Raw Story

A pair of right-wing scholars from the American Enterprise Institute, Marc Thiessen and Danielle Pletka, made a plea to President Joe Biden in The Washington Post on Monday: Pardon Donald Trump on your way out the door.

This comes as Trump's remaining criminal cases appear to be in varying stages of dead or in limbo following his re-election — which they argue should be defeated outright to let America heal.

"From a legal standpoint, Trump does not need a presidential pardon. Special counsel Jack Smith is in the process of shutting down his federal investigations. If Smith does not close his cases, Trump can simply fire him the second he takes office. At the state level, Biden has no pardon power, but the cases against Trump appear to be falling apart," they wrote.

However, they argued that the country as a whole would be unified by this decision.

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Their key argument is that in doing so, Biden could head off a cycle of partisan use of the state against political candidates: "Absent decisive action, we could find ourselves at the start of a vicious cycle, in which Republicans now argue they are justified in weaponizing the justice system to go after Democrats, and Democrats then feel free to retaliate when they regain power — sending the country spiraling into a miasma of partisan litigation."

Such a move, which was also previously urged by outgoing Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), has happened in the past, with former President Gerald Ford pardoning Richard Nixon following his resignation over the Watergate scandal — a decision that, far from healing the country, proved wildly unpopular and contributed to Ford's undoing in the subsequent election of 1976.

Biden, for his part, already committed against pardoning Trump when they ran against each other in 2020. But Thiessen and Pletka insist he should reconsider, and that this time it would make the country better off.

They concluded by quoting Biden's 2020 victory speech, where he said “To everything there is a season — a time to build, a time to reap, a time to sow. And a time to heal. This is the time to heal in America.” Should Biden do what they are advocating, they wrote, "history can still record that, in the waning days of his presidency, Joe Biden finally delivered on that promise."

Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy told Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) that she didn't need to see women's private parts to enforce anti-transgender bathroom bans because she could tell who was a biological woman by looking at them.

During a Sunday interview on Fox News, Mace explained her crusade against Rep.-elect Sarah McBride (R-DE) by suggesting she had a fear of being raped in the bathroom by the first transgender member of Congress.

The two women repeatedly misgendered McBride.

"I'm a rape survivor, and I know how vulnerable women are in personal and private spaces, and I'm going to make sure that I protect all women and girls," Mace said to defend a bathroom ban enacted by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA).

Campos-Duffy noted that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has pointed out that Republicans would resort to inspecting women's private parts to determine who could use which bathroom.

"No," Mace replied. "I can first of all she can't even she's not telling the truth, no one has ever said that women should drop trow. That's that's really disgusting, and to say that about me, a survivor of rape and sexual abuse."

The Fox News host acknowledged that McBride had agreed to abide by Johnson's bathroom ban. She also said she could tell which people were transgender by looking at them.

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"I've seen [United States Assistant Secretary for Health] Rachel Levine," she said. "I know that's not a woman. So, I don't understand this idea."

Mace nodded in agreement.

"But Nance Mace, you've taken a lot of abuse for standing up for the rights of women, especially in their private spaces, and we appreciate that," Campos-Duffy remarked.

Watch the video below from Fox News.

CNN host Dana Bash was forced to calm down a Republican senator on Sunday morning who launched into a furious rant as she attempted to read a police report documenting Donald Trump DOD nominee Pete Hegseth's interactions with a woman that has led to allegations of sexual assault.

Noting that Sen. Markwayne Mullins (R-OK) previously stated he thought the former Fox News personality was merely "flirting" with the woman at a conference in California and was therefore innocent, Bash began reading the damaging police report on air which led to the GOP lawmaker's outburst.

'He was flirting with a different girl and the other girl was trying to flirt with Pete," the lawmaker argued. "The Jane Doe here, that is unmentioned. They also said that she was holding his arm as they were leaving and that Pete was intoxicated and the Jane Doe was not."

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"They obviously said multiple people said that she was aggressively to the point of –– aggressively –– use the word aggressively flirting towards him when they were in the __."

"Senator, senator, I wasn't done, " Bash interrupted and then repeated, "I wasn't done, I wasn't done, I wasn't done," as he continued to talk over her.

When she finally got him to quiet down, she added, "You're giving his side and it was definitely on the police report, it definitely was what she said and what he said –– you're absolutely right. I hadn't gotten there but I appreciate you giving that other side for me. So I guess that just kind of answers the question which is, from your perspective, you believe his part of the story and not hers."

Watch below or at the link.

- YouTube youtu.be

ABC host Jonathan Karl pressed Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) after he suggested that FBI background checks for President-elect Donald Trump's nominees weren't necessary.

During a Sunday interview on ABC's This Week program, Karl noted that Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) had called for an FBI background check for defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth, who faced sexual misconduct allegations.

"As you know, there haven't been FBI background checks for any of these nominees," Karl explained to Hagerty. "Do you agree with her, though, that this should happen before we get to confirmation votes?"

