Pardons, Power, and the Supreme Court: Navigating Justice’s Maze

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Welcome to Amicus, a law review with Jim Santel.

Civic Media's weekly review and discussion of some of the most significant news stories in the areas of law, government, courts, and the aspiration for justice.

And now...

Here's your host, Jim Santel.

This is Amicus, a law review.

It is our weekly weekend review of all things related to the administration of justice, to government function, to the rule of law in our state, in our nation, and often beyond.

Thank you so much for joining me and my producer Max as we take you through the geography of many

issues, many developments, many events just this past week in those important areas that animate our lives and our livelihoods.

Because of the importance of these particular issues, we are pre-recording this show, so we're not today in this weekend production taking phone calls, but hoping, hoping that you will, as you listen to our discussion of these various issues, take notes.

annotate your your papers and be sure to join us again next weekend when we'll be live once again talking about even more affording you as always in those settings the opportunity to engage with me and with max on these important issues as always the name of our show amicus a lot of you taken from the latin meaning friend friend of the court amicus curiae the notion is that by providing you with information

and perspective and basic facts, you can come to your conclusions based upon your capacity to engage in the critical thinking that we so much need in this time of our nation's history and also engage in conversation with others based upon an understanding necessarily that understanding often involves.

In this broadcast and in others here on Civic Media, engaging in a bit of law school enterprise and exercise, and even education, an awful lot dependent upon civics and understanding how these legal issues and terms work, hoping, anticipating, as always, that our explanations as a friend of the community, as a friend of yours, providing that information,

is accessible and understandable so that you can indeed make your decisions about what we should do about all of this.

what kinds of policies should be in place in these important areas of the rule of law.

Our broadcasts in recent weeks have necessarily focused a lot upon courts, not exclusively, but upon courts.

And we know that in recent months, it is the federal district courts that have in many ways been the guardrails, the safety nets, if you will, for preserving democracy in our nation.

That continues to be the case this past week.

But we have another aspect of the guardrails that are out there, also animated this past week.

And that is federal grand juries.

We've got one in particular in eastern Virginia.

We're going to talk about what a federal grand jury in eastern Virginia apparently did not do, did not do this past week, that in its way, in its activity,

and inactivity did something that supports the rule of law.

We'll get to that in just a few moments, but we are going to initiate our discussion on this weekend analysis of matters important to you, important to justice, important to our nation and our state by talking once again about the United States Supreme Court because a lot of activity, two very important things happened late this past week.

They're not only going to describe the current term of the Supreme Court, but necessarily are going to attract our attention and our focus in the months just ahead.

Anticipating, once again, that the Supreme Court will issue these major decisions on these major cases at any time, but certainly before July 1 of 2026.

The Supreme Court, just this past week, very busy.

with a whole series of oral arguments, as I've often advocated, you can listen in.

You can listen in live.

You can listen in on a recorded basis to the ways in which our Supreme Court is engaging the lawyers and the litigants in their courtroom, discussing the merits and demerits of these cases.

You can listen in.

You can hear the voices of the Supreme Court justices.

You can hear.

the lawyers arguing with the Supreme Court justices, arguing in a diplomatic and respectful sense to try to figure out what the best resolution on all of these cases should be.

That process very much in evidence again just this past week in which the Supreme Court has entertained a number of oral arguments and they range in a number of different areas to things like civil and business liability for commercial copyrighted Materials out there an intellectual property case.

There's a second case involving the capacity of a state attorney general to enforce a subpoena with respect to an entity that is engaging in reproductive

rights issues much more complicated than just that superficial description but once again engaging in reproductive rights adjacent kinds of issues and there's a religious free speech case having to do with whether or not a petitioner can go into court and attack a local ordinance that prohibits him from exercising arguably his first amendment rights we've got

Religion we've got free speech.

We've got privacy rights and we've got commercial rights all of those things in Supreme Court oral arguments of just this past week in the future We will talk more about those as they percolate up and we've got more coming out of the Supreme Court and we'll begin with that right now late this week late this week the Supreme Court announced as It often does late in the week that it is adding yet another case to its docket

right now, right around 46 cases, to determine the merits on this particular case.

Yes, that's right.

You have heard this news already.

It has to do with birthright citizenship.

This is the case involving the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, passed by the states, endorsed again by the legislature, became a part of our Constitution in connection with the other post-Civil War Amendments, 1869, establishing in the very first words, the very first phrases of the 14th Amendment, birthright citizenship, that if you are born here geographically,

and you are present here, obviously, at the time of your birth, that is what is required, and that's all that's required to establish your citizenship.

Now, why does that happen inside the 14th Amendment?

Because at the time, plainly, among other issues, among other issues, but the central one was, we have just come through a civil war.

And the president, President Lincoln, had just emancipated this great population of people, of human beings in our land previously enslaved.

And the question was, what is their status?

And to the great admiration and great credit of our nation, the states and the Congress and the president decided that all of those former slaves would be citizens with all the rights, all the responsibilities, but all of the appurtenances of citizenship.

And they did that by codifying that right in the 14th Amendment.

If you are born here, which by that time of course all of the slaves had been born here in the United States, if that was your status, is your status, you are a citizen.

Now we know that the fight for equal justice and rights for the recently emancipated slaves

and others in their heritage, their ancestry, and also plainly among the families of generations that followed that fight for full civil rights, for full human rights here in America.

That continues to this day.

But in the 14th Amendment, making this major decision that if you are born here, you are a citizen of the United States.

And indeed, indeed in 1898, in another case involving a family from China, the United States Supreme Court said,

exactly that.

They said that the 14th Amendment does indeed guarantee citizenship of anyone who is born here geographically, full stop, end of sentence, end of paragraph.

And it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter who your parents are, what their status is, that is the

the effect of the 14th Amendment, that has been the law and remains the law to this day, although, again, as the president has come into power here, on his first day in office, issues an executive order that purports to change that traditional, long-standing understanding of the 14th Amendment.

And what the executive order of the president says is, birthright citizenship

is no longer as sacrosanct and complete as one might think and in fact he says in adopting and embracing a largely discredited view it is on the fringe and yet it has continued to animate discussion in the last 10 to 11 months that if your parents and specifically if your mother was here illegally or here temporarily

Under any of those two conditions, therefore, in the language of the 14th Amendment, there is no jurisdiction over your mother.

There is no jurisdiction over you.

You are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.

And therefore, if you were born of a mother who is either illegally here or temporarily here, you are not a citizen of the United States of America.

It goes into effect.

in mid-February, and there have been a whole, whole lot of lawsuits challenging that across the country.

We know that because, again, we have monitored that not only here on this broadcast, but discussed this a lot in the common parlance of our litigation in the past several months.

We know that many judges have looked at this and dismissed it.

That is the concept advanced by the president.

in his executive order as being absurd.

We know that, for example, judges have said, this is blatantly unconstitutional.

We know that there are other judges who have looked at this, analyzed the history based in part upon the very superficial history that I have just afforded and described to you.

