Civilization
Two Kinds of President
Joe Biden and Donald J. Trump clearly represent two kinds of President – one a tyrant, the other a liberator.
Donald J. Trump is now President again, the first since Grover Cleveland to serve two non-consecutive terms. The contrast between his style and that of Joe Biden already is making itself apparent. Both Presidents are pardoning people in record numbers, the difference being in who is getting the pardons from each man. But more than that, Donald Trump is the first President since Thomas Jefferson to dismantle a tyrannical apparatus his predecessor had set up. That’s the truth, whatever apologists for the leftist ideology Biden serviced, might say.
Preemptive pardons from President Biden – and what they imply
Yesterday CNAV described the likely most consequential pardons Joe Biden signed. They included, of course:
- The once-ranking military officer who prepared to betray his own forces to a likely enemy,
- A doctor who violated every imaginable concept of his oath to “first of all, do no harm,” and
- The seven Democrats and two RINOS of that bill-of-attainder task force calling itself the January 6 Committee. Along with these, Biden also pardoned members of Committee and individual Members’ staffs – and several likely perjured witnesses.
But even that wasn’t Biden’s final act. Shortly before he entered his limousine for a motorcade to the Capitol, he pardoned four members of his family, and one in-law. This is of a piece with his earlier pardon of his son Hunter. Biden might perhaps be blissfully unaware of – or indifferent to – the full implications of his act. As Grant Stinchfield explains, pardons are effective only when their subjects accept them. And acceptance of a pardon constitutes an admission of guilt – despite Biden’s statement to the contrary on the occasion of his pardon of General Milley, Dr. Fauci, and those Committee Members, staffs, and witnesses. Burdick v. United States, 236 U.S. 79 (1915).
But note what Stinchfield might not have discussed:
The facts … involve the effect of a pardon of the President of the United States tendered to one who has not been convicted of a crime nor admitted the commission thereof, and also the necessity of acceptance of a pardon in order to make it effective.
Therefore the Burdick precedent covers preemptive pardons, of the type Biden issued in these cases. The Burdick precedent also cancels out the “right to remain silent.” President Woodrow Wilson’s pardon statement is on point:
Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States of America, to all to whom these presents shall come, Greeting:
Whereas George Burdick, an editor of the New York Tribune, has declined to testify before a federal grand jury now in session in the Southern District of New York in a proceeding entitled, United States v. John Doe and Richard Roe, as to the sources of the information which he had in the New York Tribune office, or in his possession, or under his control at the time he sent Henry D. Kingsbury, a reporter on the said New York Tribune to write an article which appeared in the said New York Tribune in its issue of December 31st, 1913, headed, “Glove Makers’ Gems May Be Customs Size,” on the ground that it would tend to incriminate him to answer the questions; and,
Whereas the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York desires to use the said George Burdick as a witness before the said grand jury in the said proceeding for the purpose of determining whether any employee of the Treasury Department at the Custom House, New York City, has been betraying information that came to such person in an official capacity; and,
Whereas it is believed that the said George Burdick will again refuse to testify in the said proceeding on the ground that his testimony might tend to incriminate himself;
Now therefore be it known, that I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States of America, in consideration of the premises, divers other good and sufficient reasons me thereunto moving, do hereby grant unto the said George Burdick a full and unconditional pardon for all offenses against the United States which he, the said George Burdick, has committed or may have committed or taken part in in connection with the securing, writing about, or assisting in the publication of the information so incorporated in the aforementioned article, and in connection with any other article, matter, or thing concerning which he may be interrogated in the said grand jury proceeding, thereby absolving him from the consequences of every such criminal act.
In consequence, Burdick had to testify.
President Trump unravels a tyranny
President Trump, for his part, got to work immediately on reversing four years of the Biden tyranny. The January 6 defendants received his first official attention. Trump commuted sentences to time already served in fourteen cases. Their names, from a list embedded as an image, are:
- Stewart Rhodes,
- Kelly Meggs,
- Kenneth Harrelson,
- Thomas Caldwell,
- Jessica Watkins,
- Roberto Minuta,
- Edward Vallejo,
- David Moerschel,
- Joseph Hackett,
- Ethan Nordean,
- Joseph Biggs,
- Zachary Rehl,
- Dominic Pezzola, and
- Jeremy Bertino.
Here is the list of J6 commutations.
Everybody else is being granted a "full, complete and unconditional pardon." pic.twitter.com/jdnWXwcr5U— Jon Herold (@patel_patriot) January 21, 2025
Stewart Rhodes is the founder and president of Oath Keepers. Most of the other thirteen commutation recipients seem to have organized some kind of response. In 1500 other cases, Trump granted a “full, complete and unconditional pardon.” This doesn’t fully clear their names, but it does get them out of jail.
