, Donald
Trump saying, I want to pardon every individual that has
been charged with a January sixth crime that was charged
(10:52):
by the US Attorney for the District of Columbia, Columbia,
for anything from trespassing to assaulting a cop to everything.
I want to pardon all of those And he tells
Susie Wiles, the chief of staff, go put into the
(11:14):
proper form pardons for all of those people, or put
together one pardon listing all of those people, or put
one pardon that describes all of those people, and then
I'll sign that one document. Or if it's again the
number four thousand sticking in my head for if there
(11:34):
are four thousand January sixth j six defendants, do you
know four thousand separate pardons and go autopin them. That's
perfect legitimate, perfectly fine. But again taking it into the
current administration, if Susie Wiles and let's say JD Vance,
(11:55):
the Vice president, who has no pardon authority whatsoever. Let's
say to Susie Wiles, who is not the president, she's
the chief of staff. Jd Vance who is not the president,
he's the vice president. They're sitting in Susie Wiles's office
upstairs in the West wing, and they decide they want
to pardon, you know, five people. They want to pardon
(12:18):
five people that they come up with, and they just
on their own autopin that that is a crime. That
is fraud, and that is exercising the power of the
president without the authority or the approval of the president,
and that would be a crime. In fact, again, I
would say that since you had one or more conspiring
(12:39):
to commit that crime, you also have the crime of
conspiracy being perpetrated by those by those two individuals. But
if those same two individuals went to Donald Trump and said, look,
we have these five people that we think ought to
be pardoned. And these five people did X, Y and Z.
(13:03):
You don't know them, you know, but we know them
and we vouch for them, and we'd like for you
to issue a pardon. And Trump verbally says, okay, issue
the pardon and just do it by autopin. Okay. Now
here's where people statements still might be wrapped around the axle. Well, Michael,
how do we know if that happened, Well, we don't.
(13:24):
All we have is the word of the president and
the word of the vice president and the chief of staff,
and they could all lie about it. How are you
going to prove? He said? She said, That's why we
have a political remedy, not a legal remedy in that
latter situation, and that would be a congressional investigation, the
(13:50):
House issuing articles of impeachment, and a trial in the Senate.
The same is true if you go back to the
Biden pardons. If Biden did something wrong, the remedy is
not legal, it is political. Now. I know you may
not like that, and you may think, well, I want
him to go to jail. Well, maybe I want to.
(14:12):
I want Joe Biden to go to jail for a
lot of reasons. I want Foulton to go to jail.
I want Liz Cheney to go to jail. But just
because I want something doesn't mean I'm going to get it.
Just because you want something doesn't mean that is going
to happen. So get over it and learn to distinguish
between things that the founding fathers established that have a
(14:34):
legal remedy versus those things that have a political remedy.
Because if you go back to the Constitution, if you
go back to Article two, the power of the president
is pleanary. It is his power alone, and he can
exercise that power in almost any way that he can
possibly imagine. As I said, he could just get on
(14:55):
the phone and say hello, Dygon red Beard. Yeah, this
is Donald Trump. I understand that you committed you know,
criminal libel or something against Michael Brown. Well, I'm going
to pardon you for that, because he's such an al anyway,
So I'm just going to pardon you for that. Would
that be a valid pardon if there is evidence of
(15:18):
that actually taking place, and you can show that there
is evidence of that taking place, I would argue that
the format doesn't make any difference. Now, I think any
president worth as salt is going to make a record
of that. And in fact, like most presidential phone calls
other than other than personal phone calls, there's usually a
(15:39):
readout from those phone calls because any time that the
president is it's like it's like when I would go
to Capitol Hill to meet with a member of the
House or the Senate, I always had a member of
my staff with me, my chief of staff, my Director
of Legislative Affairs, sometimes even just my personal aid, and
(16:01):
that member of Congress, that House member or that Senate
member would also have a staffer present. Why would we
do that because we wanted witnesses, We wanted someone So
if there was ever any question about, you know, Michael
Brown agreed or did not agree to do something, then
(16:22):
we have at least three other people besides myself that
if I went back to the to my office and said, well,
I'm never going to do that. I didn't agree to it,
my stafford would say to me, oh, but you told
Senator Clinton, you told Senator so and so that you
would do that, and their staff heard it too, and
(16:42):
she heard it. Oh okay, well then never mind. Just
you know, I had a brain fart. There's a lot
of things that we don't like the way that they're done,
and we're prone to scream whether there ought to be
a law. Well, here's the situation where you might in
(17:03):
this part these pardons, where you might be screening to yourself.
Where there ought to be a law. Well, there is
a law as the United States Constitution, and it says
the President shall have the power to issue reprieves and
pardons for individuals who have committed defenses against the United States.
