Will Obama Pardon Clinton? Will Trump Object?
I think this pretty well sums it up. It's the reason that once Nixon resigned, impeachment charges were not brought forth. Ford wanted 'to get on with it and the country needed to too.'
Ford paid the price for doing so, but Obama has the incentive of preventing more damage to his 'legacy' which is already about to disappear. Trump wins by having it settled, leaving him with moving on.
It's worth reading the whole thing, a bit long. I'm of the mind that Obama will be doing all a favor, but others might have other ideas.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articl...ource=facebook
A Pardon for Hillary? by ANDREW C. MCCARTHY November 12, 2016 4:00 AM
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The question primarily arises because there is significant evidence of felony law violations. These do not only involve the mishandling of classified information and the conversion/destruction of government files (i.e., the former secretary of state’s government-related e-mails). It has also been credibly reported that the FBI is investigating pay-to-play corruption during Clinton’s State Department tenure, through the mechanism of the Clinton Foundation — the family “charity” by means of which the Clintons have become fabulously wealthy by leveraging their “public service.” Thus far, Mrs. Clinton has been spared prosecution, but we have learned that the e-mails aspect of the investigation was unduly limited (no grand jury was used); and the legal theory on which FBI director James Comey declined to seek charges is highly debatable, even if it has been rubber-stamped by Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
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But that, of course, is logic. Politics is not obliged to be logical. Even those of us who believe Mrs. Clinton’s misconduct demands a thorough investigation must acknowledge the real-world circumstances. The Trump administration will need to move on filling Justice Scalia’s Supreme Court seat; repealing Obamacare; debt, tax and regulatory reform; Iran; and who knows what unforeseen crises. A prosecution of Mrs. Clinton, especially if it is perceived as a rush to judgment, could derail the Trump train before it even pulls out of the station.
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For all the president’s gracious rhetoric this week about helping his successor succeed, the thought of leaving the thorny Clinton dilemma on Trump’s desk must be very tempting to Obama. On the other hand, Obama may calculate that a pardon for Clinton would burnish his legacy, just as historians have smiled on Gerald Ford for granting clemency to Richard Nixon (although, as I’ve argued, Nixon’s situation was very different from Clinton’s.) But all that aside, and regardless of the president’s feelings for Mrs. Clinton (which I suspect are warmer than some have suggested), this is more a matter of Obama’s self-preservation than anything else. That’s why I believe he will pardon her — after all, he seems to be pardoning everybody else. A pardon issued by Obama would make the whole affair go away, leaving Trump a clean slate.
But what if he doesn’t?
What should President Trump do once the reins are in his hands? Some are already arguing that Trump should pardon Clinton. There is some sense to this. Most of Trump’s ardent supporters would forgive him for going back on his word (as they would forgive him, it seems, for most anything). They would rationalize that he has more important fish to fry. There would also be reveling in the five or six minutes the media spent extolling Trump’s magnanimity before reverting to attack mode. As for the many in Republican circles who are tepid, at best, when it comes to Trump, a goodly number of them would cheer a Clinton pardon.
So if that’s the case, why shouldn’t Trump pardon Clinton?
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And if Mrs. Clinton is to walk away scot-free after compromising our nation’s most closely guarded intelligence operations, and after she has reaped hundreds of millions of dollars by putting our government’s foreign and security policy on sale, what is a Trump Justice Department going to do in far less consequential cases?
Trump campaigned as the people’s champion, the president who was going to “drain the swamp” and end the sordid Washington system of two sets of rules: a forgiving one for the well-connected and a harsh one for everybody else. Well, what about it, then? If Mrs. Clinton skates, is the run-of-the-mill fraudster also going to get a pass for the more mundane $100,000 scheme? How about the low-ranking naval officer who takes a couple of souvenir photos of a top-secret submarine? The mid-level CIA analyst who brings a few classified memos home rather than staying late to read them in the agency SCIF? Is everybody off the felony hook now, or just the Clintons?
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Originally Posted by gabosaurus
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