So, when will Trump derangement syndrome subside? The 2020 election is over. It should be in its last throes, but not for some people. You have folks like Seth Abramson peddling total nonsense about Trump, pardon powers, and the Constitution. Apparently, presidential pardons can be reviewed by the courts. I’m not a lawyer, but you don’t need to be one to know this is wrong. Just like you don’t need to be a historian to know that World War II happened, and the Nazis were evil.
Abramson is known for his lengthy Twitter threads about Trump and the Russian collusion conspiracy that never happened. So, now that he decided to throw this garbage take on pardons into the air, ‘lawyer Twitter’ have been activated. Attorney Akiva Cohen saw this thread, describing it as “garbage in, garbage out.”
The Pardon Clause prohibits using the pardon power to obstruct impeachments. Trump repeatedly opined—rightly—that Mueller's probe could lead to a referral for possible impeachment (which it did). The pardons he just gave are the ones he dangled to obstruct Mueller. See the issue?
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) December 24, 2020
Those who say the pardon power is unreviewable aren't just wrong, they *know* they're wrong. The Pardon Clause makes explicit that Congress has standing and a cause of action if the power is used to obstruct an impeachment. So the power is definitionally reviewable by the courts.
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) December 24, 2020
Moreover, if the grant of a pardon is itself a high crime or misdemeanor, it creates an irresolvable conflict between the Impeachment Clause and the Pardon Clause that only a federal court can resolve—making a pardon reviewable in that scenario too. That's the situation we're in.
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) December 24, 2020
Moreover, if a pardon constituting an abuse of power is issued so late in a presidential term it can't be remedied via the normal means—impeachment—it becomes impermissibly non-justiciable, and thus immediately reviewable by a court. That also happens to be the current situation.
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) December 24, 2020
Moreover, if a pardon constitutes the actus reus in an ongoing crime, the pardon itself can't pardon the ongoing crime—and therefore becomes legally inert and inoperative, as the pardoned party can still be prosecuted. That also happens to be the situation we're in right now.
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) December 24, 2020
“Oh, for f*ck's sake, Seth. Can't you take like two weeks off from misinforming people about the law? Almost every word of this thread is wrong, starting from its fundamental premise. The Pardon Clause does NOT the PARDON power that way,” he wrote.
Oh, for fuck's sake, Seth. Can't you take like two weeks off from misinforming people about the law?
— Akiva Cohen (@AkivaMCohen) December 24, 2020
Almost every word of this thread is wrong, starting from its fundamental premise. The Pardon Clause does NOT the PARDON power that way https://t.co/GAUPXqoV4L
Here's what the Pardon Clause says: the President "shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment."
— Akiva Cohen (@AkivaMCohen) December 24, 2020
It does NOT say "except where the offense is relevant to the impeachment of someone else" or "except where the pardon will obstruct someone else's impeachment"
— Akiva Cohen (@AkivaMCohen) December 24, 2020
What this means is very very straightforward. If Judge Totallyno Taracist is being impeached for stealing from Black litigants and lawyers in his court, the president can't pardon him and thereby prevent impeachment & removal
— Akiva Cohen (@AkivaMCohen) December 24, 2020
That's it
Yes, at some level you could describe "trying to prevent an impeachment by pardoning the person being impeached for the offense they are being impeached for" as "obstructing an impeachment". But pretending that limits a broader category of "obstruction" is stupid & dishonest
— Akiva Cohen (@AkivaMCohen) December 24, 2020
This is authentic frontier gibberish, Seth. I tweeted the full text of the Pardon Clause there - folks, can you see anything in there that "explicitly" give Congress standing to challenge pardons?https://t.co/rXfOnmD9UT
— Akiva Cohen (@AkivaMCohen) December 24, 2020
(Spoiler, it does not). Nor does it give Congress standing *implicitly*. All it does is say "Pardons don't apply when someone is being impeached" - which means that if some official being impeached comes running in saying "stop! Stop! I have a pardon" Congress gets to say pic.twitter.com/Tm2vhyABw3
— Akiva Cohen (@AkivaMCohen) December 24, 2020
The Congress doesn't have to (or get to) go to court and file a suit to have the pardon declared void. It just continues on its merry way, impeaching the now-pardoned official with all the joy it can muster pic.twitter.com/jlwiGNOVwz
— Akiva Cohen (@AkivaMCohen) December 24, 2020
Anyway, so his conclusion that "the [pardon] power is definitionally reviewable by the courts" is just GIGO; start with a wrong premise and you'll get to a wrong conclusion
— Akiva Cohen (@AkivaMCohen) December 24, 2020
This, too, is nonsense. There's no conflict here. If the grant of a pardon is itself a high crime or misdemeanor - say the President pardoning someone as a quid pro quo - then the pardon is valid and the President can be impeached for granting ithttps://t.co/WXY8kFxSuJ
— Akiva Cohen (@AkivaMCohen) December 24, 2020
"A pardon that's an abuse of power is non-justiciable if it's too late in his term" - what? pic.twitter.com/DzzM0e0Qwm
— Akiva Cohen (@AkivaMCohen) December 24, 2020
"As a practical matter, a lame duck second term president isn't going to be impeached by Congress for an offense committed at this point" does not magically make the validity of the pardon an issue the courts can question.