Have said of course of course if you're born here you're a citizen and oh by the way The Supreme Court has affirmed that that continues to be the law of the land John a Cohen hour who's a federal district court judge in Seattle called it blatantly Unconstitutional in the wake of that and other court decisions

The administration takes up those lower court decisions, goes back to the Supreme Court, and attacks, for example, a decision made by Joseph LePlant.

He is in New Hampshire.

He's a federal district court, and he certifies a class action, says the same thing, says the 14th Amendment does apply as it has traditionally been understood in a case.

that we talked about a lot at the end of the previous term.

What does the Supreme Court do?

It doesn't resolve the ultimate issue about whether the president is right or all of these other courts are right, but says, you know what?

You can't do judges, district court judges.

You can't establish this by virtue of a universal or nationwide injunction.

You got to divide it up.

Every single district has got to resolve it.

And that's why, for example, judges like Judge LePlant and Judge Kowinour

have done these kinds of things to establish the right under the 14th Amendment.

It is in the wake of all of that procedural history that the administration, the Department of Justice, the White House has recently gone back to the Supreme Court and said, okay, we basically had a victory in our previous decision of the last term requiring that these enforcements of the interpretation, the historical interpretation be divided up and they can only be decided

either by class actions or by independent lawsuits going back again to the Supreme Court and saying now Supreme Court decide the fundamental issue that we did not resolve several months ago and so in recent times the petition has come from the office of the Solicitor General Supreme Court take up the fundamental issue is the president right in reinterpreting the 14th amendment in turning back

in turning back the 1898 established law and all the times that have passed since then and adopting this new up to now very fringe theory.

When we come back, we'll tell you exactly what the Supreme Court has done.

Late this past week, it won't surprise you, but we'll also talk about the likely consequences of the Supreme Court action here on Amicus, a law review.

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My name is Jim Santel and this is Amicus on the broadcast stations of Civic Media.

Thank you once again for spending some portion of your weekend time joining me in this examination of the geography of issues related to the rule of law, the administration of justice, and yes, the operation of government, including the United States Supreme Court, beginning with this major decision

not yet telling us exactly what they're going to do, but even in its procedural decision of late this past week, giving us an awful lot of sense about where the Supreme Court is going to go on this issue of birthright citizenship, resolved since 1898, addressed by federal courts.

across the country in the last 10 months addressing and dismissing for the most part this completely unsupported notion that the 14th amendment does not in fact apply to all babies who are born in this country of mothers who are either illegally here or here temporarily and in fact the Solicitor General.

of the United States of America, saying to the Supreme Court, his name, of course, is John Sauer.

We've talked a lot about him.

Asserting the 14th Amendment, yes, indeed, was intended to ensure citizenship after the Civil War of the newly freed slaves and their children, but goes on to say that that's where it stops.

And not on the children, he says, of aliens temporarily visiting the United States

or of illegal aliens.

Those are the two categories identified by this president in his executive order saying that you do not have universal omnibus citizenship simply by virtue of being here.

John Sauer writes that this whole issue

has been misunderstood for all of these years.

He said the 14th Amendment guarantees citizenship born on U.S.

territory that that notion across the board application is mistaken and has become pervasive with destructive consequences, he wrote.

He asserts that Donald Trump's order would merely restore the clauses, the Supreme Court's, the Constitution's original meaning.

And that's his petition.

that has been pending for a while before the United States Supreme Court.

Review this, he says, justices and plainly advocacy to endorse what the president has said in his executive order.

What is the news, the rule of law news of justice past week?

Supreme Court saying that yes indeed will take that case.

We will entertain both briefs or arguments from the parties.

Obviously many people out there, many parties coming from many of these particular district courts and appellate courts all wanting to be heard on this plainly if the Supreme Court weighs in on it.

And plainly this is a procedural win for

the government itself, for John Sauer, for the White House that wants this concept of universal citizenship.

overturned.

And what did the Supreme Court say just this past week?

The Supreme Court said, yes, we'll take that on.

We will put this on our docket.

They have not said exactly when they're going to be hearing this case, but plainly huge when it comes to the status of people.

Again, young people right now, babies born since mid-February, but also with consequences beyond that.

The issue related to your ancestry once again was your mother

properly here legally here was she illegally here was she here temporarily what is the status of your parents which we have never before had to address now the Supreme Court saying well you know what there may be something to this admittedly

Previously, fringe theory that for well over a hundred years has not been endorsed by anyone who's looked at this seriously.

District courts, appellate courts saying that that notion that the 14th Amendment means something other than universal citizenship, birthright citizenship, is unconstitutional.

It is ridiculous.

Supreme Court saying, well, wait a minute.

Let's take a look at this.

And that's the big news.

That by virtue of doing what they have now done, they basically opened the door.

And the Supreme Court could very easily have said, you know what, Mr. Sauer, we are not going to take this case on.

We're going to let the lower courts, which we think have adopted and articulated properly what the law is.

You'll just leave all of that alone.

and the Supreme Court can basically have not taken on this case and reaffirmed what the law has been in this country, frankly, since the passage of the 14th Amendment, clearly since 1898, and that Supreme Court dispositive decision saying that birthright citizenship means something.

The Supreme Court now opening the door.

And we know that in the past, when it has granted what's called certiorari granted, granted the capacity of parties

to come before it and be heard on these issues.

It is typically because they want to not only play in this sandbox, so to speak, but have actually anticipated that they're going to make a dispositive and probably very significant decision in resolving this challenge.

It is plainly the first step, if you will, before Supreme Court justices wrestle with and likely and likely now overturn.

overturn the history of the 14th Amendment in our nation.

That's why this issue that seemingly is small procedurally, the notion that the Supreme Court will simply take this case, it is actually huge for what it indicates about future likely action.

And we of course will continue to monitor not only when that oral argument is conducted, but at some point in this term in the next six months or so, the Supreme Court going to tell us who's right.

about the 14th Amendment.

Have we been right since 1898, or is the president right in his adoption and articulation of this new theory limiting birthright citizenship?

Also with tremendous consequences about the other cases that might flow depending upon how the Supreme Court issues its opinion.

No small thing happening just late this past week.

Supreme Court has done more this past week and again it has also done something that is not final.

but also indicates where things are going.

This one has to do with voting rights.

And in particular, that case that we have talked an awful lot about involving alleged gerrymandering, political gerrymandering, racial gerrymandering in Texas.

When we come back, we're gonna talk about why the decision of the Supreme Court in that matter late this past week is so important as well.

Stay with us here on Amicus, a law review.

you

Here on the broadcast stations of Civic Media, my name is Jim Santel, and this is Amicus, a lot of you.

This is our weekly, weekend review of many, but certainly not all of the stories in the areas of rule of law, justice.

and government as it operates in 2025 in this still early portion of the 21st century.

We're talking again importantly about what the Supreme Court has done, what it has not done in some cases, but this week, this weekend, talking about specific actions that is undertaken to define the docket, not only of its own court, but of other courts going forward.

And so,

We turn again to Texas.

You know what this case is all about.

You recall well that in November there was a three judge panel of federal judges in Texas.