I don't have it in front of me, but it
(17:24):
essentially says that, and there's nothing in there, so the
Supreme Court could not rule because it doesn't involve the
Supreme Court, doesn't involve Congress. It's power that belongs solely
to the president, solely to the president. Just like in
(17:45):
terms of legislation, all bills that raise revenue taxes have
to originate in the House. That's a plenary power of
the House of Representatives, and nobody can change that, nobody
can do anything about it. How's that enforced. Well, if
(18:06):
there's a bill that is going to raise taxes that
starts in the Senate, you might be able to get
a court to you know, say no, that's unconstitutional. You
have to do it this way. But how's that actually enforced? Well,
only because we agree to follow court cases. So just understand,
(18:28):
there's their legal remedies and their political remedies. And in
the case of those pardons, there's nothing that says what
the format has to be. That's all separate apart from
a criminal activity involving pardons. Good Marti, Michael, and Dragon.
Speaker 4 (18:45):
I know that the pardons basically make things moot as
far as prosecutions, but I would still love to see
investigations happen related to what the pardons are associated with.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
All that way we know has actually.
Speaker 4 (18:59):
Happened, and maybe we find others who need to be
dragged into certain litigation.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Anyway, thanks for the discussion.
Speaker 4 (19:07):
Michael, appreciate the clarity of good Day.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Well, based on that, I'm not sure I have clarified anything.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
It doesn't matter the pardons of the pardons, whatever they
did is washed away, so right, it doesn't matter any
further investigations.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
And so now we need to we need to separate
two other issues, and that is the mental condition of
the president because there's an ongoing investigation about that. That's
where the doctorates taken the Fifth Amendment and a couple
(19:46):
of members of the little cabal that was running things,
they've taken the Fifth Amendment. But that has to do
with his mental capacity. Now, let's let's find out. Let
let's play this out for a moment. Let's say that
in the course of that congressional investigation they find that
(20:08):
the president really was of diminishmental capacity for the entire
four years. What, well, we now know that everything that
he did for four years, he probably didn't know what
(20:29):
he was doing, but we didn't need an investigation to
know that. Look at the withdrawal from Afghanistan, he clearly
had no idea what he was doing with regard to that,
but he knew what time it was. But he knew
what time it was because well, you know, this damn funeral,
this damn arrival ceremony is taking too long. I got
it's put in time, I got, I got some jell
(20:51):
od eat, So let me check my watch while these
caskets are being moved. So the Congress goes to and
does a hearing. It satisfies our curiosity. But if you're
looking for a if you're looking for vengeance, you're looking
(21:12):
for a do over, you're looking for a legal remedy.
You're looking for You're you're not going to get any
of that. You're just going to get knowledge. You're just
going to get information so that you'll be a smarter voter,
a smarter participant in this republic in the future to
watch the president and to start, you know, raising questions,
(21:35):
and you'll have now learned that, oh yeah, we've got
the twenty fifth Amendment and we have impeachment. We have
two political remedies that could have been used during that presidency,
and they failed to do so, so maybe they will
in the future. But then I made the mistake of
going to the text line, Uh, give an number sixteen
(22:00):
forty one, Mike. It still does not clear up why
pardons for activities that may have been done are Okay,
I feel like an utter complete failure. I honestly do.
(22:20):
Did I not say the power of the pardon is plenary?
Go look it up. Another word for plenary is absolute.
A president can go Gerald Ford. Gerald Ford pardoned Richard
Nixon's for any crimes that he may have committed during
(22:44):
the Watergate scandal, not that he was ever you know,
actually charged or convicted, he was pardoned for any crimes
he may have committed. The president has that authority. Article two.
Here we go again. Let me just read it this time.
(23:06):
He shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for
offenses against the United States, except in cases in cases
of impeachment. So if a federal judge is being impeached for,
you know, on federal bribery charges, he can't do that.
If a uh, you know, some other officeholder is being
(23:29):
impeached for some reason, he can't pardon that. And why
would the why would the founders take out that, Because
impeachment is a political remedy. It is not a federal
judge who has been Now you can he could pardon
(23:50):
a federal judge who has been convicted or is being
charged with, you know, bribery, But he cannot pardon the impeachment,
the removal from office, because that is a power granted
to Congress. It's not a power granted to the president.
(24:10):
So you can't grant a pardon for impeachment. You can
grant a pardon for the underlying crime for which the
judge is being impeached. I think about AlSi Hastings, the
former federal judge from Florida that was convicted of federal
bribery charges. A president can impeach him for those charges.
(24:32):
I mean, can can pardon him for those bribery charges. However,
he was removed from office through the impeachment process. That's
a cleanary power granted to Congress. The president cannot do it.
