Donald Trump has barely become the American president, and the “rule of law”, the rule of law that the United States has always been proud of, is beginning to crumble. It sounds like scaremongering and exaggeration, but at least on a symbolic level, it really is. Joe Biden’s unprecedented step is also proof. The outgoing president used the last hours of his mandate to issue preventive pardons.
Biden, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark A. Milley, doctor Anthony Fauci, who was his chief scientific adviser from 2021 to 2022, and members of the congressional investigative committee investigating the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and witnesses to the attack. Everyone could fear Trump’s retribution.
Government gangsters
Of the committee members in December, that they “should go to hell,” although he says he will not order the FBI or the Justice Department to prosecute them. Well, maybe he wouldn’t have to. Trump’s nominee for FBI director Kash Patel published in his book Government Gangsters (Gangsters from the government) from 2022 60 people whom he considers to be representatives of the so-called “deep state”.
It is attended by representatives of the security forces, justice and intelligence services. There is, for example, the pardoned General Milley, whom Trump says in other times would have deserved to die for his treason, because during the attack on the Capitol he called his Chinese counterpart to warn Beijing not to take advantage of the political crisis in Washington.
“I believe in the rule of law and I am convinced that the strength of our institutions will ultimately prevail over politics,” Biden. “These are exceptional circumstances, however, and I cannot do anything with a clear conscience.” He granted the pardon, he said, because a possible prosecution could disrupt people’s lives, threaten their safety and irreversibly damage their reputation. That’s probably true.
But a presidential pardon is also an intervention of politics in criminal proceedings, a kind of special exception to the rule of law. Someone could even call them a holdover from the times when guilt and innocence were decided by the will of the monarch. They say that in modern democracies it is not the people who rule, but the laws. However, Biden did not even give American institutions a chance to prove his strength. He pardoned people who are not even investigated yet. Politics won, but the “good” one.
Grace as a weapon
Some of Trump’s critics, spoken to by the New York Times on condition of anonymity, said they fear the president will use the FBI and Justice Department to prosecute them. Milley and Fauci publicly thanked the president. But Senator Adam B. Schiff, who was also pardoned, is critical. He considers it a dangerous precedent.
“I don’t want every successive president to pardon members of his government on his way out,” he says. Let’s imagine how we would look if President Zuzana Čaputová granted a preventive pardon to Daniel Lipšić, Ján Mikas or even Igor Matovič on the day of Petr Pellegrini’s inauguration, if Slovak law allowed it.
Robert Fico would have lived politically for years. Political scientist Jeffrey Crouch also says that Biden does not have to wait for pardons for accusations or convictions, but warns that pardons can become a weapon in this way. Biden’s move is all the more controversial because at the very end of his mandate, he also granted pardons to five members of his own family. Among them his two brothers and his sister.
The US Constitution allows him to do this, but at least morally it can be seen as an abuse of power. At the same time, however, it is proof of how much Trumpism has damaged American democracy. If the outgoing president feels that he has to take such measures to protect against the bad intentions of the new president because he expects his revenge, that is the worst news for the state of the Union.
You’d rather buy a gun
In the past, many times Trump’s statements and promises remained just big talk. He backed down from the harshest rhetoric directed against political opponents even before taking office. In December, he already claimed that his retribution would be that America would be successful. At the same time, however, he promises to pardon rioters and thugs who participated in the attack on the Capitol.
One of his critics, who wished to remain anonymous, admitted to the New York Times that he bought a gun for the first time in his life. He fears that Trump’s supporters, emboldened by the president, will attack. him and his family at home.
The biggest danger to American democracy and the rule of law may not be what Trump will do to it as president. He was always a politician of strong words and empty gestures, not actions. Much more dangerous may be what Trump’s rule will do to a divided American society. And with people who can’t wait for America to finally be great again at any cost.