What did they do?

They blocked this map, this map involving the redrawing, the alleged gerrymandering for political and or racial reasons of the

Texas legislature you recall what the Texas legislature had done by based upon the encouragement of the president and of the governor of the state of Texas they sat down and said you know what we're going to redraw our congressional lines here we did it we did it right after the census in 2021 we're doing again in 2025 and the overt

And an apologetic reason for doing this was, and remains, we are attempting to create more Republican majority districts, congressional districts, to send to Washington, D.C.

The voters in these newly drawn districts will almost certainly vote for Republicans.

And therefore, overall in the state composition of our congressional delegation, we will increase, increase the number of Republicans being sent to the Congress among the 435 members there on Capitol Hill.

We'll increase the number of likely Republicans in the November election by five.

That is no small thing in a time when, of course, as you know, the House of Representatives very closely split.

razor-thin margin right now with respect to the Republicans.

And so at the encouragement of the president and of Greg Abbott, who is of course the governor of Texas, the legislature sat down and said, we are going to engage in a partisan gerrymander.

And he might say, well, gee, doesn't that sound illegal?

The answer, of course, as we talked before, is that the Supreme Court, a number of years ago, incredulously to many people, to this day, said,

But the federal courts are no longer involved.

We're not going to entertain challenges to partisan gerrymandered.

Go ahead and do those kinds of things that politically you might like to do to guarantee a greater political representation in the Congress.

Federal courts no longer involved in reviewing the line drawing based upon politics.

But, but...

Racial gerrymandering continues, at least for now, to be an issue that the federal courts can indeed resolve.

If you're redrawing lines, the court has said, and you're doing it based upon racial considerations where populations of people of color are located in your state, that, that is unconstitutional and illegal.

You can't do that kind of racial gerrymandering.

At least up to now.

That's what the Voting Rights Act of 1964 prohibits and that's what the Supreme Court has routinely enforced in the past.

That's what gets us then to a three judge panel back in November that looks at all this and says that indeed this may in fact have been

partisan political gerrymandering, which we cannot touch.

But we're looking at this now.

We're looking indeed at the entire evidence and evidentiary corpus of information provided here, including a very, very revelatory letter written by the Department of Justice, indicating a purposeful racial gerrymander here.

And the three judge panel says at the pan of a judge named Jeffrey Brown, we've talked about him before, that this is overt

racial gerrymandering.

What you have done in creating these five districts is plainly to disenfranchise people of color.

Can't do that under the Voting Rights Act of 1964, telling the legislature that what you've done is unconstitutional in the end is saying that because we're heading into 2026, maybe what we should do and what we should do is let's go back.

Let's go back to the way in which the maps were drawn before

two previous election cycles may not be perfect, but indeed they do not accomplish the overt racial gerrymander that you have accomplished, accomplished state legislature by drawing these lines as you have.

Based upon that decision of the three judge panel, what happens?

The

Governor of the state of Texas runs promptly very promptly to the United States Supreme Court And you know initially what happened because we talked about this a little bit the associate justice assigned to the Fifth Circuit which includes Texas his name is Sam Alito and in any initially he says

I'm gonna enter what's called an administrative stay.

I'm gonna stop all this from going ahead.

Well, we have an opportunity here in the Supreme Court to figure out exactly what this three-judge panel did.

Are they right?

Are they wrong?

Should we, in fact, enter this fray?

Should we decide something here?

Or should we just let the lower court decisions, the three-judge panel, which is not a final judgment, should we let that go ahead to some judgment knowing once again

that we do have elections, we've got campaigns, we've got all sorts of primaries going on in 2026.

Time is admittedly of the essence.

We talked last weekend about this Purcell principle based upon a Supreme Court decision that says that courts, federal courts, appellate courts, Supreme Court should not be tinkering with things late in the season

But here we are, we're sitting here in December of 2025, and we're talking about a lecture that admittedly needs to be in place long before November of 2026, but you still have some time to correct what may be the racial gerrymandering that the lower court found.

And indeed, indeed, the lower court does say exactly that.

What did the Supreme Court do just late this past week?

Supreme Court, again, takes up.

what Samuel Lido had done, which is to stay that lower court order, to stop it from going ahead.

And the Supreme Court this past week clears the way for those Texas lawmakers who did this gerrymandering that accomplished what the lower court said was a racial discriminatory action.

Those newly redrawn congressional maps favoring Republicans in five districts in 2026 and beyond the midterm elections

That's okay.

And the other reason why this is so very important is once again, it's based upon the emergency docket.

It is not a disposition that has gone through all the rigor and all of the analysis and the oral argument and the briefs from the lawyers that we talked about on their merit stock it, which now, as I've said, includes other things, including birthright citizenship.

This one, again, you put this on your dance card as being yet another example of

the shadow docket, the emergency docket.

The Supreme Court decision, again, it's about one paragraph long, overturns that lower court three judge panel that the new maps were likely unconstitutional as a racial gerrymander.

Decision

Had blocked again the maps for going ahead now now based upon what the Supreme Court did this past week The signal is go ahead and the majority writes in particular that Texas Contrary to what the lower court has said is this is the quote likely to succeed on the merits of its claim

And what their claim was is that we did not racially gerrymandered.

This is not based upon racial animus.

We didn't disenfranchise anybody based upon color, but instead we did this based upon partisan perspective.

Overtly, unapologetically, they're saying, yes, we did this because we want more Republicans than Democrats or others.

in the slate of candidates in this five congressional seat area.

We want to send more Republicans to Congress.

Again, why is that permissible?

Because the Supreme Court has said we're not engaging in that kind of review of partisan gerrymandering.

And so the people challenging what Texas has done have said, that may well be, but you've also accomplished a racial gerrymander and that in and of itself.

That's the thing.

that renders all of this unconstitutional.

You've improperly done this in a way that disenfranchises people of color.

Majority writes this past days or so late this past week that the lower court that found in fact that this is a racial gerrymander has improperly this is the words from the very limited opinion coming out of the Supreme Court on the emergency docket has improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal state balance in election.

The court order once again, as in all of these emergency applications, does not include a vote count, which is what we get under a merits docket decision.

Typical again for rulings on these emergency docket applications.

We know that Sam Alito wrote a concurrence and that was joined in by the two other conservative justices.

Their names were Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch.

They say once again that the confusion is too much

And then, oh, by the way, the lower court almost certainly aired in coming to the conclusion that this was a racial gerrymander.

Now, you know where we're going to go next, because we always try to present here on this broadcast the information about both sides.

Indeed, there is a scathing dissent from, you know their names, Elena Kagan and Katanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor.

Elena Kagan, justice of the Supreme Court.

joined in by the two others, authors a 17-page dissent.

The majority, in one paragraph or a little bit more, resolves this and says, even while the lower courts can continue to adjudicate this, even as we go forward in 2026, we're going to go back to the maps that indeed the Texas legislature has redrawn in this way that accomplishes this political and arguably...

racial gerrymander.

What does Elena Kagan say in her 17-page dissent?