So they said, you can. You have the power to
(24:53):
grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States bribery,
for example, accepting cases of impeachment, so you can't pardon
them for impeachment. Otherwise, the sky's the limit. And that
is they thought there needed to be a relief valve
(25:16):
for when a president thought there was a miscarriage of justice,
or a president just for whatever, for any reason or
no reason, wanted to You know, a president can pardon
someone for no reason whatsoever. Let's say that I decide
today this afternoon to go. Somebody asked me for you know,
you didn't hear a discussion yesterday about dairy queen. But
(25:38):
somebody says, Michael and Dragon, this is seventy one oh five.
Did the two of you ever make dairy queen for hamburgers?
He did I did not, so what I didn't go
to dairy Queen. Well, if Trump wants to pardon me
for my failure to go to dairy Queen, if that's
(25:59):
a offense, he can pardon me for it. You may
not like this, you may disagree with it, and that's okay,
but it doesn't change the underlying reality that a president
(26:21):
has the power of pardon because if he thinks there's
an injustice. The founder said, we need some mechanism by
which we get we give the president the power to
correct an injustice. And even if you know Richard Nixon's
a great example, I can't get into the mind of
(26:45):
Gerald Ford other than what he's written and what he
wrote in the pardon. But he thought it was time
for us just to move on, you know, let's quit
hagning over Watergate. So I'm going to pardon him for
any crimes he may have committed, not impeachment, but he'd resigned,
(27:06):
so they can't impeach him anymore anyway. But for any
crimes if if you actually engaged in the conspiracy to
cover up uh, you know, some underlying crime, the burglary,
for example, or you paid hush money to people the
burglars to keep them quiet. Whatever any crimes you may
(27:26):
have committed, whether they're ever proven or not, your pardon
for those. And Ford's reasoning was he wanted that long
national nightmare to be over, so boom it was over.
It may have cost him the election against Jimmy Carter
because the country was divided. Some people wanted Nixon to
(27:48):
be held to account. They wanted to see Richard Nixon
in jail, and other people were like, good grief, he's
the president. He engaged in, you know, cover up, he
may have lied about some stuff. They were going to
impeach him. The Senate Watergate Special Count Special Committee was
(28:08):
about to you know, refer to the House articles of impeachment.
But they didn't quite get quite that far because Howard
Baker and the others went up to the White House
and said, mister President, there are votes to impeach you.
We think you ought to resign and avoid that. And
then Ford said, you know what, let's just finish this.
Let's just move forward. Let's get all this behind us
(28:31):
and move forward. So I'm going to pardon you for
any crimes you may have committed. You may not like that.
I may not like that. I think it was the
right thing to do. I think it was the right
thing to I think what Ford did was the right
thing to do, and he probably knew it might have
(28:53):
cost him the election, and I believe that probably did
cost him the election. But I think it was the
right thing to do, and he had the power to
do so. So Yes, it is quite clear that you
can pardon for activities that may have been committed. It's planary,
it's absolute. And is are there are there any questions? Dragon?
Speaker 3 (29:19):
Nope, it's great time cloking.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Hey, Michael, I was wondering.
Speaker 5 (29:23):
I heard somewhere that the pardons that Joe Biden ended
out to his family along with foci were signed by
auto pen except the one for Hunter.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Is that true? Number one?
Speaker 5 (29:39):
And do you think he probably gave some thought, although
it's a long shot, that he better sign it in person.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
So it's valid. Let me know, Dragon asked me during
the break, because we have a text message that says
this is from number seventy one old goober seventy one
oh five Mike and Dragon. Michael seems so frustrated right
now explaining pardons. It It is reminding me of this
(30:10):
part of biodome and it's got a YouTube link there.
It is frustrating to me.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
You're one of the five people that watched biodome. Wow,
I didn't and I know the text, yeah, and I.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Don't know what that references too. So I saw had
no cud okay, and I'm not and I've not seen
that particular YouTube, so I don't know what it is.
But Dragon asked me during the break, so on a
scale of one to ten, how frustrated are you about
this whole pardon topic? And I said, ask ex except
(30:47):
and your response was so we could still poke some
fun at you, We still got some leeway in which
to really see if we can't push it over the edge,
really get pissed off. Yeah, And I'm like, yeah, go
for it, go for it.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
So if that talkback was the best you could do,
that was a very lame attempt at pushing me over
the edge.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
Well, now that I set it up, it seems more
comical now.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
Yeah, right, it's yeah, it's it's more like, oh, he's
pissed off, let's just poking just for the fun of it. Yeah. Yeah,
forty five twelve rites to my talk back in your response, Yes,
the investigations could clarify the extent of the trans aggressions
and those who were involved. We're talking about the investigation
(31:35):
into well, for example, the little cabal that was running
the White House while Joe Biden was eating jello all
the time. I'm one hundred percent for that investigation. I
want to know for political science reasons, for historical reasons,
because we lived through all that bull crap. I want
(31:57):
to know what was really going on. That's why I
went to the trouble of actually going to Barnes and
Noble and purchasing Jake Tapper's book, reading it over a weekend,
and then returning it unscathed, and getting my money back,
so you would not get the money for it, yet
I got the information out of it.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
You're so worried you didn't even crack the spy into
the book.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
I didn't even crack the spy of the book. I
read it very very carefully and returned it. And the
only thing I learned was I learned some of the
names of the people who were involved in that cabal.
