Assange and Snowden remain unpopular with Senate Republicans, and my understanding is that he was told pardoning them would hurt his chances of avoiding a Senate conviction in his second impeachment.
He was also recently steered away from pardoning himself, his family, and some Republicans that may have helped the capitol rioters (and he apparently got the message), but who knows if he'll change his mind in the next couple hours.
Is pardoning oneself legally possible?
EDIT: Seems possible but never tested.
> The Constitution provides little guidance on the issue of a potential presidential selfpardon. Only one sentence is dedicated to pardons: “The President . . . shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” Looking to historical precedent and case law likewise provides no dispositive answer. No president has ever issued a self-pardon, and very few Supreme Court cases have addressed any aspect of the president’s pardon power.
-- https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3587921
Part of the what?
I was looking for clarification about what "the information warfare campaign" was. I'm guessing it's some kind of post-hoc rationalization for a lot of Trump's bizarre statements and other distractions, but I'm not sure.
As for the information warfare part. The media on opposite sides tend to sensationalize their titles to manipulate the discourse for their benefit.
In X’s comment, we can summarize information warfare as lies. So X thought that “Trump is going to pardon himself” titles are part of the informational warfare and Trump won’t actually do that. But now that X saw this HN thread, X said “was he even going to do that? Do we actually have a proof that he intends to do that? Or was it just a lie to shape public opinion further” Like the time Pelosi asks US generals if they keep Trump in check so that he can’t launch nuclear weapons. [0] Implying to the public that Trump is so crazy he can start a nuclear war. These type of things, shape public opinion over time. It is the same with Fox News shaping conservatives’ opinions about Biden. Or the NYT shopping global issues from a pool for Americans to get concerned with. It is standard propaganda and has been happening for decades.
That’s why I think X’s skepticism is healthy and warranted.
[0] https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-politics-nancy-pelos...
https://web.archive.org/web/20180604233027/https://twitter.c...
I am fairly confident that even if Trump had specifically wanted to pardon Assange or Snowden he could not have.
Edit: lol, this will have been the most successful lie by the media and GOP... getting people to believe the GOP and Trump were friends. They never wanted him. McConnnell picked Sessions and Barr both who did little for Trump. McConnnell picked the 3 Supreme Court justices, and the federal judges who when given the chance refused trumps election fraud cases, McConnnell dropped the mask the second it was clear Trump no longer had power. Ffs, they stuck him with Reince Preibus at first.
This is the thing I’ll never understand about GOP-Haters... not understanding Trump was fighting them too. Literally everyone had to pretend that wasn’t the case including Trump if he wanted to get anything done at all.
Sessions did everything he could for Trump just did the right thing once to avoid legal jeopardy for himself by recusing himself. In exchange he got nothing but abuse, I mean Sessions is a nasty little goblin so I don't feel to sorry for him but that's what loyalty to Trump gets you
Barr did cross ethical lines anday have broken laws in making the justice department Trump's personal defense lawyers instead of the semi independent agency it's supposed to be.
https://abovethelaw.com/2020/12/the-temptation-and-corruptio...
Barr was the ultimate lacky Attorney General. But because he declined to support overturning the results of the election illegally, he's not Trump's loyal toady?
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/19/politics/mitch-mcconnell-riot...
Do you think the House pushed through breakneck-speed impeachment vote, breaking almost all of the rules about witnesses, testimony, procedure all for fun? No, that was calculated to keep Trump in line I think.
Removing all platforms from him, looming impeachment or other threats, publicly denouncing him after four years of pretending to be MAGA...
Now, I don’t have a CNN article to make my case. So maybe you are right.
McConnell has no influence. That's why Stone, Kushner, and Bannon are on the list among others.
Trump decided not to pardon Snowden and Assange. Full stop.
Trump should have pardoned Assange, it's the only thing that would actually have taken a (small) chunk out of the "deep state" for real. Instead, as many of us saw coming, Trump's rhetoric about "draining the swamp" and "fighting the deep state" was always empty bluster.
Now Assange will die in prison (there's not a snowball's chance in hell that Biden pardons him, to state the obvious).
