Tag Archives: pardons

Video Transcript: The Semi-Inside Story of Why Trump Refused to Pardon Snowden and Assange, by Glenn Greenwald

Posted on January 8, 2022 | 1 comment

Trump blew it on Assange and Snowden and he blew it on the vaccines. He’ll have to give better answers than the ones he’s given so far if he expects to run in 2024. From Glenn Greenwald at greenwald.substack.com:

For months, Trump indicated that he was strongly considering pardoning NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, and considering a pardon for Assange as well. Yet he never did. Why?
In an interview at Mar-a-Logo, Candace Owens presses Donald Trump on why he did not pardon either Edward Snowden or Julian Assange, Dec. 29, 2021

When Donald Trump vacated the White House on January 20, 2021, it became clear that he had refused to issue two pardons which many of his most ardent supporters were advocating and even expecting: one for the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, who has spent eight years in exile in Russia for revealing to American citizens that the Obama-era NSA was secretly and unconstitutionally spying en masse on their communications and other online activities, and Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder whose reporting in 2010 on grave crimes by the U.S. and its allies and in 2016 on the Clinton campaign were among the most consequential journalism stories of the last two decades.

Trump’s failure to pardon either of them fostered disappointment and anger in many circles — “Trump left the White House about as weak, cucked, and submissive as it’s possible for a grown adult to scamper away,” I tweeted on that day, with an obviously considerable mix of each sentiment. That reaction was due to the fact that Trump himself had raised the possibility that he might pardon Snowden — infuriating everyone from Susan Rice to Liz Cheney — and was also actively considering a pardon for Assange. Given that it is virtually impossible to imagine any other U.S. president even remotely considering such a move, Trump seemed to be not just the best but the last chance for either of these two courageous dissidents to finally earn their freedom and be able to go home. That many of Trump’s most trusted Congressional allies [such as Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Matt Gaetz (R-FL)] were strongly advocating for a pardon of one or both, and because Trump himself harbored so many valid personal reasons for wanting to confront these security state agencies — he had, as much as anyone, seen first-hand how pernicious and sinister these agencies can be, and what grave menaces they pose for American democracy — it was difficult for many people to understand why he did not pardon one or both of them.

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Government, History, Intelligence, Media, Politics, Propaganda

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A Pardoning Time of Year, by Philip Giraldi

Posted on December 29, 2020 | Leave a comment

Trump would win absolution for any sins he’s committed in his four years in office by pardoning Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. From Philip Giraldi at unz.com:

The resistance to the apparent election of Joe Biden as President of the United States is continuing to play out. Current President Donald Trump is continuing to fight against the presumed results of the November national election with his final card appearing to be a vote in Congress when it reconvenes on January 6th to throw out the results due to fraud in certain key states. Many have noted how the registration and electoral processes in the United States, varying as they do from state to state, were and are vulnerable to fraud. That, plus some eyewitness testimony and technical analysis, suggests that possibly systematic fraud did take place but it is far from clear whether it was decisive. This is particularly true of the vote by mail option, which was promoted by leading Democrats and which empowered literally millions of new voters with only limited attempts made to validate whether citizens or even real people were voting.

Vote by mail is now one of several options that are appearing to be weaponized by the cash-rich Democrats in the state of Georgia, where two Senate races will be up for grabs in runoff elections on January 5th. If the Democrats obtain both, they will control the Senate through the Vice President’s role in presiding over the upper chamber where she has the tie breaking vote. That will mean that we the voters can expect some dramatic changes as the Democrats respond to their various constituencies with their well enunciated grievances.

In what may be its last weeks in office, the Trump Administration is also exploiting its executive power to pardon to reverse perceived injustices and to protect remaining allies, to include some family members. Trump is already on track to pardon more individuals than any preceding president with 90 pardons issued as of Christmas Eve and many more expected. One of his initial pardons was a notable example of a miscarriage of justice in the case of presidential national security advisor designate Michael Flynn, who was wrongly accused of collaborating with Russia. If anything, he was actually cooperating with a request that came from Israel, which Congress and the media apparently do not regard as wrongdoing.

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Crime, Cronyism, Government, Law, Morality, Politics

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Should Snowden and Assange Pardon the U.S. Government? by Jacob G. Hornberger

Posted on August 21, 2020 | Leave a comment

Snowden and Assange did nothing wrong, yet have been persecuted relentlessly. From Jacob G. Hornberger at fff.org:

President Trump is saying that he might issue a pardon to Edward Snowden. For some reason, he hasn’t said the same thing about Julian Assange.