I also learned that I think Jake Tapper knew all along.
In fact, it's since come out that Jake Tapper really
didn't know all along that there was something going on,
but they were covering up for him. So I'm all
(32:38):
for that investigation, just just as I'm all for the
investigation of Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, the Capitol Police chief,
and everybody else involved in the denial and well all
aspects of January sixth, And I'd like to know, you know,
why weren't they pardon, for example, all they're involvement in
(32:59):
the it's so called insurrection on that day. Yes, we
need to know that because we need to know what
the power elites in this country are doing so that
we can respond accordingly, which unfortunately leads me to something
that I want to talk about it, but I dread
(33:23):
talking about it. But we're going to talk about it.
I'm not going to tell you what it is, because
if I tell you, you might not turn in, you
might not tune in and listen. No, I bet you
if you guess
Michael, You'll never guess what I found. I just happened
to be looking in the trunk of my car. I
found a couple of boxes of ballots from the twenty
twenty four presidential election and an entire stack of Joe
Biden presidential pardons.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Imagine that interesting you use or that dragon pulls up
a pardon pardon talk back for the first talk back
of the morning. We talked about pardons extensively.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Yesterday and I wasn't paying attention.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
I know, but what's new? You know, by the way,
we are now focused on broadcasting. I went to a
meeting yesterday. We're going to focus on broadcasting. So whatever
that is, let me know so we can start doing it.
We're focused on broadcasting.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
I didn't mention quality, did they No, No.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
I just I was I was just mumfuzzled by the
meeting because we're a we're a broadcasting company. We're we're
a company of radio stations. Well, I know we do
other things. I mean, I know we stream, but you
know that's just that's just another that's just taking I mean,
to stream, you have to first. You don't have to.
(01:24):
You don't always have to, but normally, like the podcast
is just a recording of the broadcast of the What
the podcast is a recording of the broadcast.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
We're focusing on broadcast. Oh yeah, I'm lost.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
I was totally lost to thought he lost. I was like,
I thought, that's what we were. Yesterday we talked about pardons,
and then I read some of the text messages and
then I realized, I think people are conflating a couple
of issues that maybe I just didn't do a good
(02:08):
enough job explaining the difference. As I said yesterday, Article
two gives the president plinary power to issue pardons. There
is nothing in the Constitution that says a pardon has
to take a particular form. As somebody said on the
(02:30):
text line, you could write a pardon on a cocktail napkin.
You absolutely could. You could other than you know, he
can issue reprieves and pardons. That the verb issue indicates
that you take some affirmative action the president does to
(02:55):
pardon so and so I would say that you could
just orally pardon someone. Now, clearly somebody other than the
pardny has to hear it so that there is a
record somewhere of yes, he pardoned Dragon Redbeard for offenses
(03:17):
against the United States. That might be an extreme example,
but again, just a plain reading of the Constitution. It
doesn't specify a format, it doesn't specify anything about anything,
just the president has the power to do that period.
(03:39):
Then people started talking about future pardons. Well, I went
back and I looked, and there was nothing future in
the pardon for Hunter Biden. It was through December I
think twenty four orst something. Anyway, it was before Biden
(04:00):
left office, So it went back in time to prior
to his earlier convictions up through and don't hold me
to the exact day, but let's just say it was
Christmas Eve, December twenty fourth. It was a Christmas president
a Hunter, but it wasn't somewhere in the future. It
wasn't December twenty fourth of twenty twenty eight, because you
(04:24):
can't pardon someone for something that they have not done
the pardon, if you read the pardon for Hunter Biden,
for any crimes he may have committed during that period.
So I wanted to clear that up. The second thing
is we're conflating the issue of the autopin with whether
(04:50):
or not the old autopin was authorized by the president
to be used. For example, Biden pardoned. I forget I
thought I heard the number four thousand yesterday. I find
that incredulous. But you know, maybe it was four thousand
(05:10):
of people who had been convicted of felonies or misdemeanors
at the federal level that were like certain you know,
drug cases. Remember Polish did the same thing. Polist pardoned
everybody in Colorado during a certain time period that hadn't
been convicted for you know, possession of you know, minute
amounts of marijuana. Biden did the same thing. So let's
(05:35):
think about the mechanics of how he may have done that.
He may have said to a staff member, get the
names of every individual that was convicted of and let's
just use marijuana as an example for a marijuana possession charge.
