Tag Archives: Mark Milley

Can You Pardon Someone Who Has Never Been Charged With Anything?

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Can you pardon someone who has never been charged with a crime? We may be about to find that out.

On Friday, Breitbart reported the following:

White House lawyers are studying preemptive pardons that President Joe Biden has discussed with senior aides, according to multiple establishment media reports.

Democrat and media allies have urged Biden in the last several weeks to pardon many of his comrades, including Mark Milley, Christopher Wray, Justice Department lawyers, Joe Biden himself, the whole Biden family, Liz Cheney, Mark Milley, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, and Adam Kinzinger, among others.

All of these people tried to disrupt the first Trump administration. Some of them committed crimes in the process–destroying evidence, illegal contact with foreign leaders, lying before Congress (is that a crime?), blocking investigations, etc. Although it would be nice to see some of them held accountable for their crimes, I think there are probably more important things for the new Trump administration to do. Some of those things are cutting federal spending, de-politicization of the Justice Department, securing our border, reestablishing energy independence, and restoring America’s position on the world state. Those priorities are an indication of the size of the mess the Biden administration has created in the past four years.

According to CBS News:

Among those who could be eligible for preemptive legal relief include well-known names at the center of many of the most rancorous moments of the first Trump administration, many of whom remain the subject of his public ire.

The list includes Dr. Anthony Fauci, who helped coordinate the nation’s COVID-19 response and later served as Mr. Biden’s top science adviser; retired Gen. Mark A. Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has called Trump a “fascist” and provided information for several books and news reports detailing the former president’s behavior and activities around the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol; California Democratic Senator-elect Adam Schiff, and other Democratic and Republican lawmakers who led the two impeachment cases against Trump or sat on the House committee that reviewed the Jan. 6 attack — a group that includes former Wyoming Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney, who actively campaigned against Trump this past fall.

Fauci, Milley and Cheney were not immediately available for comment. In an interview with NPR in late November, Schiff said he didn’t think a preemptive pardon is a good idea, because “I think the courts are strong enough to withstand” threats made by Trump.

Just because they may belong in jail does not mean it would be constructive to put them there.

Harsh Words, But True

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The Federalist posted an article today by Fred Fleitz, who is currently president and CEO of the Center for Security Policy. He served in 2018 as deputy assistant to the president and chief of staff of the National Security Council. Fleitz held national security jobs for 25 years with the CIA, DIA, Department of State, and the House Intelligence Committee staff. He believes that the only way back to some sort of credibility for America after the Afghanistan fiasco is to replace President Biden’s top national security advisers with experts who have the experience, principles, and gravitas to reverse the damage Biden is doing to our national security and will stand up to future unsound and dangerous decisions by this president.

The article reports:

In a perfect world, Biden would immediately resign, be impeached, or be removed from office under the 25th Amendment for this unprecedented incompetence and dereliction of duty.

To remove the president under the 25th Amendment, the vice president and the majority of the cabinet would need to determine that Biden is unfit for office. Congress would then need to approve that process by a two-thirds vote in both chambers. It is hard to see how a majority of Biden’s cabinet or two-thirds of the Democrat-controlled Congress would agree to such action.

Impeachment would require passage of articles of impeachment by a majority of the House and conviction and removal by a two-thirds vote in the Senate. Democrats will not permit this now, but it might be possible in early 2023 if Republicans take control of Congress in the 2022 midterm elections.

The article notes that removing President Biden from office is probably not possible right now. When you talk about removing President Biden from office, you need to remember that he will be replaced by Vice-President Kamala Harris. At that point, the Democrats lose their 51st tie-breaking vote in the Senate. That fact may partially explain why Joe Biden has not already been removed.

The article reports:

It is pointless now for National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley to claim or leak to the press that they opposed Biden’s decision to rapidly withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan. They knew this decision was wrong and dangerous. They were duty-bound to resign and report Biden’s reckless decision to Congress.

Making this worse, most of Biden’s senior national security advisers are unqualified yes-men. Putting aside buffoonish Vice President Kamala Harris, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan are third-stringers out of their league. And Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin apparently has so little influence with Biden that the president forgot his name at a press conference.

The article concludes:

Biden’s senseless Afghanistan policy and unmistakable signs of his mental decline strongly suggest he is not capable of serving as commander-in-chief. Democrats almost certainly will not agree to remove him, so their Republican colleagues must pressure them to pursue the next best option: surrounding Biden with highly qualified and principled national security experts who will not tolerate more irrational national security decisions.

To safeguard America’s national security and global leadership, we need bipartisan action now to compel President Biden to take this action.

Our country’s security is in danger as long as Joe Biden is President.