According to Politico, Joe Biden and his team are discussing pre-emptive pardons for those Donald Trump is planning to “target” for prosecution (as if it were all just petty political retribution on Trump’s part).  By now, you should be familiar with the following partial list of names and their alleged offenses (if not, just click on the link):

• Joe Biden & extended family
• Barack Obama
• Kamala Harris
• Nancy Pelosi
• Letitia James
• Arthur Engoron
• Liz Chaney
• Jack Smith
• Alvin Bragg
• Mark Milley
• James Comey
• Peter Strzrok
• Lisa Page
• Adam Schiff
• Mark Zuckerberg
• Michael Cohen
• Michael Byrd
• Jamaal Bowman
• the 51
• Jan. 6 select committee
• Anthony Fauci

Many of these are already claiming they’re not asking for a pardon, but they would say that, wouldn’t they?

Hey, here’s an idea for how Joe Biden can get back at Barack Obama for ousting him from his re-election bid: give Obama a pardon, whether he wants one or not.  Be sure to specify that it’s for knowing about Hillary’s Trump-Russia collusion plot but saying nothing, and allowing Cabinet members who had no business doing so to unmask Trump’s associates and violate FISA norms in spying on the Trump campaign.

To me, keeping quiet (even if that’s all he did) on a plot to take down the government borders on sedition.  “See something, say something”?  Silly — that’s only for us peons who report a Muslim acting suspicious and then get charged with racism.  Barack the Untouchable would never be charged (who knows? those might even be considered official presidential actions and hence off-limits as per the Supreme Court’s decision), so the pardon will hurt his reputation while looking as though it was intended to help him.  That sounds like Jill Biden’s handiwork.

As discussed previously, it seems that “pre-emptive, non-specific, secret, self-, and secret self-pardons all are allowed.”  After the criticism Joe Biden got for the public, very broad pardon of his son Hunter, consider this possibility: Joe gives many on the list (himself included) secret pardons, possibly non-specific, each to be whipped out later as needed as a sort of get-out-of-jail-free card.  Think of the advantages: 1) there’s no criticism of any pardon until it becomes public, and 2) the effect would be to make prosecutors reluctant to bring any of these cases to trial.

Some legal scholars believe that an exception might be “if the pardon is part of a crime or cover-up of one, which could be obstruction of justice.”  But as I speculated earlier, if you mean “like Joe Biden pardoning son Hunter to hide his own corruption, get real.”  Charging Joe on something like that will never happen.  If nothing will happen anyway, maybe Joe could even charge bribes for his secret pardons, whether right away or when each goes public, and pardon himself for that, too.  No worries — the mainstream media will provide cover.  In any case, if he already is not prosecutable because he is “an elderly man with a poor memory,” what will he be a year or two from now?

W.A. Eliot is a pseudonym.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.