If you pay close attention, you can see President Donald Trump on a collision course with the entire federal judiciary.
For instance, earlier this week Trump announced a series of pardons for multiple individuals convicted of crimes such as bank fraud, tax evasion, and bribery, including reality TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley, parents of Republican social media influencer Savannah Chrisley.
Wednesday on CNN’s “The Arena with Kasie Hunt,” conservative commentator Scott Jennings headed off potential objections to those pardons by contrasting Trump’s transparent use of the pardon power with former President Joe Biden’s highly controversial pardons, issued quietly in the waning hours of Biden’s catastrophic presidency.
“It’s being done out in the open,” Jennings said in a clip posted to YouTube. “It’s being done in the light of day. We’re not doing it at the 11th hour here or as we’re on our way up to the Capitol to see the next president being sworn in.”
Biden preemptively pardoned family members only minutes before Trump took the Oath of Office on Jan. 20.
The former president also issued 11th-hour pardons to NeverTrumpers, such as COVID tyrant Anthony Fauci and former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming.
Of course, in light of Biden’s cognitive decline, one wonders who actually pardoned Fauci, Cheney, and others.
“And, I might add,” Jennings said, “I don’t think there’s any doubt who’s actually signing these [Trump] pardons.”
Indeed, the current president has taken full responsibility for his decisions. Biden, by contrast, probably did not even know about some decisions made in his name.
Do you support Trump’s recent pardons?
Jennings, in fact, characterized Biden’s inner circle as “something of a Politburo running the White House.”
“So, in this case,” Jennings added, “Donald Trump, I think, is fully owning all of these decisions.”
Readers may view the entire segment in the YouTube video below. Jennings’ relevant comments began around the 8:10 mark.
Of course, the contrast with Biden alone makes Trump’s pardon decisions politically unassailable. In fact, Hunt and the panelists agreed that Trump would pay no political price for these pardons.
That does not mean, however, that the president will avoid a politically charged collision with the entire justice system. And that collision must happen, so that Americans may open their eyes. After all, many Americans naively believe that law schools produce judges who know and care about the Constitution.
For instance, in announcing a full pardon for ex-sheriff Scott Howard Jenkins, convicted of bribery, Trump called Jenkins “a victim of an overzealous Biden Department of Justice.”
Indeed, conservatives who love law and order face an uncomfortable admission. In short, we have a very, very serious problem with our entire system of jurisprudence.
Trump sees this. He experienced it personally, as did many of his supporters.
Worse yet, a cabal of unelected rogues in robes has conspired to hamstring the president by exercising powers they lack. If the Constitution actually authorized federal judges to prevent the president from interpreting the extent of his own Article II authority, then the Constitution would amount to a farce, a parody of self-government unworthy even of the parchment on which the great Founders wrote it.
Trump sees this, too. In fact, he has called it out on several occasions.
Late Thursday on his social media platform Truth Social, for instance, the president made one of the most important social media posts of his political career.
First, he chided the U.S. Court of International Trade for trying to curtail his tariff powers. But he went much further by blasting the entire process by which judicial nominees arrive at his desk.
“Backroom ‘hustlers’ must not be allowed to destroy our Nation!” Trump thundered.
Moreover, “Radical Left Judges, together with some very bad people, are destroying America.”
Thus, we must understand Trump’s pardons in the context of his awakening about the nature of the U.S. justice system.
The issue at hand, as Trump framed it, has nothing to do with the presidential pardon power. It has to do with Biden’s weaponized Department of Justice.
If Trump sees that weaponized DOJ as part of a larger and fundamentally corrupt system of jurisprudence — as mounting evidence suggests that he does — then expect a potentially Earth-shaking collision between The People’s President and the establishment’s courts.
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