“Trump may have pardoned Cole last year as part of the sweeping clemency that he gave to Jan. 6 offenders on his first day back in office.
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Trump’s proclamation commuted the sentences of 14 individuals and also granted “a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.” This immediately covered roughly 1,500 people, including hundreds of defendants who were charged with assaulting or resisting law enforcement officers.
Lawyers for Cole did not respond to a question about whether they intend to argue that Cole is entitled to a pardon if convicted. But there are several legal and factual points that are worth zeroing in on if they pursue that strategy.
For starters, it does not matter whether Trump specifically intended to pardon the person who planted the pipe bombs. Under the law, it is the text of the pardon that matters — not the subjective intention of the president or the DOJ’s interpretation of it.
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Cheerleaders of the sweeping Jan. 6 pardon did not bat an eye when Trump knowingly freed people like Stewart Rhodes and Enrique Tarrio — leaders of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, respectively, who were convicted at trial of a seditious conspiracy to prevent the transfer of power to Joe Biden. And they have remained silent as some of the people that Trump pardoned have gone on to commit more alleged crimes — a predictable development given the empirical evidence on recidivism rates among convicted felons. Some of these crimes have been explicitly political in nature, including threatening to kill House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
For all that’s happened in the last year, Trump’s Jan. 6 pardon remains one of his most stunning acts since he returned to office.”
“I think we’re in a situation where we have not gotten regime change. The same group, minus only Maduro, is still in power, and it’s not at all clear just how much intimidating force that we’ve really got.
There are pressure points. I think they’re in trouble on oil exports and so on. But what are China and Russia and Iran and Cuba going to do in the face of that, just sit back and watch it happen? So, I’m not at all sure what day-after planning there was, because I’m not sure we’re finished with the day yet.
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Trump talked about getting the oil, and I think there would have been a legitimate argument that U.S. oil companies kind of get first dibs to come in — not that we would take it, but that we would get some preference in terms of the ability to present proposals — and we should, at a minimum, get some of that production and maybe a lot of it.
But that’s not how Trump looks at it. He just wants to take control of it, and that’s how he’s going to pay for the military force and sort of everything else he’s been promising.
I just think that’s the kind of limited vision he has. He focuses on what he thinks he understands, the tangible economic asset.
The idea that American oil companies are just lining up to go invest in Venezuela is just flatly wrong, and the idea that somehow there will be a quick transformation of the incredibly dilapidated Venezuelan oil infrastructure that’s going to suddenly turn the production back online is fantasy, too.
It’s going to take tens of billions of dollars over a sustained period of time before they get this thing back up and running the way it used to be.
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I think we do have full authority under international law to go after Maduro because what we would consider the legitimate government today is the opposition, with Maduro having stolen both the 2018 and 2024 presidential elections.
When you basically go back to dealing with the old regime and undercut the legitimate government, you’re giving Russia and China the precedent that they don’t have.
There’s nobody in Ukraine calling for Russian intervention, and the government of Taiwan certainly isn’t calling for Chinese intervention.
So the Venezuelan case as it stands now is quite different from those, but that’s not the way Trump’s behaving, and it’s the mistakes he’s making today that lend greater credence to a Russian or a Chinese effort to say, well, we’re just doing what the U.S. did in Venezuela.
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what if they decide they’re not going to do what we want six months from now? Where are we going to be at that point? And I don’t think Trump has addressed that.”
Venezuela is a direct security threat to the United States because they cooperate militarily with countries like Iran who considered giving missiles to Venezuela that can hit the US.
Because the Maduro regime is still in charge in Venezuela, it seems likely that these military ties will continue, even if they take a temporary pause.
Venezuela isn’t simply ruled by a dictator or a military junta, but by criminals who are in criminal enterprises to get rich. That makes it harder to negotiate away the rulers because the government is actually run by criminals who want to maintain their criminal enterprises.
Venezuela is a more homogenous country than Iraq, and it has a history of democracy before the authoritarian socialists took over.
“The U.S. Constitution gives Congress the sole authority to approve military strikes against foreign countries. Federal laws, like the War Powers Resolution, allow for unilateral executive action only in response to an imminent threat against Americans or U.S. troops. That separation of powers is fundamental to American democracy—not an optional arrangement for presidents to discard when it is politically or logistically inconvenient.
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Trump’s violation of the rule of law on Saturday morning is not without precedent. That creates some awkward considerations. Trump’s critics often want to frame him as a radical and unique threat to democracy. But, as is often the case, Trump is merely pulling levers of power that already existed. Congress shrugged off the elder Bush’s attack on Panama, which paved the way for its sequel.”
“The U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war. Bombing a foreign country’s capital and arresting its president are plainly acts of war that received no authorization from Congress. The Trump administration clearly seems to have violated the Constitution.
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If Vance were correct, all any president would need to do to start a war is have his Justice Department file charges against a foreign leader. That’s hardly compatible with Congress controlling the power to initiate hostilities.
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The most direct historical parallel to the Maduro operation would be the U.S. ouster of Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega in 1989 after he stole an election and was indicted on drug smuggling charges.
But as Ilya Somin points out, there are some important legal differences. Panamanian forces had killed a U.S. Marine in the Panama Canal Zone and captured other U.S. citizens. Also, the Panamanian government declared war on the United States.”
“Congress is supposed to declare wars under the U.S. Constitution, and we have laws that are supposed to constrain unilateral military deployments without congressional consultation. The Trump administration has blown through both of those domestic legal prohibitions, either because it could not be bothered to get consent from Congress or it did not think it would get the votes.”
The US as a rule of law democracy, and international norms and values against military action against other countries, are under threat with this attack on Venezuela.
Multiple law firms gave in to illegal, autocratic demands by the president. When it came down to it, big law firms didn’t want to risk resisting an aggressive president. Democracy is vulnerable and we won’t keep it unless people defend it.
The US electoral system pushes politicians to the left and right due to primaries, where politicians need to win over a small number of more polarized voters. We can change this system into non-partisan ranked choice elections so that politicians don’t need to bend over for the extremes.
“The Trump administration is using a law against impeding federal law enforcement to threaten and arrest people who are recording and protesting immigration officers. However, an unprecedented number of those cases are falling apart once they go to court, according to media investigations, think tank reports, and voluminous court records and video evidence.
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“On their own, yelling, protesting, honking a horn, blowing a whistle, following, and recording are all clearly First Amendment–protected activities, even if done during law enforcement operations,” Bier wrote. “Of course, it is possible to follow an officer in a dangerous manner or physically interfere while recording an operation or protesting, but following and recording by themselves without physical interference are clearly protected.”
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It would be tempting to call these cases failures, and they are in a legal sense, but the administration’s real goal isn’t to win cases. It’s to intimidate American citizens into giving up their First Amendment right to peacefully oppose and monitor the police.”