拜登团队考虑在特朗普承诺“报复”之前全面赦免
【中美创新时报2024 年 12 月 5 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）白宫官员认为，当选总统唐纳德·J·特朗普选择党派战士担任高级执法职务表明他将对他的敌人进行报复。《纽约时报》记者Peter Baker 和 Erica L. Green对此作了下述详细报道。
据知情人士透露，拜登总统的工作人员正在讨论他是否应该对当选总统唐纳德·J·特朗普 (Donald J. Trump) 的一大批敌人进行全面赦免，以保护他们免受特朗普上任后威胁的“报复”。
这个想法是先发制人地将行政赦免范围扩大到一系列可能犯下任何罪行的现任和前任政府官员，这实际上阻止了下一任总统承诺的报复行动。
白宫官员并不认为这些潜在的赦免对象确实犯下了罪行，但他们越来越担心，特朗普对司法部高级职位的选择表明，他将履行自己一再发誓要报复的誓言。即使调查没有结果，也可能拖延数月或数年，让这些人花费数十万美元的法律费用，并削弱他们的职业前景。
据知情人士透露，尽管拜登已经与团队的高级成员讨论过全面赦免问题，但有关赦免的讨论主要仍停留在工作人员层面。知情人士不愿透露姓名，以描述内部审议情况。此前，拜登赦免了他的儿子亨特，以免他因枪支和税收指控入狱。白宫周四拒绝置评。
拜登实际上通过赦免儿子预示了这一做法，不仅抹去了他实际被定罪的罪名，还抹去了他自 2014 年以来“可能犯下或参与”的任何罪行。这大概会阻止特朗普的司法部以任何不值得检察官指控的指控追究亨特·拜登的罪名，自特朗普第一任期以来，检察官一直在调查他。
如此全面的赦免行为，甚至涵盖了十年来的理论上的罪行，超出了至少自水门事件以来的任何范围，当时杰拉尔德·福特总统赦免了他声名狼藉的前任理查德·尼克松的任何罪行，尽管他没有受到指控。此前从未有总统发布过大规模赦免政府官员的命令，因为担心继任者会出于党派报复而试图起诉他们。
但选择前佛罗里达州司法部长、特朗普代理人帕姆·邦迪 (Pam Bondi) 执掌司法部，选择前特朗普助手、极右翼煽动者卡什·帕特尔 (Kash Patel) 担任联邦调查局局长，将这个问题推到了风口浪尖。帕特尔发誓要“追击”特朗普的批评者，甚至在 2023 年出版的一本书的附录中公布了一份约 60 人的名单，他认为这些是“行政部门深层政府成员”。
国会山的民主党人一直在敦促拜登尽其所能保护特朗普的目标。南卡罗来纳州众议员詹姆斯·E·克莱伯恩 (James E. Clyburn) 是特朗普最亲密的盟友之一，他在上个月特朗普当选后不久敦促白宫考虑先发制人赦免，并同样建议总统赦免他的儿子。
“我认为，下届政府中有很多即将上任的人在告诉我们他们是谁，”克莱伯恩在周四接受采访时说。 “我看到卡什·帕特尔说他要追捕谁，所以我们为什么不相信他们呢？这就是我对总统工作人员说的话：你们都必须相信这些人。”
他补充说：“我认为，如果离开这个办公室而不尽你所能保护他们决策的完整性，那将是一件不光彩的事情，尤其是当他们作为爱国者履行这些责任、为追求更完美的联盟而做必要的事情时。”
白宫法律顾问埃德·西斯克尔 (Ed Siskel) 正在主持此次讨论，这是一项更广泛计划的一部分，该计划旨在向更传统的获得赦免和减刑的人颁发赦免和减刑，包括那些被判犯有非暴力毒品罪的人，这是总统最后几天的惯例。参与讨论的其他助手包括白宫办公厅主任杰弗里·D·齐恩茨 (Jeffrey D. Zients)。
但在白宫官员权衡此事时，他们担心此举会加剧保守媒体传播的印象，即获得赦免的人确实做错了什么。至少有一些明显适合赦免的人私下表示，由于这种暗示，他们不想要赦免。其他担心报复的人也游说自己获得赦免。
被提名的人包括怀俄明州共和党前众议员利兹·切尼 (Liz Cheney)，她是调查特朗普在 2021 年 1 月 6 日国会大厦袭击事件中所扮演角色的两党委员会的副主席；安东尼·S·福奇博士曾是政府的顶级传染病专家，他关于新冠疫情的建议使他成为极右翼攻击的目标；杰克·史密斯是起诉特朗普的即将离任的特别顾问；以及加州民主党参议员亚当·B·希夫，他是特朗普第一次弹劾审判的首席众议院检察官。
切尼女士和福奇博士没有回应置评请求。希夫先生说，他认为一刀切的赦免不是一个好主意。“我敦促总统不要这样做，”他告诉《政治报》。“我认为这似乎是防御性的，没有必要。”
其他人说他们很纠结。奥利维亚·特洛耶曾是副总统迈克·彭斯的顾问，一直是候任总统的主要批评者，就在本周，她收到了帕特尔先生律师的一封信，威胁说，如果她在电视采访中不收回对他的批评，“就会对你提起诉讼”。
“我没有犯罪，”她在接受采访时说。但“现在是完全不同的时代。这是我们考虑过并担心的事情吗？是的。但我所做的只是说实话。我没有做错任何事，也没有犯罪，这就是问题复杂的地方。这是前所未有的时代。这就是让这件事变得如此困难的原因。”
特朗普辩称，针对他的许多刑事和民事案件是一场大规模“猎巫”的一部分，这场“猎巫”行动“武器化”了司法系统，他几乎不掩饰自己想利用执法系统报复敌人的愿望。他威胁要起诉民主党人、选举工作人员、执法官员、情报官员、记者、自己前工作人员以及不支持他的共和党人。
他在社交媒体上表示，切尼女士“应该为她对我们国家的所作所为受到起诉”，整个 1 月 6 日委员会“应该为他们的谎言和坦率地说的叛国罪受到起诉！”他说，副总统卡马拉·哈里斯“应该被弹劾和起诉”。他承诺“任命一名真正的特别检察官来追究”拜登先生和他的家人。他暗示退休的参谋长联席会议主席马克·米利将军应该被处决。
他说，纽约州总检察长莱蒂蒂亚·詹姆斯因商业欺诈案赢得 4.5 亿美元判决，以及主持审判的大法官亚瑟·F·恩戈隆“应该被逮捕并受到相应的惩罚”。他分享了一篇帖子，说 1 月 6 日保卫国会大厦的警察“应该受到指控，抗议者应该被释放”。他说，如果 Facebook 创始人马克·扎克伯格 (Mark Zuckerberg) 做了任何被视为非法的事情，“他将在监狱里度过余生。”
帕特尔自己的“深层政府”敌人名单不仅包括民主党人，还包括与他决裂或被视为障碍的前特朗普任命者，包括前国家安全顾问约翰·R·博尔顿 (John R. Bolton)、前司法部长威廉·P·巴尔 (William P. Barr)、前国防部长马克·T·埃斯珀 (Mark T. Esper)、前白宫法律顾问帕特·A·西波隆 (Pat A. Cipollone)、前中央情报局局长吉娜·哈斯佩尔 (Gina Haspel) 和现任联邦调查局局长克里斯托弗·A·雷 (Christopher A. Wray)。
“特朗普和帕特尔的起诉威胁是真实的，”乔治·W·布什总统手下的国土安全官员、独立检察官肯·斯塔尔 (Ken Starr) 在调查比尔·克林顿总统时担任高级顾问的保罗·罗森茨威格 (Paul Rosenzweig) 说。 “拜登有道义上的责任去保护所有为他冒着生命危险的人，并尽其所能保护他们免受特朗普的独裁冲动。他应该赦免特朗普或帕特尔敌人名单上的任何人。这是他能做的最起码的事。”
一些民主党人也附和了这一观点。宾夕法尼亚州众议员布伦丹·F·博伊尔在一份声明中表示：“他们瞄准的人包括执法人员、军人和其他毕生致力于保护这个国家的人。这些爱国者不应该因为做了正确的事情而生活在政治报复的恐惧之中。”