Hang on, if you’re certain about it being entirely trumps decision not to pardon Snowden or Assange... can we at least have a citation that McConnell cared at all about Stone Kushner or Bannon?
You declaring that those names put together are in any way equal to the weight of Snowden -or- Assange?
I never suggested Trump did want to. I suggested he could not.
"Always has been."
I think lots of people think Assange has been (“is” is a murkier question) a Russian asset, but not so much a spy (someone who serves as an agent for collecting information) as an active influence agent.
For Snowden, I think that’s probably less common.
If there was a Trump pardon, I guarantee every major news outlet would bring up their Russian connections and Twitter would lose its mind. What people "seriously believes" changes rapidly.
Simply put, Trump was threatened that if he pardons Assange, senate republicans (the establishment) would vote to convict.
I wish he had the courage to call their bluff, because them convicting Trump would fragment the GOP to an extent that is irreversible, IMO. Most people who aren't Trump supporters don't appreciate the extent to which Trump's base is not overlapping with the establishment GOP base.
"there was knowing and complicit behavior between the Trump campaign and Russians that stopped short of direct coordination, which may constitute conspiracy."[1]
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report#Redacted_report...
That's one of the reasons he colluded with a hostile foreign entity(Russia). Cause he doesn't give a shit. Sadly I don't have much hope for senate Republicans to do the right thing regardless of what Trump did, even after his role in the attempted coup
Trump doesn't have courage, he has bluster and self interest, he didn't see what was in it for him to pardon Assange
It's also been reported that Mitch McConnell threatened to support the impeachment if he pardons Assange. Though this claim has not been substantiated.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-lobbying-execu...
This had been one of his only practical actions towards keeping his campaign promise of "draining the swamp."
Levadowski pardon, the spy, the swamp, etc.
I personally look at the pardon list and I'm at a loss for words. What a weird mix of scammers and celebrities.
Remember, Trump won 47% of the popular vote which likely includes a large number of HNers. We should not alienate those people.
But how do we get there?
In my view, until Hacker News has a mechanism to capture different kinds of feedback; e.g.:
1. comment is well-written (even if I disagree)
2. comment is civil (even if not well-written and/or I disagree)
we're going to have "lump all, some, or none of these factors together" voting.
Im also downvoted btw, so this goes both ways.
The only result this achieves is telling these people with "reprehensible ideas" that they need to take their discussion elsewhere and avoid any communication with people who don't share their opinion.
This is the opposite of productive.
Both sides see themselves as the victim and the others as the attacker.
>Why is it always on us to be nice to people who hate us and want us dead?
Do you see how this is perpetuating the problem?
I have not been brainwashed by the TV to think these types of people are evil. I know them intimately. I know that they are multifaceted human beings, capable of love, but also capable of hate and great harm. I have family members that do believe other races are below them, aunts and uncles old enough to have fought against civil rights and desegregation. Much like Trump, who was 22 when MLK was assassinated. Grandparents who mutter about the war of northern aggression. They are still alive today, there are millions of people like them, and they vote. They push real policies that present a real threat to many Americans.
I have moved away from the South, and have new friends and family, who have directly been affected by the Muslim Ban, changes to immigration policy, and the rhetoric of Trump and his supporters these past four years. This is real harm.
"Both sides" are not the same, and there are real victims of such bigotry. To deny this reality perpetuates these problems.
The media has spent the last 4 years portraying Trump and his voters as evil racists. What is not mentioned is that his support among minorities increased from 2016 to 2020. He had more black and hispanic percentage of voters than any republican in in living memory. Ironically Trump lost the election because middle class white voters abandoned him.
Don't get me wrong Trump was a terrible president and there are countless criticisms that can be leveled at his administration. But the key question no one is asking is why did people vote for him in the first place and why did so many vote for him again? To me answering that with "because they're all racist/fascist" is nothing more than a cop-out from established political powers to distract from their own failure of public confidence.
My experience was not some one off event, or story that applies to just my family, it reflects a culture of racism common in this country, particularly the South. We are talking about well documented multi-generational harm perpetuated by communities, businesses, and government.