"I don't think the American public cares who does the background checks," Hagerty insisted. "What the American public cares about is to see the mandate that they voted in delivered upon."

"So are you saying you don't care about FBI background checks?" the surprised ABC host replied. "Should we just do away with them, that you can go ahead and not do this? It's been standard practice, as you know, for a long time, but you're saying do away with it?"

Hagerty declined to definitively say the FBI should conduct background checks.

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"I've been through it myself," the senator insisted. "I've been through confirmation as well. They need to do these checks expeditiously."

"The FBI, I think the American public's got great concerns about how weaponized it's become," he added. "They need to get on with this. We'll get this done."

Watch the video below from ABC News.

Just because Donald Trump won re-election doesn't mean his legal problems will go up in a puff of smoke with a big assist from the conservative Supreme Court.

The president-elect was granted a lifeline by the court on July 1st, when Chief Justice John Roberts penned a 6-3 opinion that granted the former president with blanket immunity if whatever he does is within his constitutional duty.

That ruling, in turn, undercut several criminal indictments the president-elect was facing in both federal and state courts as well as sentencing after being convicted in a Manhattan courtroom on fraud charges.

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However, as Bloomberg is reporting, after Trump returns to the Oval Office, he will still have to deal with a handful of civil suits that are beyond the reach of the nation's highest court.

As Bloomberg's Zoe Tilman wrote, "President-elect Donald Trump will bring legal baggage to the White House in January, even if he succeeds in pausing or getting rid of the four federal and state criminal indictments against him."

Specifically, the re-elected ex-president will still have to put up a defense in at least a dozen lawsuits that will proceed despite his election win.

"Ongoing cases include attempts to hold him liable for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, and his appeals of a $454 million New York civil fraud verdict and rulings that he sexually abused and defamed writer E. Jean Carroll," the report notes before adding that "Trump is a defendant in eight lawsuits over the Jan. 6 attack brought by law enforcement officers, congressional Democrats and the estate of a police officer who died," which a judge has already ruled is not absolved by the immunity ruling.

Trump's lawyers are also attempting to fend off a civil suit filed by member of the so-called "Central Park Five" after he made allegedly defamatory comments about them during a presidential debate in September.

The report adds that the president-elect has a few civil suits of his own that his lawyers filed that will also occupy some of his time that include suing journalist Bob Woodward, CBS, ABC and CNN.

You can read more here (subscription required).

New York State Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan has issued an indefinite delay in the sentencing of Donald Trump, who was found guilty in a criminal trial and convicted on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to influence the outcome of the 2016 election, in the so-called "hush money" case. In response, incoming Trump White House communications director Steven Cheung issued a statement whitewashing Trump's record.

Trump's attorneys have asked for the case to be dismissed, or for the judge to overturn the verdict, ABC News reports, adding: "If Judge Merchan tosses the conviction, he could order a new trial -- which would be delayed for at least four years until Trump leaves office -- or dismiss the indictment altogether."

In that same order, Judge Merchan also allowed Trump's legal team to submit a motion to dismiss, as Law.com reports.

Merchan did not schedule a new sentencing date.

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Professor of Law and former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance observed: "Sad day for the rule of law."

"Understand that the Judge hasn't ruled yet & the DA maintains the conviction is proper. But the delay in sentencing is just another chink in the armor of justice," she noted.

U.S. Senator-elect Adam Schiff (D-CA), posting the judge's order, remarked, "If anyone ever wanted to see what “justice delayed is justice denied” looks like in legal form, this is it."

Meanwhile, Trump communications director Steven Cheung made several controversial claims in a statement reported by The Guardian's Hugo Lowell: "In a decisive win for President Trump, the hoax Manhattan Case is now fully stayed and sentencing is adjourned. President Trump won a landslide victory as the American People have issued a mandate to return him to office and dispose of all remnants of the Witch Hunt cases. All of the sham lawfare attacks against President Trump are now destroyed and we are focused on Making America Great Again."

The case was not a "hoax." A grand jury indicted Trump and a New York jury convicted him on all counts.

Sentencing is not "adjourned," but delayed.

Trump did not win in a "landslide victory," nor does he have a "mandate," political pundits and experts say.

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Earlier this week MSNBC's Chris Hayes wrote, "The final 2024 election tally is almost in. It should end the MAGA mandate myth."

Trump won less than 50% of the popular vote, meaning he did not win a majority. His popular vote margin, according to Cook Political Report's vote tracker, is now at a slim 1.62 percentage points, or just less than 2.5 million votes. Some states are still counting, including California which has over 350,000 ballots left to count.

Four days ago, CNN's Harry Enten reported Trump's popular vote victory ranks him near the bottom: 44th out of 51.

The legal cases are not all destroyed. The Georgia case has not been dismissed. The New York case that Cheung mentions is not finished. Even the classified documents case that was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon is being appealed, at least for now.

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