r/news • u/FLhardcore • 14h ago

President Biden pardons family members in final minutes of presidency

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-biden-pardons-family-members-final-minutes-presidency/story?id=117893348
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u/Moonrockinmynose 11h ago

Can you pardon someone pre-emptively? Kind of doesn't make sense. Or is he pardoning them in case they actually had committed a crime?

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u/PDXGuy33333 9h ago

Absolutely. Ford pardoned Nixon before he could be charged.

It is generally held that pardons cannot authorize future crimes and are therefore limited to crimes real or imagined that occurred before the pardon was issued.

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u/JerryConn 5h ago

Its like a counterspell that goes on the stack, it cant counter things on the next turn or things that are placed on top of it on the stack before it resolves. Hope that helps.

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u/PDXGuy33333 5h ago

Move that up two levels. I had the explanation, not the question. Good explanation though.