"There are shitty people of all walks of life," is not sufficient to explain away the harms of institutionalized racism in the United States.
So, you do not need to call people "brainwashed" for recognizing the attitudes espoused by many Trump supporters. They have earned their reputation for good reason, though "some, I assume, are good people."
As for "the key question no one is asking is why did people vote for him in the first place and why did so many vote for him again?" In fact, many people have asked that question, have studied it extensively, and have found that racism and anti-immigrant attitudes were the strongest indicators of support for Trump (e.g. [1]). Yes, you're right that "because they're all racist" is a cop-out, there are other factors at play, but to say that "racial attitudes" is not a significant factor is to ignore the evidence.
[1] https://theintercept.com/2018/09/18/2016-election-race-class...
"People from the south are racist bigots"
"Minorities are lazy criminals"
"White people who disagree with my politics are white supremacists"
These are all different flavors of the same poison.
Just how you can use your antidote to justify your statements of prejudice against groups of people you don't like, equivalent people from the right will citing FBI crime statistics until they're blue in the face to justify their prejudice.
In that respect there is parity between the right and left.
Likewise, understanding of the historical conditions and causal factors responsible for racial disparities in wealth, education, incarceration rates, and other outcomes is not equivalent to the regurgitation of FBI statistics. Anyone can cite statistics, what matters is understanding why these disparities exist. In that respect, both the "left" and "right" rely on such statistics, the difference is in their interpretations, or lack thereof. Someone who is familiar with the history of racial discrimination in the U.S. will offer causal explanations of these disparities, which are consistent with these statistics and often distribute responsibility among various institutions and policies. On the other hand, someone who reflexively cites FBI statistics without interpretation, is at best justifying their prejudice by means of willful ignorance. At worst, by omitting the underlying context and offering no explicit explanation, they imply that these disparities are actually explained race, so that the minority can be blamed, conveniently absolving themselves of any responsibility. Thus they perpetuate and spread this prejudice, relying on their others' existing biases, ignorance, and proclivity to accept simple explanations or easy scapegoats.
These behaviors are clearly not equivalent. One is born out of ignorance and desire for self absolution, which are timeless, and that is why the same arguments have been used for decades. The other relies on deeper understanding of historical conditions and acceptance of culpability, which takes significant time and collective effort to build and communicate, which is why it has taken decades for concepts like "institutionalized racism" to enter the broader public discourse. Furthermore, the former is by definition prejudice, bias based on an immutable attribute of others, their race, while the latter is instead critical of others' prejudicial behavior, behavior that can change.
So, this as not an issue of prejudice on "both sides", and framing it as such presents a shallow understanding of the situation. This is also demonstrated by the quotes you've constructed to characterize the "left" on this issue, e.g. "white people who disagree with my politics are white supremacists". No reputable person actually says this, though the quotes from the "right" that you've used are almost direct quotes from sources like the President Trump, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, etc. So, what would someone on the "left" actually say? Let's check out some quotes from Ibram X. Kendi; "Racist and antiracist are not fixed identities. We can be a racist one minute and an antiracist the next", and, "whenever the antiracist sees individuals behaving positively or negatively, the antiracist sees exactly that: individuals behaving positively or negatively, not representatives of whole races". The quote you've constructed is not just an uncharitable interpretation, it's actually in direct contradiction to what people on the "left" are saying.
So, again, these are not equivalent. I also want to point out that you have not engaged with any of the specific points (or references) that I have made in my previous comments, but instead are changing topics, presenting straw man arguments, and doubling down on "both sides" false equivalence fallacies. It is extremely unlikely that everyone else is "brainwashed" while you are somehow an objective observer of "both sides", nothing is that simple. Approaching discussions in this way will only serve to protect your own ego and worldview, and prevent personal growth. I highly recommend that you reflect and seek out opinions different from your own, while thinking critically about the foundations for your beliefs and the environment from which you derived them.
There was literally no good reason to vote for Trump regardless of views (to be fair op didn't say he voted for Trump)
Same old story. "I'm shocked, shocked that there's gambling going on!"