Not intend to distribute, but let's just say possession and
(05:56):
possession of under you know, an amount that would you know,
preclude or cause a district attorney or a US attorney
to think to themselves, I'm not going to charge this
person with intent to distribute because you can there is
a there is a crime called possession with intent to distribute,
and often that entails that you possess so much marijuana
(06:20):
that because Remember, marijuana is still illegal at the federal level.
So if you possess, you know, twenty five kilos of marijuana,
well that's not for obviously, not for personal consumption. You're
going to sell that.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
It does look like during his entire term, Biden granted
a total of four two hundred and forty five pardons.
Doesn't exactly dive into it to.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Which ones were which, Okay, maybe that's where I got
the four thousand number, but there there was, there was
a large number of drug offenders that were pardoned. Let's
just say it was four hundred, four hundred. That's still
that's that's a big number. And it's a big number
because who wants to sit and sign for high hundred
individual pardons. Not Joe Biden, because he doesn't have the
(07:05):
energy of the time. He can't stay awake long enough
to do it. So he said, to a staff or
find those names. So they came up with the names.
They presented him with a list of names and said
these are the four hundred names that we have found,
and Biden said, okay, issue pardons to all four hundred
of those people. If they then took that list and
(07:27):
they drafted up four hundred pardons, and they used the
autopen to do so. My contention yesterday was and still is,
that is legal, and there's nothing you can do about it. Oh,
you can bitch known about it, but you can't do
anything about it. If Congress wants to investigate the use
of the AUTOPM, now we're moving into a different territory.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
And just for a clarification, the James Biden, Francis Biden,
all the other bidens for any involvement offenses against the
United States which may have been committed or taken part
during the period of time between January one, twenty fourteenth,
through the date of this pardon.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
And you have the date of the pardon for sum reason.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
I think it was on January nineteenth.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Oh, January nineteen was the day before the inauguration, So
January nineteenth, so which he could do because he's still
president until January twentieth, so he could do that. But
those again are not for.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
The Sorry, I got one clarification. The Hunter Biden was
December first, okay, through December December first.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Yeah, okay, so but it's not into the future. It's
not like you know, December first of twenty twenty eight
so again, totally totally legitimate, totally fine. Here's where I
think people are getting a little wrapped around the axle
that I may not have carved out this exception. Let
(08:56):
me give you the most extreme example. Some on the staff.
Let's say one of these staffers that has taken the
Fifth Amendment in their testimony before the US Congress about
the Biden use of the auto pen if they on
their own volition, without approval from the president, without authorization
(09:20):
from the president, with never having talked to the president,
they were just sitting in a meeting in the Roosevelt Room,
you know, that little cadre of four or five people
that were actually running the White House, including doctor Jill.
So doctor Jill and three or four others are sitting
in the Roosevelt Room across from the Oval Office, and
they're like, you know, we've got these twenty five names here.
(09:44):
You know, some of some of them are our friends
of ours or with their friends of big donors, or
perhaps they are a big donor, and you know they've
been convicted of some you know, tax felony or whatever
it might be. Let's just give them pardons. And doctor
Jill says, yes, let's do that, but let's not talk
to the president about it. Let's not let's not say
(10:06):
anything to Joe because Joe's upstairs asleep right now and
he's drooling. And let's not do anything that's not a
presidential pardon. And in fact, that might be a fraud,
that might be a crime, that might even be move it,
move into the territory of a conspiracy to commit a
crime in addition to the crime itself, that is entirely
(10:30):
separate and apart from the format of a actual presidential pardon,
and a president saying I want, for for example, Donald
Trump saying, I want to pardon every individual that has
been charged with a January sixth crime that was charged
(10:52):
by the US Attorney for the District of Columbia, Columbia,
for anything from trespassing to assaulting a cop to everything.
I want to pardon all of those And he tells
Susie Wiles, the chief of staff, go put into the
(11:14):
proper form pardons for all of those people, or put
together one pardon listing all of those people, or put
one pardon that describes all of those people, and then
I'll sign that one document. Or if it's again the
number four thousand sticking in my head for if there
(11:34):
are four thousand January sixth j six defendants, do you
know four thousand separate pardons and go autopin them. That's
perfect legitimate, perfectly fine. But again taking it into the
current administration, if Susie Wiles and let's say JD Vance,
(11:55):
the Vice president, who has no pardon authority whatsoever. Let's
say to Susie Wiles, who is not the president, she's
the chief of staff. Jd Vance who is not the president,
he's the vice president. They're sitting in Susie Wiles's office
upstairs in the West wing, and they decide they want
to pardon, you know, five people. They want to pardon
(12:18):
five people that they come up with, and they just
on their own autopin that that is a crime. That
is fraud, and that is exercising the power of the
president without the authority or the approval of the president,
and that would be a crime. In fact, again, I
would say that since you had one or more conspiring
(12:39):
to commit that crime, you also have the crime of
conspiracy being perpetrated by those by those two individuals. But
if those same two individuals went to Donald Trump and said, look,
we have these five people that we think ought to
be pardoned. And these five people did X, Y and Z.
