The Untested Self-Pardon

Delay tactics: Former President Donald Trump is currently dealing with the hush-money/falsifying business records case before him, in which he may be convicted and serve some time in prison. It is also not impossible that he will serve some amount of time in jail beforehand if he violates the judge’s gag order again.

But the other three criminal cases before him look increasingly like they will be delayed until after the presidential election in November, in part due to the fact that Trump’s legal team has been successfully pushing them off until later.

“If Trump wins, he could appoint Justice Department officials to make the two federal cases against him go away,” notes Axios, referring to the cases involving conspiracy to overturn election results and mishandling of classified documents. There would still be the Georgia case—concerning the overturning of election results—to contend with, but that case has been roiled by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ conflict of interest scandal. And, in terms of the first two federal cases, legal experts are torn on whether Trump would be able to pardon himself.

“The answer is open in part because no president except Trump has ever been charged with a crime,” reports Axios. “But it’s also the result of a failure on Congress’s part to prohibit the potential practice through a constitutional amendment, though some members of Congress have tried to do so.”

Hunter’s guns: “A federal judge in Delaware denied Hunter Biden’s bid to throw out his felony gun charges on Thursday, rejecting arguments from the president’s son that the federal prohibition on owning guns while using illegal drugs is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment,” reports Politico.

Biden the younger was charged in 2023 with buying a gun while using illegal drugs—he notoriously had a crack cocaine problem at the time of the purchase, in 2018—as well as lying about the drug use on a government form while buying the weapon.

“Separately, a federal appeals court panel ruled against Biden earlier Thursday in another bid to have the charges against him tossed,” reports Politico. “The two decisions appear to clear the way for his case to head to trial on June 3, though his defense team can still pursue further appeals.”

“Hunter Biden’s multiplying gun charges threaten the right to arms and the right to trial,” wrote Reason‘s Jacob Sullum last year. “Survey data suggest that millions of gun owners are guilty of violating 18 USC 922(g)(3) because they consume arbitrarily proscribed intoxicants (mainly marijuana). Yet fewer than 150 Americans are prosecuted for that crime each year. Even when gun buyers (including people who are disqualified for other reasons, such as felony records) are caught lying on Form 4473, they are rarely prosecuted.” It’s almost like an example is being made of Hunter Biden, whose legal argument is in stark opposition to the Biden administration’s position on the matter.

Scenes from New York: Inside the city’s effort to remove severely mentally ill people from subway cars. We discussed this with Peter Moskos, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and former Baltimore cop, on Just Asking Questions #15, (“What does good policing look like?”).

• My friend Mike Solana, head honcho of Pirate Wires, interviewed Jack Dorsey. “In a rare, far-reaching interview, what follows is a missing chapter of internet history that sheds light not only on Bluesky, but Twitter, X, and the past five years of censorship and backlash,” writes Solana. “Because of vulnerabilities designed into the technology, social media, in its current, centralized form, can’t survive the global war on speech. The future will be decentralized, or it won’t be free.”
• “Retiring early is becoming the norm as the share of US workers planning to work beyond age 62 continues to retreat, extending a downshift that started with the pandemic,” reports Bloomberg, based on Federal Reserve Bank of New York data.
• In the future, your AI concierge will date other AI concierges and get back to you with a filtered list of who to actually meet. (I’m not reflexively anti-AI, but this strikes me as a bit dark, undervaluing both chemistry and dissimilarity.)

Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd says the future of dating is having your AI date other people’s AI and recommend the best matches for you to meet pic.twitter.com/9GEEvpuiKZ

— Tsarathustra (@tsarnick) May 10, 2024

• “There is broad agreement that the US housing market needs more homes,” writes Conor Sen at Bloomberg. “There is also broad agreement that affordability needs to improve. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that we should build more affordable homes.”
• Innovation in textiles!
• Thailand’s about-face on legal pot throws entrepreneurs for a loop.
• You can keep your “modest prosperity”; I’ll take a dynamic, growing, highly prosperous society, the likes of which the world has never known before:

ah, yes, “modest prosperity” (being put on a waitlist for 10-13 years to receive a shitty car) is what I aim for https://t.co/yRZzGd6YDY

— Liz Wolfe (@LizWolfeReason) May 9, 2024

• I believe in him:

I offer to eat 5 more brain worms and still beat President Trump and President Biden in a debate.

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) May 8, 2024

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