I'm not forgetting about the last 4 years anytime soon.
There is nothing virtuous about ignoring and rationalizing intolerance.
Drain the Swamp simply meant get rid of anyone against Trump, including goverment ethics watchdogs
Likewise could it not be said that it is better that many legitimate programs go exposed to expose the blatantly lawless mass surveillance of USA Persons?
Snowden was just the first honorable American to come across the information and he did his best to expose it safely, by giving it to journalists to release, after consulting with the government.
We can't expect whistle blowers to do a perfect job. There will always be some mistakes. As long as they act in good faith and reasonably, they should be protected.
Edward had a childish reaction to release documents that had nothing to do with Xkeyscore (of which the media claim as the reason for his release), particularly those of Tailored Access Operations [TAO]. This was the action of a petulant individual lashing out at the system however he felt he could. Don't let it be ignored that he was specifically working in a capacity supporting operations in China.. then fled there before moving on to Russia. No one talks about or acknowledges that Edward was in a support role and not an "Operator" at the agency either. He was pissed because he applied twice and was denied, in part due to his horrible support on operation plans.
He wanted to act out and damage the NSA and their mission.
The hero worship of Snowden is deplorable. I only wish the american public had a real understanding and grasp of what goes on to keep their "bubble" safe and sound. Edwards actions have had an outsized impact and unfortunately it won't be mad public in a nonclassified space for many years to come, because of further operational impacts.
He was 100% a traitor.
That’s just a lie. He was in a plane on his way to Ecuador when the US cancelled his passport, resulting in him being blocked in the Russian airport for a while. At some point the situation created such a mess for the airport that Russia accepted to let him enter the country.
All of this has been documented at length, and anyone on this forum is likely old enough to remember the events from when they happened live.
At no point he wanted to be in Russia. The US forced the situation by canceling his passport mid-flight and putting pressure on any country that would offer their help (my home country did and was publicly pressured for this).
In any case, you can forget about the guy, the information he gave demonstrate that the NSA under Obama was committing plenty of illegal surveillance of the US population (and of course other countries, but US citizens don’t seem to care about non-US rights), created a system of hidden courts, and lied about all of it. That should be enough to consider him a whistleblower.
I didn't say he wanted to be there, but he clearly wanted to be in Hong Kong, then move on... and ended up in Russia? Again, what part of this is false?
Did you know him? I did, he's a fucking tool. The information leaked was piecemeal. Take the bible, leak random pages and one will say live a joyous life, love each other.. where a different page might tell you to sacrifice your only child. Unless you've been privy to all of the information at the right scale, you've been sold a piece, a piece that paints a narrative.
The FISA courts weren't new. You have have to have a secure means to disclose data without risking release in a non classified environment. Obviously this concept is over your head.
Even if he was genuine in trying to blow a whistle on one program, that doesn't mean he has a right to do a smash and grab and release un-related materials. He took a spray and pray approach to retaliation and it just so happened he was able to form a "good guy" narrative around one piece of it.
This reads like you have an indiscrete level of personal animus. Aside from being lazily pejorative, it isn’t very descriptive. Still I’m so glad to know if I just had “all the information at the right scale” this wouldn’t go “over the head” of regular folk like me. Truly you are a federal bodhisattva.
This line of argument seems more in line with Scientologist’s protection of “Zenu” stories thru cooyright than “the Bible,” which has substantially available to read since Gutenberg. If only the security apparatus was more like Jesus than Mr. Hubbard.
No I wouldn't. A, I don't have first hand knowledge of the situation, and B, it's a drastically different scenario. I'm not anti-whistleblower. I'm anti retaliation because you were told no.
> I don’t think he would’ve been ignored.
He told the intelligence committees the same time he told _the entire country_ and he was still ignored.
I agree 100%.
Everyone says this but it's pure conjecture. We don't know what would have happened and now we never will.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/giuliani-associate-reportedl...