— Akiva Cohen (@AkivaMCohen) December 24, 2020
Throwing in latin law words like "actus reus" doesn't make Seth's asininity any better.
— Akiva Cohen (@AkivaMCohen) December 24, 2020
Bottom line: the pardon wipes the slate clean from PRIOR conduct/crimes that is/are the subject of the pardon. That's it, the end
Seth, did you hit your head repeatedly as a child? Were you black-out drunk when you typed this?
— Akiva Cohen (@AkivaMCohen) December 24, 2020
You think a subsequent Justice Department can try to convict Paul Manafort for the crimes he was pardoned for?
Which HE WAS ALREADY TRIED AND MOSTLY CONVICTED ON?
You didn't bother dealing with any of the various SCOTUS cases that absolutely torpedo your random speculation. Just, ya know, said stuff.
— Akiva Cohen (@AkivaMCohen) December 24, 2020
That's not how it works.
Here, Seth, let me help you https://t.co/jCAuY5pcu8
This, though, is a great summary of Seth's argument: "I really really want to be right about this. It would be much better if I was right about this. Therefore, I must be right about thishttps://t.co/qPQJEx2f9L pic.twitter.com/yPbG0NUzMz
— Akiva Cohen (@AkivaMCohen) December 24, 2020
As I said, the thread is long, which required an equally long rebuttal from Cohen who appears to have been working in-between reading what appears to be a grossly misinformed screed about presidential pardons. Cohen’s responses came in a couple of parts, he wanted that he needed to do client calls before returning to see that the more he read Abramson’s analysis, the more mentally defective it became. I’ll let the lawyers do all the explaining, but some of the best takedowns here revolve around Cohen just crapping all over Abramson’s unhinged theories about how pardons can be reviewed by the courts.
“I can't even with this, Seth. You've basically descended to kraken levels of incoherence with this one,” he wrote.
At one point, it appears the idiocy from Abramson was just too much to handle.
“Seth, did you hit your head repeatedly as a child? Were you black-out drunk when you typed this? You think a subsequent Justice Department can try to convict Paul Manafort for the crimes he was pardoned for?” tweeted Cohen.
Yet, the best post was the summary of Abramson’s thought process in all of this. His whole apparently wrong thread about pardons can be summarized here: "I really really want to be right about this. It would be much better if I was right about this. Therefore, I must be right about this.”
That’s not how the law works. You don’t need to have a law degree to know that. That’s also not how life works, but that is how Trump derangement syndrome works. I fear that this will not end on January 20. Remember 2008? All Democrats did was blame George W. Bush. In 2009, they continued to blame the 43rd president as they sold the stimulus package to jumpstart the economy. They must’ve forgotten that the Bush tax cuts produced 52 months of uninterrupted economic growth, but okay. In all, it was a pretty pathetic exercise, but it’s bound to be worse in 2021. Brace yourselves, folks. The Left is going to stretch this to its maximum limit.