(13:03):
You don't know them, you know, but we know them
and we vouch for them, and we'd like for you
to issue a pardon. And Trump verbally says, okay, issue
the pardon and just do it by autopin. Okay. Now
here's where people statements still might be wrapped around the axle. Well, Michael,
how do we know if that happened, Well, we don't.
(13:24):
All we have is the word of the president and
the word of the vice president and the chief of staff,
and they could all lie about it. How are you
going to prove? He said? She said, That's why we
have a political remedy, not a legal remedy in that
latter situation, and that would be a congressional investigation, the
(13:50):
House issuing articles of impeachment, and a trial in the Senate.
The same is true if you go back to the
Biden pardons. If Biden did something wrong, the remedy is
not legal, it is political. Now. I know you may
not like that, and you may think, well, I want
him to go to jail. Well, maybe I want to.
(14:12):
I want Joe Biden to go to jail for a
lot of reasons. I want Foulton to go to jail.
I want Liz Cheney to go to jail. But just
because I want something doesn't mean I'm going to get it.
Just because you want something doesn't mean that is going
to happen. So get over it and learn to distinguish
between things that the founding fathers established that have a
(14:34):
legal remedy versus those things that have a political remedy.
Because if you go back to the Constitution, if you
go back to Article two, the power of the president
is pleanary. It is his power alone, and he can
exercise that power in almost any way that he can
possibly imagine. As I said, he could just get on
(14:55):
the phone and say hello, Dygon red Beard. Yeah, this
is Donald Trump. I understand that you committed you know,
criminal libel or something against Michael Brown. Well, I'm going
to pardon you for that, because he's such an al anyway,
So I'm just going to pardon you for that. Would
that be a valid pardon if there is evidence of
(15:18):
that actually taking place, and you can show that there
is evidence of that taking place, I would argue that
the format doesn't make any difference. Now, I think any
president worth as salt is going to make a record
of that. And in fact, like most presidential phone calls
other than other than personal phone calls, there's usually a
(15:39):
readout from those phone calls because any time that the
president is it's like it's like when I would go
to Capitol Hill to meet with a member of the
House or the Senate, I always had a member of
my staff with me, my chief of staff, my Director
of Legislative Affairs, sometimes even just my personal aid, and
(16:01):
that member of Congress, that House member or that Senate
member would also have a staffer present. Why would we
do that because we wanted witnesses, We wanted someone So
if there was ever any question about, you know, Michael
Brown agreed or did not agree to do something, then
(16:22):
we have at least three other people besides myself that
if I went back to the to my office and said, well,
I'm never going to do that. I didn't agree to it,
my stafford would say to me, oh, but you told
Senator Clinton, you told Senator so and so that you
would do that, and their staff heard it too, and
(16:42):
she heard it. Oh okay, well then never mind. Just
you know, I had a brain fart. There's a lot
of things that we don't like the way that they're done,
and we're prone to scream whether there ought to be
a law. Well, here's the situation where you might in
(17:03):
this part these pardons, where you might be screening to yourself.
Where there ought to be a law. Well, there is
a law as the United States Constitution, and it says
the President shall have the power to issue reprieves and
pardons for individuals who have committed defenses against the United States.
I don't have it in front of me, but it
(17:24):
essentially says that, and there's nothing in there, so the
Supreme Court could not rule because it doesn't involve the
Supreme Court, doesn't involve Congress. It's power that belongs solely
to the president, solely to the president. Just like in
(17:45):
terms of legislation, all bills that raise revenue taxes have
to originate in the House. That's a plenary power of
the House of Representatives, and nobody can change that, nobody
can do anything about it. How's that enforced. Well, if
(18:06):
there's a bill that is going to raise taxes that
starts in the Senate, you might be able to get
a court to you know, say no, that's unconstitutional. You
have to do it this way. But how's that actually enforced? Well,
only because we agree to follow court cases. So just understand,
(18:28):
there's their legal remedies and their political remedies. And in
the case of those pardons, there's nothing that says what
the format has to be. That's all separate apart from
a criminal activity involving pardons. Good Marti, Michael, and Dragon.
Speaker 4 (18:45):
I know that the pardons basically make things moot as
far as prosecutions, but I would still love to see
investigations happen related to what the pardons are associated with.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
All that way we know has actually.
Speaker 4 (18:59):
Happened, and maybe we find others who need to be
dragged into certain litigation.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Anyway, thanks for the discussion.