Because he has a grudge against the US intelligence community, so would enjoy using his power to piss them off:
https://www.lawfareblog.com/why-flynn-pardon-matters:
> The “own the intelligence community” pardons—pardons designed to offend and punish the intelligence agencies for their professionalism over the past several years and the inconveniences that professionalism has caused to Trump. A number of right-wing and civil liberties figures have suggested pardons for Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, though Axios suggests that Snowden will not get a pardon today. Such actions may have a certain appeal for a president—who, like both Assange and Snowden—has a tolerant attitude toward Russian intelligence activity that benefits him and who does not care overmuch about revealing American intelligence activity to adversary actors. There has also been talk of late about clemency for Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the “Silk Road” dark web market—who is serving a life sentence in connection with a murder-for-hire scheme. This would arguably be more of a “own law enforcement” clemency, but the concept is the same.
The enemy of Assange's enemy was never his friend. Nothing about Trump's conduct has ever suggested he wants more whistleblowers walking free, especially ones who may not feel a "professional courtesy" to refrain from leaking some things.
The next thing Wikileaks reports on could have been shady back-dealing on Trump real estate projects, for all we know. Trump never saw pardoning Assange as a gain for himself.
- Trump can't afford making more enemies in the intelligence community, or simply does not want to.
- Assange and Snowden are libertarians' heroes, but libertarians didn't even vote for Trump this time, right? The percent of libertarians voting for an independent candidate was larger than the gap between Trump and Biden, even though Trump was probably the most libertarian president in the past 30 years. For instance, Trump refused to expand federal government's power during Covid, and he deregulated a lot to defer policies to states. Not that I like or dislike Trump's policy, mind you -- just my assessment. So, Trump may simply ignored the requests to pardon Assange and Snowden.
Don't mistake incompetence for libertarianism.
The moment when POTUS is unable to profit off of his presidency is the moment where these things wouldn't happen.
POTUS becoming a multimillionaire after presidency is just a sad display of moral corruption.
Edit: Not talking about Trump, just in general about POTUS. It's my impression that in the last 50 years all of them benefited from the public, exerting their influence after losing the binds of the POTUS position to enrich themselves. Shows quite a lack of moral character in all of them.
If, on the other hand, a president makes his presidency about doing favours for the rich and powerful then he won't have to write books and speeches afterwards.
ex-POTUS is still an influential individual and is just profiting after the binds of the position are lifted.
I think it would be a pretty nice decree to disallow the president to become extremely wealthy X years after presidency. Let the influence slowly fade and let's see if POTUS as an individual, after being elected to do public good, can produce some value outside of benefiting from being elected.
It still seems like an accident of history that Americans sent Jimmy Carter to the highest office in the land. For as much as they claim to want a regular Joe/Joe-ette as President (the mirage of the unpretentious 'I can have a beer with him' candidate) they seem to vote for people that are the polar opposite.
Before they passed a presidential pension bill Truman was basically broke, living of his army pension
In 2000 Donald Trump told Fortune magazine, “It’s very possible that I could be the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it.”
Oh boy, are you going to be in for a nasty surprise. Trump is going to get more powerful after this mess, but it will likely tear the GOP apart. And don't kid yourself that the Democrats love the idea of having him as an enemy if he ever runs again. Most of what you're watching is political theatre.
If he stays out of prison then the message is 'USA's political establishment endorses white power, and oligarchy' and given many nations rely on USA having at least a little morality as the greatest military superpower on Earth ...
USA seemingly can't be trusted to keep even a semblance of Rule of Law, any country lead by those who don't themselves pretend towards megalomania has to find this problematic. Your (USA's) democracy is very broken.
No offense, but this seems like a narrative straight out of the left-wing playbook. Fomenting racial divisions around the World? Seems a bit of a stretch.
As far as the motivation being "purely money", I'd say his presidency cost him a bunch of scrilla, though I bet he earns it back in the long run. Is that any different than, say, Bill Clinton, who has made millions of dollars doing speeches around the world after his presidency? I'm not sure.
>USA seemingly can't be trusted to keep even a semblance of Rule of Law
Turn off the TV. The US is still great. Again, what you are watching is mostly theatre.