Pardons also cancel such “lingering punishments” as those forbidding ex-convicts to vote, own or carry a gun, etc. Commutations, in contrast, do not. This would indicate that Trump doesn’t entirely trust those fourteen not to commit violent acts. Not, that is, without a far more thorough investigation than has taken place so far. But at least with a commutation, those fourteen don’t have to wait for any investigation to play out.
Ironical reactions and further Presidential actions
The estranged son of one pardon recipient, Guy Reffitt, has changed residency and bought a gun. That last is supremely ironical. According to the ideology he clearly served through his acts (including using wiretaps to gather incriminating evidence, which he then laid before the Capitol Police), no person, except a law-enforcement officer, an active-duty military service member, a Very Important Person, or such person’s bodyguard, should own, carry, or so much as touch, much less discharge, a firearm.
Guy Reffitt had faced a seven-year-and-three-month sentence merely for being present on January 6, 2021. With his pardon, he can reunite with members of his family other than his estranged son Jackson. Jackson Reffitt actually says he is “terrified” of his father now.
Jackson Reffitt, who ratted out his own father Guy Reffitt to the FBI for his role in the January 6th protests, now says he is “terrified” and has bought himself a gun after Donald Trump issued a blanket pardon to all those involved. pic.twitter.com/fr9BfhcNKa— Ben Kew (@ben_kew) January 21, 2025
In another, more consequential action, President Trump revoked the security clearances of most of the fifty-one spooks who pooh-poohed the Hunter Biden Laptop. The remaining two of the fifty-one are now deceased. Trump also canceled the security clearance of Ambassador John Bolton, the King of Warmongers. He had published a spiteful memoir in 2019 – and might have disclosed classified information in that book.
The Presidentalso ordered an investigation to find out who else had a hand in the pooh-pooh letter. So perhaps some others, whom Biden could not pardon in time, will face disciplinary – or criminal – action.Trumpexplained this in his Executive Order:
Holding Former Government Officials Accountable for Election Interference and Improper Disclosure of Sensitive Governmental Information
Three names will no doubt be familiar to most: James R. Clapper, Jr., Leon E. Panetta, and John O. Brennan.
Other actions
These are only some of a slew of Executive Orders Trump signed, some at the Capital One Arena where several Inaugural festivities took place, and some in the Oval Office in the full presence of the White House Press Corps. By two such orders, Trump withdrew – again – from the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organization (see also here). This latter EO also means that the proposed World Pandemic Treaty is dead.
In another EO, the new President revoked Law-of-the-Soil birthright citizenship as extended to the children of illegal aliens. Thus, within thirty days of yesterday, it shall be
the policy of the United States that no department or agency of the United States government shall issue documents recognizing United States citizenship, or accept documents issued by State, local, or other governments or authorities purporting to recognize United States citizenship, to persons: (1) when that person’s mother was unlawfully present in the United States and the person’s father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth, or (2) when that person’s mother’s presence in the United States was lawful but temporary, and the person’s father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth.
The above applies to “birth tourists” as well as to “anchor babies.” Note that, per this policy, Wong Kim Ark would still have won citizenship, because his parents were lawful permanent residents at the time of his birth. U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898). Nevertheless the American Civil Liberties Union has already filed suit against this EO. So the long-overdue legal test of the limits of the Law of the Soil will at last take place.
Two pardons President Biden failed to issue
Remarkably, President Biden failed to pardon two other persons who troubled the new President’s peace in arguably unlawful ways. One is Cassidy Hutchinson, who gave hearsay evidence to the January 6 Committee that Trump, on January 6, 2021, struck a Secret Service member and lunged for the steering wheel of his limousine. The other is Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman USA, who perjured himself before the Senate in 2019. The Senate was then trying the first of Trump’s two impeachments.
Rachel Vindman, the now-retired colonel’s wife, is worried.
Rachel Vindman, the wife of Alexander Vindman, is angry President Biden didn’t issue a sweeping pardon to her and her family. pic.twitter.com/jlsHRLDjRz— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) January 20, 2025
Alexander Vindman’s twin brother Eugene now represents Virginia’s Seventh District. Rumors implicate him, too, in giving false evidence that Trump was some sort of “Kievan Candidate” or “Muscovite Candidate.”
What, if any, action Trump will take against either man, he hasn’t disclosed. But Trump has made clear that he is a different kind of President. He is far more willing to act – and, like Jefferson before him, has taken down a tyrannical apparatus. And a mendacious apparatus, too – one given to promulgating false information to scare the public into acquiescence.
Even now Trump is cleaning house – while preparing to challenge more instances of leftist “settled law.”
Terry A. Hurlbut has been a student of politics, philosophy, and science for more than 35 years. He is a graduate of Yale College and has served as a physician-level laboratory administrator in a 250-bed community hospital. He also is a serious student of the Bible, is conversant in its two primary original languages, and has followed the creation-science movement closely since 1993.
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