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OPINION

Let Democrats Have Their Blanket Pardons, It’ll Screw Them in the End

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.
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The old saying that if it were not for double standards, liberals wouldn’t have any standards at all dates back decades, at least to the 1960s. While it has evolved to be more succinct, it is not accurate anymore – Democrats do not have double standards; they no longer have any standards for themselves. 

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If there is a limit to what a Democrat can do before their own side criticizes them, it remains a mystery to the ages. Ok, if they lose an election, they can be criticized, at least when claiming it was stolen won’t fly. 

Otherwise, nothing is beyond the pale for the left. The CEO of a health insurance company gets assassinated on the streets of New York City, and the left’s first response is he deserved it because some people have been denied care. Were they, and were they denied to his company? I have no idea, but neither does anyone celebrating this man’s murder. They just know health insurance is expensive, and sometimes people are denied coverage – they’ve seen movies about it – so anyone associated with it has to be evil. It’s OK to do evil to someone who does evil themselves, the “logic” goes.

Democrats are terrified, if you believe them, over the prospect of the incoming Trump administration treating them like, well, they treated people in the first Trump administration. Terrified is the wrong word – they’re not really terrified, they simply do not want it. The “Golden Rule” is more subtle regarding the left.

What worries them is the power of government being turned on them the way New York Attorney General Letitia James campaigned on investigating then President Donald Trump to see if he’d done anything wrong. Democrats cheered this because they hate Trump. They cheered laws literally being changed and created to go after him. Who would want to live with that hanging over them?

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But Democrats are not arguing (now) that what they did to Trump was wrong (though Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman is admitting it was political); they’re arguing that to do to them what they did to Trump would be wrong without acknowledging what they did to Trump at all.

It would be one thing if they admitted they’d corrupted government power, but they do not. They act as though history began on Election Day, with nothing before then. 

With that mentality, the White House is allegedly discussing pardoning nearly everyone involved in the Biden administration for anything they MAY HAVE DONE that COULD BE ILLEGAL before Trump resumes office on January 20th.

That’s one hell of a bit of power to exercise – the preemptive pardon. What might someone do if they thought there was absolution awaiting them, no matter what? Not many would do it, but surely some would misappropriate funds or valuable equipment because why not?

Remember the discussion at the end of the Trump administration where leftists were speculating that Trump might pardon himself for reasons they couldn’t and didn’t even try to articulate? He didn’t, of course. But Joe might. 

What is it they think they’d be protecting themselves from? If they did it, not being able to be prosecuted wouldn’t absolve them from having to answer questions before Congress. Removing the ability to plead the 5th – if you can’t be prosecuted, there is no threat of self-incrimination – would require them to answer all questions or face contempt of Congress charges, which would be new and not covered by a blanket pardon. 

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By being required to answer all questions, these people would have to choose between answering questions thoroughly and honestly or shading the truth and lying to prevent the public from learning the things they hoped to hide. While they wouldn’t face prison for any actual crimes they would have committed, the public humiliation of their corruption and/or incompetence would likely cause at least some of them to commit perjury, which would be new and, therefore, not covered by these insane pardons.

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of these preemptive pardons. It’s like conspiring to set a perjury trap with the person you hope to catch – who could ask for more?

Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!) and author of the book Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses, and host of the weekly “Week in F*cking Review” podcast where the news is spoken about the way it deserves to be. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter.

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