Speaker 4 (19:07):
Michael, appreciate the clarity of good Day.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Well, based on that, I'm not sure I have clarified anything.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
It doesn't matter the pardons of the pardons, whatever they
did is washed away, so right, it doesn't matter any
further investigations.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
And so now we need to we need to separate
two other issues, and that is the mental condition of
the president because there's an ongoing investigation about that. That's
where the doctorates taken the Fifth Amendment and a couple
(19:46):
of members of the little cabal that was running things,
they've taken the Fifth Amendment. But that has to do
with his mental capacity. Now, let's let's find out. Let
let's play this out for a moment. Let's say that
in the course of that congressional investigation they find that
(20:08):
the president really was of diminishmental capacity for the entire
four years. What, well, we now know that everything that
he did for four years, he probably didn't know what
(20:29):
he was doing, but we didn't need an investigation to
know that. Look at the withdrawal from Afghanistan, he clearly
had no idea what he was doing with regard to that,
but he knew what time it was. But he knew
what time it was because well, you know, this damn funeral,
this damn arrival ceremony is taking too long. I got
it's put in time, I got, I got some jell
(20:51):
od eat, So let me check my watch while these
caskets are being moved. So the Congress goes to and
does a hearing. It satisfies our curiosity. But if you're
looking for a if you're looking for vengeance, you're looking
(21:12):
for a do over, you're looking for a legal remedy.
You're looking for You're you're not going to get any
of that. You're just going to get knowledge. You're just
going to get information so that you'll be a smarter voter,
a smarter participant in this republic in the future to
watch the president and to start, you know, raising questions,
(21:35):
and you'll have now learned that, oh yeah, we've got
the twenty fifth Amendment and we have impeachment. We have
two political remedies that could have been used during that presidency,
and they failed to do so, so maybe they will
in the future. But then I made the mistake of
going to the text line, Uh, give an number sixteen
(22:00):
forty one, Mike. It still does not clear up why
pardons for activities that may have been done are Okay,
I feel like an utter complete failure. I honestly do.
(22:20):
Did I not say the power of the pardon is plenary?
Go look it up. Another word for plenary is absolute.
A president can go Gerald Ford. Gerald Ford pardoned Richard
Nixon's for any crimes that he may have committed during
(22:44):
the Watergate scandal, not that he was ever you know,
actually charged or convicted, he was pardoned for any crimes
he may have committed. The president has that authority. Article two.
Here we go again. Let me just read it this time.
(23:06):
He shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for
offenses against the United States, except in cases in cases
of impeachment. So if a federal judge is being impeached for,
you know, on federal bribery charges, he can't do that.
If a uh, you know, some other officeholder is being
(23:29):
impeached for some reason, he can't pardon that. And why
would the why would the founders take out that, Because
impeachment is a political remedy. It is not a federal
judge who has been Now you can he could pardon
(23:50):
a federal judge who has been convicted or is being
charged with, you know, bribery, But he cannot pardon the impeachment,
the removal from office, because that is a power granted
to Congress. It's not a power granted to the president.
(24:10):
So you can't grant a pardon for impeachment. You can
grant a pardon for the underlying crime for which the
judge is being impeached. I think about AlSi Hastings, the
former federal judge from Florida that was convicted of federal
bribery charges. A president can impeach him for those charges.
(24:32):
I mean, can can pardon him for those bribery charges. However,
he was removed from office through the impeachment process. That's
a cleanary power granted to Congress. The president cannot do it.
So they said, you can. You have the power to
(24:53):
grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States bribery,
for example, accepting cases of impeachment, so you can't pardon
them for impeachment. Otherwise, the sky's the limit. And that
is they thought there needed to be a relief valve
(25:16):
for when a president thought there was a miscarriage of justice,
or a president just for whatever, for any reason or
no reason, wanted to You know, a president can pardon
someone for no reason whatsoever. Let's say that I decide
today this afternoon to go. Somebody asked me for you know,
you didn't hear a discussion yesterday about dairy queen. But
(25:38):
somebody says, Michael and Dragon, this is seventy one oh five.
Did the two of you ever make dairy queen for hamburgers?
He did I did not, so what I didn't go
to dairy Queen. Well, if Trump wants to pardon me
for my failure to go to dairy Queen, if that's
(25:59):
a offense, he can pardon me for it. You may
not like this, you may disagree with it, and that's okay,
but it doesn't change the underlying reality that a president
(26:21):
has the power of pardon because if he thinks there's
an injustice. The founder said, we need some mechanism by
which we get we give the president the power to
correct an injustice. And even if you know Richard Nixon's
a great example, I can't get into the mind of
(26:45):
Gerald Ford other than what he's written and what he
wrote in the pardon. But he thought it was time
for us just to move on, you know, let's quit
hagning over Watergate. So I'm going to pardon him for
any crimes he may have committed, not impeachment, but he'd resigned,
(27:06):
so they can't impeach him anymore anyway. But for any
crimes if if you actually engaged in the conspiracy to
cover up uh, you know, some underlying crime, the burglary,
for example, or you paid hush money to people the
burglars to keep them quiet. Whatever any crimes you may
(27:26):
have committed, whether they're ever proven or not, your pardon
for those. And Ford's reasoning was he wanted that long
national nightmare to be over, so boom it was over.