She says the majority has wrongly overturned a 160-page lower court ruling.

What is she talking about?

She's talking about the decision, the meticulous decision of this three-judge panel, and she says based upon its, meaning the majority's, perusal

Over a holiday weekend, basically she's talking about the recently passed Thanksgiving weekend, she said, we reviewed a cold paper record.

And then she goes on to talk about the ways in which the Supreme Court differs from a district court.

She says this, we are a higher court indeed.

We're higher than the district court, but she says we are not a better one.

When it comes to making a fact-based decision,

And she says that the Supreme Court order that is issued this week disserves the millions of Texans whom the district court found were assigned to their districts based upon their race.

She adds that because this court's precedence and our Constitution demand better

She says, I respectfully dissent.

The other two do the same as well, but they lose.

They're on the losing side of this decision.

The Supreme Court telling the Republican majority in the Texas legislature, go ahead and pursue the elections that are coming up here until such time, if ever, as this lower court.

addresses this issue again and comes to a different decision, which, yes indeed, could come up a second time to the Supreme Court.

While all that is going on, we're going to intercede in all of this, overturn the three-judge panel, and basically tell the legislature that the maps that you have drawn that accomplish, as you have said, a partisan gerrymander, that almost certainly ensure five more Republican

candidates that will be successful in those districts going to Congress, but also according to the three judge panel disenfranchise major portions of that Texas constituency.

That's okay.

That's what the Supreme Court said just this past week.

When we come back, we'll talk about something else that happened, not in Texas, not in Washington, D.C., but close in the Eastern District of Virginia.

All that coming up as Amicus, a lot of you, continues here on the broadcast.

stations

of civic media.

My name is Jim Santel and this is Amicus, a lot of you here on the broadcast stations of Civic Media.

Thank you once again for joining me and my producer Max in this edition of our broadcast and this last segment of our first hour, we continue for a next hour on the broadcast stations of Civic Media, that next hour focusing more on rule of law issues and specifically

Pardons once again constitutional issue lots and lots of pardons coming out of the White House these days including one including one that implicates

the other major issue, which we will talk about in future editions of Amicus, having to do with the interdictions, the military actions with respect to allegations that there are those Venezuelan boats bringing large amounts of drugs into our nation.

We'll talk about some of that and the relationship between that hot topic issue at the top of the headlines in many written publications in your news feeds online

and other places.

What's the connection between that, the boats issue, the military issue, and at least one of the president's major pardons of this past week.

That's coming up in the second hour of our broadcast this weekend in this segment.

Something else.

Again, apart from the Supreme Court, at least for now, with respect to the actions of our U.S.

Department of Justice, you know well that just about a couple of weeks or so ago, a federal district court judge who is sitting by designation in the Eastern District of Virginia.

determined that the U.S.

Attorney, her name is Lindsay Halligan, had no authority, improperly appointed to serve in that capacity.

Why?

Because the President and the Attorney General had improperly appointed her under a circumstance where you cannot stack 120-day terms, interim terms.

We talked a lot about the reasons why that decision of the Federal District Court Judge resulted in the dismissals of these

indictments against whom?

Against Letitia James and James Comey.

Both of those cases again involving defendants who have been on the president's list of adversaries, foes, people he has identified as ripe for prosecution demanding

that the Attorney General through the U.S.

Attorneys, including Lindsay Halligan, indict these people because, as the President has said, they're as guilty as hell.

His words in explaining his animus toward them and his direction to the Department of Justice.

completely contrary to every other standard of every prior administration, the exception of his the first time around, that has had a clear line between what the Department of Justice can and should do and what the president wants.

That political involvement in criminal prosecutions needs to be a clear and bright and unassailable wall.

That's the reason why Watergate happened.

That's the reason why in the post Watergate years, that wall was built.

broken down by this administration demanding, demanding the prosecutions of Letitia James for allegedly engaging in bank fraud, mortgage fraud, with respect to a house of hers in Norfolk, Virginia, as to James Comey maintaining the way back in September of 2020, he lied before a congressional committee having to do with some engagements with his colleagues at the FBI and the media.

The substance of these cases we have not gotten to, although there

to believe that on the merits they're going to fall apart if ever they see the light of day inside a federal court there in eastern Virginia.

But what happened again in the wake of recent activity?

Many issues related to challenging those indictments including vindictive prosecution, selective prosecution, mishandling wild misstatements by the U.S.

Attorney before the grand jury that certainly

that process result resulting in grand jury abuse and government misconduct what happened just late this past week well the reality is in addition to appealing those dismissal orders to the appeals court which the Department of Justice can do

Plain now that prosecutors or a prosecutor in eastern Virginia has gone back into a federal grand jury forum and asked for a new indictment as to Letitia James and The big takeaway news of late this past week is that the grand jury has apparently declined Refused said no to a new indictment as to Letitia James.

That's no small thing and while it is

not unprecedented.

It's also an affirmation of the importance of the grand jury process.

These are not folks who simply rubber stamp what the government presents.

And we know that from the first go around with respect to James Comey because plainly there were grand jurors who were not.

Pleased with the first iteration of an indictment, as to him, went back and said, no, we're not indicting on one of these three counts, come back, and the mayhem then continued.

Now we have an attempt by the Department of Justice to re-indite Letitia James.

We don't know.

We assume it's based upon mortgage fraud.

Maybe it's a recast, a recodified indictment.

of the sort that the federal district court judge dismissed previously for lack of authority.

Maybe it's been cleaned up in some way, substantively.

Presumably there is a prosecutor there who has the authority to do justice.

But again, a grand jury in Norfolk, Virginia declining late this past week to re-indite Letitia James telling the Department of Justice, telling the government.

that we're not going to go forward.

They didn't pick and choose.

They didn't say, we're going to go ahead with this one and not that count.

But again, another blow to the president's efforts, inappropriate, unconstitutional, illegal, to gain control over the process by which the grand jury works.

In this case, again, the grand jury's standing as a bastion, as a guardrail of democracy.

of the rule of law, we've talked a lot about that, and identified federal district court judges as being principal among them, identifying people inside the Department of Justice, other places in government who have said no to these unconstitutional things, and also identifying, although not nearly in the notoriety, grand juries coming forward and telling this Department of Justice in a number of different areas, including now Eastern Virginia, that the answer

Madam Attorney General, Madam U.S.

Attorney, others there, Mr. Attorney General, U.S.

Attorney, that in fact we're not going to indict.

That's no small thing.

That's the rule of law in America.

When we come back, we'll talk about more rule of law issues, including focus on pardons here in the United States of America.

Stay with us here on the broadcast stations of Civic Media.

Welcome to Amicus, a law review with Jim Santel, Civic Media's weekly review and discussion of some of the most significant new stories in the areas of law, government, courts, and the aspiration for justice.

And now, here's your host, Jim Santel.

This is Jim Santel, and I am your host for this, the second hour of our weekly weekend broadcast

All about things related to the rule of law, the administration of justice, operation of government in the United States of America, spending all of our first hour talking about these matters coming out of the Supreme Court, a major key factor, obviously, in defining what the rule of law means in America, making decisions about its merits docket, and yes, indeed, its emergency docket.