But a pardon suggests that the person being pardoned has done something wrong. Neither Snowden and Assange has done anything wrong — at least not in a moral sense. It is the U.S. government — and specifically the national-security state branch of the federal government — that has engaged in terrible wrongdoing — wrongdoing that Snowden and Assange revealed to the American people and the people of the world.

Therefore, the real question is: Should Snowden and Assange pardon the U.S. for having destroyed a large part of their lives and liberty?

Oh, sure, the two of them technically violated the federal government’s national-security laws, rules, and regulations against revealing the dark-side, sordid policies and practices of the national-security establishment. Big deal. Those laws, rules, and regulations are illegitimate, at least in a moral sense. Why should the dark-side, sordid policies and practices of a government be immune from disclosure?

The American people have now become so accustomed to living under a national-security state form of governmental structure that many of them tend toward deferring to the laws, rules, and regulations that come with a national-security state. Thus, when the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA refer to Snowden and Assange as “enemies of the state” or “traitors,” the tendency of many Americans is to blindly accept their assessment.

Of course, it works that way under every national-security state. Look at China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela, Russia, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia, They too are all national-security states. Like the U.S. national-security state, they all engage in dark-side, sordid policies and practices. And like the U.S. national-security state, they go after anyone who discloses such policies and practices with a vengeance. And most of their citizens blindly and loyally go along with it all.

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America Will Never Live Down Trump’s War Crime Pardons, by Danny Sjursen

Posted on November 22, 2019 | 1 comment

A substantial portion of the American public, including the president, believes that anything goes when it comes to war. They shouldn’t be surprised at the blowback, notably terrorism. From Danny Sjursen at antiwar.com:

Donald Trump loves him some bluster, worships machismo, and always has. Spectacle over substance has long been the name of his game. Decades before his successful presidential run, back when he was still a cartoon billionaire playboy, Trump took out a full-page newspaper advertisement that argued that New York state should bring back the death penalty for five adolescents arrested in 1989 for allegedly beating and raping a jogger – even though the boys hadn’t yet been convicted. Turns out that the infamous Central Park Five were later exonerated by DNA evidence. To this day, Trump refuses to apologize, even though his suggestion would have resulted in the execution of five innocent kids. But regret isn’t part of The Donald’s playbook.

Neither is adherence to facts, or recognition of history. Trump illustrated this point on the 2016 campaign trail, when he repeated a demonstrably false story about how then-Capt. John J. Pershing (future commanding general for all U.S. forces in World War I) – “a rough, rough guy” – had, during the brutal American counterinsurgency in the Philippines (1899-1913), once captured 50 Muslim “terrorists,” dipped 50 bullets in pig’s blood, shot 49, and set the sole survivor loose to spread the tale to his rebel comrades. The outcome, or moral of the story, according to Trump, was that “for 25 years, there wasn’t a problem, OK?” Well, no, actually, the Philippine insurgency dragged on for another decade, and a Muslim-separatist rebellion continues in the islands to this day.

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Posted in Crime, Government, Military, War

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Pardon Everyone (Except That Rat Cohen), by Kurt Schlichter

Posted on December 17, 2018 | Leave a comment

Kurt Schlichter has what may be an ingenious idea. From Schlichter at theburningplatform.com:

Let’s stop pretending that America in 2018 has a “justice system.” It’s not a justice system. It’s a set of elite institutions that swing the law like a sledgehammer to crush threats to the ruling class’s monopoly on power. You know, threats like the people we elect to represent our interests against the elite. And we are under no moral obligation to pretend it is anything else.

This painful to admit it, but we need to grow up. There are two sets of law in America today, meaning there is no rule of law in America today. Oh, there are statutes, and there are courts, and there are agencies full of people with guns willing to enforce the will of aspiring tyrants, but there is not rule of law. There is only power, theirs and ours. Time to get woke to the undeniable fact that the Fredocons deny up and down. Justice is no longer blind. Her blindfold is off and she’s picking favorites.

You are not one of her favorites.

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Posted in Collapse, Crime, Cronyism, Government, Horseshit, Investigations, Law, Politics

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