>If he stays out of prison then the message is 'USA's political establishment endorses white power, and oligarchy'
Wait, you say the US can't be trusted to keep the law, but then say that Trump needs to go to prison? For what crime?
He's clearly a capable actor. He pretends, rather convincingly, to be this amazing, confident, shrewd businessman. And I think a lot of people idolize him because he embodies what they think of when they think of a smart, successful business person. But I think real smart, successful business people spend two minutes with him, and paint him as a rube.
I agree, but, uh, everyone with half-a-brain knew that this about Donald Trump long before he was elected president. He's been playing this character for 40 years.
You are underestimating something. I remember how Bush was literally Hitler and Cheney was an impossibly evil name.
But now Bush is a lovable cook, Biden admin was taking with Dick Cheney about foreign affairs and Liz Cheney was just celebrated by the left/media for dumping on Trump.
Trump brand won’t be what it was, but it’s something different now. I think the political left did themselves a great disservice by not giving in to election fraud investigations, when people were asking for signature matching, observer access, proving compliance with Article2, scanned ballot uploads, whatever else was reasonable and we should expect our election system to provide without question. Even the most rabid TrumpHater5000 should have supported that because it would have proved he was wrong. Now in some people’s eyes we will never truly know. For practically half the country Biden has an asterix by his name. That doesn’t seem like a great start and it didn’t actually tarnish Trump Brand except to the people who hated him already including the establishment GOP. His approval among supporters is not lower since Jan 6th, as difficult as it may be to understand.
Nobody from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU is on that list.
We are wasting our time and energy caring about either of those organizations. Let them stick to filing Amicus Briefs in courts, but they clearly have no pull or influence or backchannel despite our tech scene thinking they do.
These aren't some crappy organizations that do 'deals' to get their objectives. There's really (afaik) two ways to keep government in check. Voting and paying lawyers to sue the government when they do 'bad' things (read: against the law/constitution).
Disclaimer: I am a member of both EFF and ACLU.
Direct quote by the way
I get the impression people don’t know what an Amicus Brief is, about half of the replies are pretty off topic
https://www.axios.com/aclu-leaked-memo-free-speech-civil-rig...
I think the actual leaked memo is a phenomenal read and very well balanced. : https://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/20180621AC...
Excellent quotes from that memo:
> “although the democratic standardsin which the ACLU believes and for which it fights run directly counter to thephilosophy of the Klan and other ultra-right groups, the vitality of the democratic institutions the ACLU defends lies in their equal application to all.”
>We also recognize that not defending fundamental liberties can come at considerable cost. If the ACLU avoids the defense of controversial speakers, and defends only those with whom it agrees,both the freedom of speech and the ACLU itself may suffer.The organization may lose credibility with allies, supporters, and other communities, requiring the expenditure of resources to mitigate those harms. Thus, there are often costs both from defending a given speaker and not defending that speaker.Because we are committed to the principle that free speech protects everyone, the speaker’s viewpoint should not be the decisive factor in our decision to defend speech rights.
Considerations in prioritizing cases:
> Whether the speaker seeks to engage in or promote violence
> Whether the speakers seek to carryweapons
> The impact of the proposed speechand the impact of its suppression
> The extent to which we are able tomake clear that even as we defend aspeaker’s right to say what they want, we reserve our right to condemn the views themselves
I'd be curious if there was a list of all unsuccessful applicants too. I think that would be very interesting to see and bring some transparency. We'd be able to see just how many businesses, shady and legit, how many political orgs and cultural institutions, millionaires lobby and for whom.
For example, Peter Theil risked ostracizing himself from the broader tech community to gain massive leverage and influence, and it worked and continues to work.
We should be supporting more flexible and crafty organizations to turn our memes into reality.
Like I said, EFF and ACLU are a waste of our energy because they failed to do that. The White House has published a list of the kinds of people and organizations that get results. Its an instruction manual.
The ACLU and EFF should also find a way to give Trump money / favors under the table to get pardons too in the name of the ends justify the means?
The world thinks our ideas are just memes with quizzical effect on the real world, and they're right.
Instead it’s just more and more corruption.