They're going to have great impacts when they decide these cases down the road about who we are as a nation, what our constitution means, what the authority of the president is going forward.

We also know that late this past week, something else happened in eastern Virginia that is no small thing.

A federal grand jury telling the Department of Justice, no.

that we're not going to simply re-indite Letitia James.

We don't know the facts behind this.

We don't know exactly what happened.

Why?

Because grand jury proceedings are by their very nature under what's called Rule Six of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.

They're private.

They're private.

And the transcripts, which again, made available.

With respect to the first indictment, at least as to James Comey, those kinds of things are not a part of the public domain.

We don't know exactly what happened in front of the grand jury, what kind of a case this might have been, what the government wanted to do.

What we do know, according to very reliable reporting, is that the grand jury said no, and that the grand jury

pushed back and again under the Constitution the 23 or so members of this grand jury said no we're the only ones who can indict under our Constitution and we have chosen not to do that.

It could be because of a lack of a finding of probable cause which is what a grand jury does could be because

They're concerned about maybe some of the abusive conduct, the expectation that a grand jury simply will re-indite when in fact a previous district court judge has found the cases need to be dismissed again, not so much on their merits.

Previous district court judge has said, yes, you can re-indite.

We don't know exactly the circumstances under which this was represented.

What we do know is,

that the grand jury pushed back on the United States Department of Justice and dealt a blow to the president's efforts to exert not only control over the Department of Justice, but also to see that his political adversaries are brought into the criminal justice system.

So once again, as of now.

The prosecutions of Letitia James and of James Comey are dismissed.

There's an awful lot more to come of all of this.

Yes, indeed.

It's entirely possible that the indictment as to James Comey could be resurrected because it has not been dismissed based upon a prejudicial or a with prejudice approach.

That could happen.

As we've talked before, there are also some statute of limitations problems that would probably loom large there.

We know as well that the district court judge who dismissed the case involving the Tisha James said yes, you can bring it again and indeed even after this action by the grand jury it is possible that the Department of Justice could go back a third time and do this and seek yet another indictment.

We don't know what their plan is But at some point even that process becomes abusive does it not

And at some point, it looks as if the Department of Justice is not accepting, as all branches of government should do, the results of another branch, and you say, well, gee, Jim, what is that about?

It is important to recognize that the grand jury is not a function.

of the Department of Justice.

It's not on the organizational chart.

Pam Bondi and the U.S.

Attorney in Eastern Virginia are not in charge of the grand jury.

They make presentations to it.

But to whom are the grand juries responsible?

The grand jurors themselves?

They're a branch of the courts.

They're part of the judicial system, right?

Based upon the notion that this is a grand jury, you've got a pettit or a trial jury, also a part of the court system in our mechanisms, our structure.

And this is a situation where the courts effectively, through the grand jurors have said, executive branch, we do not concur.

It is checks and balances incarnate.

And that's the reason why this seemingly insignificant superficially event, that is a Supreme Court, I'm sorry, a grand jury not doing something, which you would think under other circumstances is not that significant.

is significant.

They have said no.

It is a check and a balance as to this administration and indeed as to this Department of Justice.

The reason why in the capacity of rule of law issues, it looms very large from this past week.

Also looming very large are the president's invocations of his partner responsibilities and his authorities under the Constitution of the United States of America.

We just spend a lion's share of the time in this, the second hour of our broadcast talking about those pardons and indeed the through line of these issues related to executive authority, the power of the president and yes indeed,

touching necessarily upon that hot topic coming out of the Congress just late this past week very much on the minds of all Americans that is the authority of this president to continue prosecuting what he is defined as a war against Venezuela or at least against boats that are coming according to him to America heavy laden with contraband.

We'll talk more about that and talk about the connection between what's going on there

and pardons.

We have talked about this a lot in the past.

You know where this comes from.

The article two, section two, clause one of the United States Constitution says, the president shall have power to grant repris and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.

And that's it.

There is no other description inside the Constitution, the language that tells us anything about the circumstances under which those kinds of partners, also including commutations, which are basically the present reducing sentences of people in the federal system to

time-served or other lower sentences.

We do know that Alexander Hamilton, going back to the Federalist Papers explaining what this was all about, talked about these notions that the chief executive should be able to exercise a certain amount of forgiveness, some mercy.

He said that the power should be as little as possible fettered or embarrassed.

That's his use of that word to mean it's unrestricted.

It is not the subject of review by another branch of government, unlike the grand jury process with respect to the executive branch, unlike decisions made by lower courts, litigants, the Supreme Court, the Congress, the president going back, all of those checks and balances.

This is arguably the only authority inside the Constitution that is unchecked, and that gives rise to a lot of the challenges and difficulties that virtually every president has had when it comes to issuing pardons and commutations.

Alexander Hamilton went on to say, this is meant to ensure, as he said, easy access to exceptions in favor of unfortunate guilt.

An interesting way of describing this, right?

The concept is, and the Supreme Court has talked about the notion that what the founding fathers meant to do is to vest in an executive, the capacity to do mercy.

not apart from the rule of law, not apart from government, not apart from justice, but recognizing that there's something about a conviction, a judgment, under the federal system of someone who has run afoul of our laws, that has been the subject of a judgment, finding them guilty, whether it's by a jury or by a plea agreement, that they've served their sentence, that there's something about their life that qualifies them, that commends them for this merciful work.

by the chief executive.

Hamilton argued that placing power solely with the president would lead to its most beneficial exercise.

What he's doing there is he's saying we're trusting this chief executive to do the right thing.

And he said, I can't imagine a more eligible dispenser of the mercy of the government than a body of men who might often encourage each other in an act of obduracy and might be less sensible to the apprehension of suspicion or censure for an injudicious or effective clemency.

Now, what does all that language mean?

He's talking about the reason why it's placed in one person, placing the power solely in the executive

branch, so you're not subject to all of the other considerations, including arguments that might come.

That's the reason why this was placed in the authority of the executive branch, a lot of language there to unpack, and a lot of Supreme Court history, actually, in this area as well.

Interestingly, of course, because it's not subject to review in the courts, it's not subject to review by the legislature

There is some significant but not extensive Supreme Court history.

There's a case in 1950 that's fascinating called Burtic versus United States.

Supreme Court holding in the end that a pardon does not take effect if the defendant does not accept it.

fascinating concept and it was in verdict as well that the court specifically said circumstances may be made to bring innocence under the penalties of law if so brought this Supreme Court went on in this verdict case escaped by confession of guilt

implied in the acceptance of a pardon may be rejected.

That's the notion that if you take the position that you did not commit the underlying offense, if you're not contrite, if you say, I didn't do this, then not only is a pardon inapplicable to you, but it cannot be accepted because implicit and inside the very notion of granting a pardon

granting other forms of relief under the Constitution is the acceptance of responsibility by the person who did the underlying offense.

That's hugely important.

That's what the verdict case says.