It may have cost him the election against Jimmy Carter
because the country was divided. Some people wanted Nixon to
(27:48):
be held to account. They wanted to see Richard Nixon
in jail, and other people were like, good grief, he's
the president. He engaged in, you know, cover up, he
may have lied about some stuff. They were going to
impeach him. The Senate Watergate Special Count Special Committee was
(28:08):
about to you know, refer to the House articles of impeachment.
But they didn't quite get quite that far because Howard
Baker and the others went up to the White House
and said, mister President, there are votes to impeach you.
We think you ought to resign and avoid that. And
then Ford said, you know what, let's just finish this.
Let's just move forward. Let's get all this behind us
(28:31):
and move forward. So I'm going to pardon you for
any crimes you may have committed. You may not like that.
I may not like that. I think it was the
right thing to do. I think it was the right
thing to I think what Ford did was the right
thing to do, and he probably knew it might have
(28:53):
cost him the election, and I believe that probably did
cost him the election. But I think it was the
right thing to do, and he had the power to
do so. So Yes, it is quite clear that you
can pardon for activities that may have been committed. It's planary,
it's absolute. And is are there are there any questions? Dragon?
Speaker 3 (29:19):
Nope, it's great time cloking.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Hey, Michael, I was wondering.
Speaker 5 (29:23):
I heard somewhere that the pardons that Joe Biden ended
out to his family along with foci were signed by
auto pen except the one for Hunter.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Is that true? Number one?
Speaker 5 (29:39):
And do you think he probably gave some thought, although
it's a long shot, that he better sign it in person.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
So it's valid. Let me know, Dragon asked me during
the break, because we have a text message that says
this is from number seventy one old goober seventy one
oh five Mike and Dragon. Michael seems so frustrated right
now explaining pardons. It It is reminding me of this
(30:10):
part of biodome and it's got a YouTube link there.
It is frustrating to me.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
You're one of the five people that watched biodome. Wow,
I didn't and I know the text, yeah, and I.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Don't know what that references too. So I saw had
no cud okay, and I'm not and I've not seen
that particular YouTube, so I don't know what it is.
But Dragon asked me during the break, so on a
scale of one to ten, how frustrated are you about
this whole pardon topic? And I said, ask ex except
(30:47):
and your response was so we could still poke some
fun at you, We still got some leeway in which
to really see if we can't push it over the edge,
really get pissed off. Yeah, And I'm like, yeah, go
for it, go for it.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
So if that talkback was the best you could do,
that was a very lame attempt at pushing me over
the edge.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
Well, now that I set it up, it seems more
comical now.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
Yeah, right, it's yeah, it's it's more like, oh, he's
pissed off, let's just poking just for the fun of it. Yeah. Yeah,
forty five twelve rites to my talk back in your response, Yes,
the investigations could clarify the extent of the trans aggressions
and those who were involved. We're talking about the investigation
(31:35):
into well, for example, the little cabal that was running
the White House while Joe Biden was eating jello all
the time. I'm one hundred percent for that investigation. I
want to know for political science reasons, for historical reasons,
because we lived through all that bull crap. I want
(31:57):
to know what was really going on. That's why I
went to the trouble of actually going to Barnes and
Noble and purchasing Jake Tapper's book, reading it over a weekend,
and then returning it unscathed, and getting my money back,
so you would not get the money for it, yet
I got the information out of it.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
You're so worried you didn't even crack the spy into
the book.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
I didn't even crack the spy of the book. I
read it very very carefully and returned it. And the
only thing I learned was I learned some of the
names of the people who were involved in that cabal.
I also learned that I think Jake Tapper knew all along.
In fact, it's since come out that Jake Tapper really
didn't know all along that there was something going on,
but they were covering up for him. So I'm all
(32:38):
for that investigation, just just as I'm all for the
investigation of Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, the Capitol Police chief,
and everybody else involved in the denial and well all
aspects of January sixth, And I'd like to know, you know,
why weren't they pardon, for example, all they're involvement in
(32:59):
the it's so called insurrection on that day. Yes, we
need to know that because we need to know what
the power elites in this country are doing so that
we can respond accordingly, which unfortunately leads me to something
that I want to talk about it, but I dread
(33:23):
talking about it. But we're going to talk about it.
I'm not going to tell you what it is, because
if I tell you, you might not turn in, you
might not tune in and listen. No, I bet you
if you guess
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