And once again, affirms this notion that the transgressor, the transgressor has the capacity to say no, but if the transgressor, as the Supreme Court has said in verdict, if the defendant, the person who's been convicted, says yes,

Coming with that pardon with that clemency decision is an acknowledgement of guilt Why is that so important?

We've talked about this before one of the course the the major historical pardons in the memories of many of you and certainly in the history books that many of you study is the pardon granted by Gerald Ford as to Richard Nixon Richard Nixon was never convicted He wasn't charged criminally never went into a federal court Gerald Ford pardoned him prophylactically

basically for everything that he may have done during the course of his term in office that might have run afoul of the federal statues.

And in the wake of that, again, a huge amount of controversy about that, Gerald Ford saying, I exercised my explicit and unassailable and uncheckable

pardon power because I wanted the country to move on and that is of course a judgment that he made may well have cost him in part the presidency when he ran in 1976 lost to Jimmy Carter as we all well know in the wake of that he carried in his pocket as he recounted repeatedly to the last day of his life a small card

And that was this language from Burdick.

When people would approach him, President Ford said and chastised him or took him on, criticized him for for entering and issuing a pardon as to Richard Nixon.

and saying you never never accomplished an adjudication of him what Gerald Ford said was let me read to you from verdict that when I granted Richard Nixon that pardon implicit in that is Richard Nixon's acknowledgement of guilt for the crimes that I identified in that pardon document and that gives rise again to an awful lot of what is happening just this past week as our current president like presidents before him continue to exercise this authority under

Clause 1, Section 2, Article 2 of the Constitution.

When we come back, we'll tell you more about the contemporary recent invocations of that language, how things should go, how they have gone here on Amicus, a lot of you.

My name is Jim Santel.

This is Amicus, a law review once again appreciating their time that you're spending in moving through this geography of rule of law issues, including now revisiting what we have talked about in previous episodes of Amicus a law review.

That is the pardon power of the presidency, noting also, noting also that there is a process.

It's not in the Constitution, but important to understand because it comes up a lot in the recent discussions about

this president's pardons, the pardons of previous presidents, including Joe Biden, including Bill Clinton, including George Bush, including Jimmy Carter, including Ronald Reagan, including all the presidents of recent times, including Barack Obama, all of them have engaged in this unfettered, unchecked capacity to pardon people, to issue clemency orders.

Many of them, many of them had been controversial.

In an attempt to try to bring the controversial nature

of these things to a lower level.

What did the United States Department of Justice do many years ago?

They established something called the Office of the Pardon Attorney.

It's inside the structure of the Department of Justice.

We've talked about this before.

It is a unit that basically handles the great majority of these cases.

If you are looking for a pardon based upon your prior federal criminal conviction.

What you have done is yes, you can go online and fill out your application for a presidential pardon and the office of the pardon attorney under every administration until Recently although the office of the pardon attorney still exists Every other administration is said before you get to the White House down the street from the Department of Justice You have to go through the office of the pardon attorney They're basically a precursor to review by the president.

They're the ones who winnow and sift and make

recommendations based upon what they see would have been the general outlines for what the office of the pardon attorney does.

Basically, they have said, you've got to be done with your judgment for at least five years.

And by that, I mean, out of prison, beyond supervision, you've got to be clear of any obligations under your criminal judgment to report to a probation officer, a supervising agent, you are done for at least five years.

That's in your rear view mirror, at least five years, okay?

time element on this.

Second, second.

Again, implicit in the notion of verdict, which we talked about, you got to admit that you did what you did.

You've got to be contrite.

You've got to show some remorse for your criminal conduct.

whether it's been in prison, whether it's been on supervised release, whether it's right after the judgment is entered as the judgment is entered, often at sentencing, acknowledging to the federal district court judge who's sentencing you that you did indeed engage in the conduct.

That's number two.

And number three, and here's the big one.

The office of the pardon attorney has said there's got to be something about your life At least in the last five years that commends you for a pardon something that suggests it not only have you admitted to your bad previous behavior It only has been there the passage of time and of course that passage of time is to ensure that you haven't engaged in more criminal conduct you've robbed more banks who've engaged in more drug dealing You've engaged in human trafficking or white collar offenses bank fraud male fraud wire fraud

all bets are off plainly, but during that period of time and in any period since then, there's something about the way that you've conducted your life.

It doesn't mean that you've got to start nonprofits across the board for all sorts of people who could indeed benefit from those kinds of things and do that kind of thing.

Whether it's youth, it's people with disabilities, it's people who are economically, commercially, educationally, for purposes of society, societal position, need assistance.

A lot of people who apply for part and say, you know what?

I've been a good person.

I've done some things to support my community.

I've been out there in the cities and villages and towns in which I live and work.

I've done things to help people in all sorts of areas or even just one area.

I've worked on urban renewal.

I've worked on things with farmers.

I've worked on things with youth groups and adult groups and groups of elderly people.

All kinds of things that you know as public service.

know as things that are engaged in the communities that make our societies, our communities better.

Something about your life that is not only a reversal of what you've done before, but something to commend this notion that you warrant the president's mercy in the words of Burdick, in the words of the founding fathers, including Alexander Hamilton, that justice would be accomplished if indeed

The unfortunate guilt that Alexander Hamilton has described should be overcome.

And an expression of mercy and forgiveness, that's what you deserve.

That's how the process works.

They look at all those things and they make recommendations to the White House about who among these thousands of people were applying for a pardon.

Who should be granted?

Which application is too early?

Which one should be addressed and rejected outright?

And that's their clearinghouse process in the office of the pardon attorney.

It is significant to note that the current head of the office of the pardon attorney is a fellow named Ed Martin.

You may recall that we've talked a lot about him in connection with a present investigation of him with respect to his own independent review and pursuit of mortgage fraud cases, including

arguably the one with respect to Letitia James, Ed Martin, a major figure in some of the most controversial things going on in main justice.

Ed Martin is in charge right now of the office of the pardon attorney.

And all of that leads then to the decisions being made very recently, including just this past week by the president that may or may not have gone through the process of the office of the pardon attorney that he just described.

Must the president do that, that clearinghouse process?

No.

There's nothing in the Constitution that mandates it's a matter of efficiency.

It also ensures some consistency.

Keep that notion in mind as we talk about some of the inconsistencies that we have seen recently.

It's a matter of ensuring that justice is accomplished.

And the question which can and should be asked is which of the pardons by this president and yes indeed by other presidents have gone through that winnowing and sifting and recommending process and which are simply because the president has said I'm going to do this without any of that because of reasons that I know.

Maybe they're political reasons.

Maybe there are familial reasons.

Maybe there are, we hope it's not bribery or economic or financial reasons, but we know that this process is in fact coming out of the White House.

Again, this past week and in previous days when we come back, we'll talk about some of those major pardons and why there are so important to understanding the administration of justice in America.

As our broadcast continues here on Amicus, a lot of you.

This is Amicus, a law review.

My name is Jim Santel.

We are talking in this the second hour of our weekend broadcast all about pardons once again because they loom large and there is a through line with respect to pardons and yes indeed those Venezuelan boats and the major controversy will get to that in just a moment or so.

Talking a lot about the process and the Constitution, there's very little guidance when it comes to what the founding fathers intended.

Except with the notion that the executive intending the executive to exercise this power out of mercy, out of justice, about a sense of forgiveness, weighing the merits of it and finding that indeed the merits, the justice-based, even rule of law-based merits with respect to a particular case warrant this extraordinary remedy.

So let's do a little bit of surveying here first about with respect to some of the pardons that the current president has entered and once again I hasten to add that every single president you can go online and you can identify all the pardons that every single president has issued during the course of their terms most often at the end of their terms some of them are right in the middle of the reasons for the office of the pardon attorney the people that you look at and say they merit it they should in fact have the civil infirmities that

otherwise attend a criminal conviction?

Have those lifted?

Have their pardons effectively removed from the criminal judgment annals?

The fact that they did this, history never erases that completely, but the judgment itself should be taken off of the annals of the district court.

All of their presidents have done this.

Let's talk about Donald Trump in particular give you some sense leading up to his recent pardons We know that on his first day in office on January 20th Donald Trump pardoned nearly all of the defendants charged with offenses related to the riot

at the Capitol on January 6th.

You know that well.

A total of about 1,500 people, partisans included people convicted of very violent crimes against law enforcement.

Trump claimed at the time that these defendants were unfairly treated by the Justice Department.

They were properly charged.

They were given notice.

Some of them went to trial.

Many of them pled guilty to the offense conduct alleged in the indictments against them, sentenced for their offense conduct,

Over a thousand people, the president saying the pardons will end, as he said, a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years and begin a process of national reconciliation.

That was his explanation for pardoning the capital

Insurrection rioters on January 20th, civilian named Ross Ulbricht.

President granted a full and unconditional pardon to him.

He is the founder of something called the Silk Road Dark Web Marketplace.

What did he do?

He was serving a life sentence, a life sentence in federal court and federal prison based upon a judgment entered as to him in a federal court, multiple charges, including conspiracy to distribute narcotics and money laundering.

sentence.

President says this, the scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me.

That's his explanation for Ross Ulbricht being

freed from a lifetime, if you will, of federal imprisonment.

Many others down the road.

Let's talk about Rod Bogojevic.

You remember him.

February 10th, the president pardoned former Illinois governor, Rod Bogojevic.

What was he convicted of?

You remember this?

Multiple political corruption charges that included, including seeking to sell an appointment, his appointment at the time, to then President Barack Obama's now old Senate seat,

he was doing this.

Barack Obama vacates that seat.

The governor has the capacity to fill that seat as the governor.

Donald Trump commuted Bogovitch's 14-year sentence in federal prison.

During his first term, President said Bogovitch's conviction sentencing shouldn't have happened.

He said, I've watched him.

He was set up by a lot of bad people.

Some of the same people I had to deal with

And for that reason, the pardon is issued as to him.

Many other instances of this will give you a little bit more of a sense before turning to recent situations involving invocations of the pardon authority.

March 27th, Donald Trump pardoned Benjamin Adela.

and Arthur Hayes, Gregory Dwyer, Samuel Reed the Four, who founded something called BitMEX, Cryptocurrency Exchange.

You know that the president has focused a lot on these cryptocurrency matters, including a recent, recent pardon that we talked about previously.

All of them had pleaded guilty to violating the Bank Secrecy Act.

By failing to do what?

They failed to implement a compliant and anti-money laundering

program.

And that's exactly the reason why the more recent pardon with respect to one of the most wealthy cryptocurrency moguls on the face of the planet also convicted for establishing a mechanism that did not have safeguards as a result.

Groups like ISIS and ISIL and Hamas and Al Qaeda able to use the platforms of these particular cryptocurrency mechanisms and circumstances

to gauge in money laundering and other things that make us all less safe.

There are many other cases here.

Scott Jenkins, May 27th, the former sheriff of Culpeper County, you may remember this one in Virginia, convicted of accepting more than $75,000 in bribes in exchange for appointing people as auxiliary deputies.

He was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison back in 2024.

The president posting that Jenkins and his family have been dragged through hell.

all capital letters by a corrupt and weaponized Biden DOJ.

The sheriff, he said, is a victim of overzealous Biden Department of Justice, doesn't deserve to spend a single day in jail.

He is a wonderful person who is persecuted by the radical left monsters and left for dead.

He will not be going to jail tomorrow, but instead have a wonderful and productive life.

And the list goes on.

Let's turn to this justice past week.

in no particular order, but significant among them.

The President, just this past week, did in fact pardon both Texas Democratic Representative Henry Cuellar and his wife, Imelda.

They were facing, facing prosecution being pursued by this Department of Justice on federal bribery and conspiracy child charges.

The president said in a social media post that Koyar bravely spoke out against open borders and accused Biden, a Democrat, of going after the congressman as wife for speaking the truth, capital TRUTH.

In other words, Henry Koyar,

Criticizing the former president for border patrol policies gets the attention of this president and sure enough before Henry and his wife Imelda Cuellar are going to face a jury trial in federal court, the president says, pardon.

And the horse, all of the defendants here under any circumstances

prior to judgment, including Henry and Imelda Cuellar presumed innocent.

They have maintained their innocence.

This is not to say that that is in any way robbed from them.

But now, now there is no adjudication as to the crimes of bribery and conspiracy with which the United States Department of Justice charged Henry and Imelda Cuellar just this past week.

Let's get to some of the other, other major pardons of just this past week.

And that includes

at the top of this list, a major pardon that has an awful lot of people inside the Department of Justice, outside the Department of Justice, who are responsible for this prosecution scratching their heads and shaking their heads in absolute amazement.

It is significant that this particular pardon erases the actions of one of the top loyalists within the Trump family, if you will, would get to that in just a moment or so.

You know what this story is about?

Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former president of Honduras.

Juan Orlando Hernandez

the center the focus of a broad sweeping drug case found guilty again didn't plead guilty but by an American jury 12 people finding beyond a reasonable doubt unanimously that the former president of Honduras guilty of conspiracy to import cocaine into the United States that understates the charge dramatically the presentation during the course of the jury including the levels of cocaine

Tons of cocaine imported by this defendant, millions of dollars of bribes as a result of that undertaking, partnering with cocaine traffickers, bringing into this country, and remember that in connection with a next reference we'll make to this.

bringing into this country huge amounts of cocaine.

The judge in the case at the time, post-judgment, post-verdict, his name is Kevin Costel.

He calls Hernandez a two-faced politician, hungry for power, who masqueraded as an anti-drug crusader while in fact he was pandering

partnering with traffickers.

Prosecutors had asked the judge to make sure that Hernandez would die behind bars, citing his abuse of power.

They talked about his connections to violent traffickers and to the unfathomable destruction.

That's what the government said caused by what he has done.

All of that coming out of the prosecution of the former president of Hernandez.

former president of Honduras and his name again is Juan Orlando Hernandez.

What is the reflection of how significant this prosecution and the judgment against him was and is?

The judge who looked at all of this under the sentencing guidelines, the nature of the offense conduct, the dramatic, colossal, catastrophic work of this defendant sentenced this defendant to 45 years in federal prison.

45 years, that is huge.

Now, Mr. Hernandez himself is not an old man, he's not a young man, but it basically would have assured that he would die in prison as the federal prosecutors and your Department of Justice wanted them to do.

Drug Enforcement Administration agent who has worked on the investigation to Hernandez and spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to speak publicly, of course, about this matter, called this pardon

lunacy and indeed it is that and so much more the president at the time of his announcing this pardon said this you said congratulate all this in caps by the way congratulations to Juan Orlando Hernandez on your upcoming pardon

That's what the president writes minutes after he's arriving at Mar-a-Lago during a recent visit there and says again all in caps, make Honduras great again.

Make Honduras great again.

We know that in the middle of this week as a result of the complete and unconditional pardon imposed with respect to this conviction of Juan Orlando Hernandez, Mr. Hernandez was released from federal prison and he is now a free man.

And that comes in the wake of huge frustration.

Not only by the prosecutors, the agents who compromised their lives, again, put themselves in harm's way, did a huge amount of work to accomplish this important result in the criminal justice system.

Under, under mind, if you will, basically erased by the president in granting this pardon a 45-year sentence reduced to virtually nothing.

And that happened just this week again.

Does the president have the power to do this?

Absolutely.

Is there any way of turning this back?

No, there is not.

Aside from being in the public domain for criticism and for looking at what this president is doing.

He's done this in many other cases in recent times and it is significant as well just as a footnote to note that when President Trump pardoned the

former president of Honduras this past week.

He erased what was called the crowning achievement of years of work by one of those Department of Justice lawyers, one of his own former criminal offense lawyers.

When Emil Beauvais was inside the Department of Justice, he was responsible in part along with others for this very prosecution of this Honduran leader.

Now pardon an interesting footnote to all of this when we come back a bit more.

about pardons and a bit more about the connection, the line that goes through this and what's happening now with respect to the review of cases involving these boats being blown up by our military in the Caribbean and the Pacific.

Here on Amicus, a law

review.

This is Amicus.

My name is Jim Santel.

This is the final segment of our two-hour program this weekend.

We are spending a lot of it talking about pardons, giving you some civics understanding, which I suspect most, if not all of you already have, but putting in context what our president, our current president, and yes indeed, former presidents have done in connection with their exercise of this authority under Clause 1, Section 2, Article 2 of the Constitution, giving presidents virtually unfettered power.

You could probably erase the word

virtually from that sentence, it is uncheckable.

And indeed, the president just this past week, in the wake of many other pardons that he has issued, we recounted some of those, has pardoned Juan Orlando Hernandez, former president of Honduras, previously sentenced to 45 years in federal prison for importing literally tons of cocaine into this country, receiving millions of dollars in bribes, partnering with cocaine traffickers, and masquerading.

As the judge said, as an anti-drug crusader, well, in fact, partnering with traffickers, accomplishing huge violations of the criminal law, and affecting dramatically, most importantly, the safety and security of our country.

Let me give you some sense of some other...

cases in which the president has recently acted.

This is in the nature of superficial but important reporting on at least four other pardons he's issued.

And then we're going to go back to the Hernandez pardon in particular.

We know that way back in May the

President partner of felony Michael Grimm.

He's a former New York representative who pleaded guilty in 2014 to felony tax evasion.

And that case, again, is a situation in which Grimm's prosecution sort of follows.

He was compared to the president's own legal troubles.

And Donald Trump derided, criticized the prosecution

of Michael Grimm as a witch hunt.

There was a case in which the president set free a private equity executive, served less than two weeks of a seven year sentence.

His name is David Gentile.

For his role, what prosecutors described as a 1.6 billion with a B scheme that defrauded thousands of victims convicted in August of 2024 commuting that sentence down to time served.

We know that that involves

again, David Gentile.

There's a case involving Timothy Liocki.

And Mr. Liocki is a founder and former chief executive of something called the Oakview Group.

He allegedly orchestrated a conspiracy to rid the bigging... I'm sorry, the bigging...

bidding process for the Moody Center Arena at the University of Texas to benefit his own company and as a result of the pardon imposed with respect to Timothy Laiwiki, all of that erased from official government and court annals and then also other matters out there involving, as we said before, Henry Cuellar, his wife, other cases

Getting back then to the Hernandez case.

Why is that so significant and why are there so many people looking at that case and talking about the inconsistency between on the one hand, pardoning someone for bringing again proved in a courtroom, historically proved in a courtroom, judgment by a jury of peers here, unanimous verdict.

finding that he is in fact guilty of these horrific crimes, now pardoned by this president, a person who brought into this country tons of cocaine.

You know where this is going.

At the same time that we are talking about these pardons and others, we know that the president, through the defense secretary, is prosecuting what he's described as a war.

Venezuela at least on the the boats there coming out of Venezuela he is obviously also opposed to the president of Venezuela who has condemned our military actions lots of things to unpack there but why is the judge the president why is the president said he's doing this he is stopping as he has said repeatedly the

actions of these boat runners who are bringing from Venezuela what the president has described as all of these illicit drugs.

As an aside, it's a part of the national understanding, the facts of this, that Venezuela produces very little fentanyl, very little cocaine.

Those come from other countries, but even putting aside that particular factual infirmity with justifying this action,

and all of the other things that are coming out of it.

We're doing that.

We're going after we're killing people in the high seas based upon this invocation of wartime activities when in fact our

Coast Guard usually has done that.

They've done interdiction.

They've gone down the road of addressing this problem without violence, seizing the drugs, seizing the contraband, bringing those people into our criminal justice system.

That's how we've normally done all of this.

The president choosing again with the defense secretary to make this a military operation as opposed to a domestic, domestic law enforcement operation.

killing people about 83 of them in 21 different assaults on these boats.

One of them, as we know well now, the subject of an awful lot of focus on whether or not we additionally killed a couple of the survivors of one of those strikes on September 2nd.

All of that continuing to be the focus of a lot of our appropriate national attention.

But the other point is.

that we're doing all that to supposedly stop the onslaught of drugs, including cocaine, into this country in the very same time.

And we have told Mr. Hernandez of Honduras that you are now a free man for bringing into this country what we know to be tens of tons of cocaine.

And that is the inconsistency that so many of the reporters and people looking at the pardon authority and our enforcement on the high seas have identified not only as the inconsistency, but turning on its head.

Fundamental notions about the pardon power, the authority of the president to declare a war, much of that going to be the subject of additional conversation.

here on this broadcast and on others here on Civic Media.

Next week, next week, more of all of this, we return to a format in which we're soliciting your questions, encouraging your comments and perspectives, write those down, make certain to be a part of our broadcast next weekend as we come back talking about the rule of law, justice, and government here in the broadcast stations of Civic Media.

Have a good weekend, everybody.

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