但其他民主党人表示，这会给民主党带来不良影响，使其看起来好像只保护自己，而不是保护社会上最无权无势的人。
“民主党应该支持改革和限制赦免权，”加利福尼亚州众议员罗·卡纳在接受采访时表示。“因持有大麻而被监禁的黑人和棕色人种所面临的不公正程度远远超过一些在国会或参议院任职的最有特权的人。”
题图：众议员利兹·切尼坐在美国国旗前的讲台上。前众议员利兹·切尼 (Liz Cheney) 曾担任调查 2021 年 1 月 6 日国会大厦袭击事件委员会的副主席，她是被列入可能获得赦免名单的人之一。来源：Doug Mills/纽约时报
附原英文报道：
Biden Team Considers Blanket Pardons Before Trump’s Promised ‘Retribution’
White House officials believe President-elect Donald J. Trump’s selection of partisan warriors for top law enforcement jobs indicates that he will pursue revenge against his perceived enemies.
Representative Liz Cheney sitting at a dais in front of American flags.
Former Representative Liz Cheney, who was vice chair of the committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, is among those whose names have been floated for potential pardons.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times
Peter BakerErica L. Green
By Peter Baker and Erica L. Green
Reporting from Washington
Dec. 5, 2024
President Biden’s staff is debating whether he should issue blanket pardons for a swath of President-elect Donald J. Trump’s perceived enemies to protect them from the “retribution” he has threatened after he takes office, according to people familiar with the discussion.
The idea would be to pre-emptively extend executive clemency to a list of current and former government officials for any possible crimes over a period of years, effectively short-circuiting the next president’s promised campaign of reprisals.
White House officials do not believe the potential recipients have actually committed crimes, but they have grown increasingly worried that Mr. Trump’s selections for top Justice Department positions indicate that he will follow through on his repeated vows to seek revenge. Even an investigation that results in no charges could drag on for months or years, costing those people hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees and crippling their career prospects.
The discussion of blanket pardons, reported earlier by Politico, remains primarily at a staff level although Mr. Biden has talked about it with senior members of the team, according to the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations. It comes after Mr. Biden pardoned his son Hunter to spare him from prison on gun and tax charges. The White House declined to comment on Thursday.
Mr. Biden in effect previewed the approach with his son’s pardon, wiping away not just the counts he was actually convicted of but any crimes he “may have committed or taken part in” since 2014. That presumably will forestall Mr. Trump’s Justice Department from going after Hunter Biden on any allegations that did not merit charges by the prosecutor who has investigated him since Mr. Trump’s first term.
Such a sweeping act of clemency covering even theoretical crimes over the course of a decade went beyond the scope of any since at least the Watergate era, when President Gerald R. Ford pardoned his disgraced predecessor, Richard M. Nixon, for any crimes even though he had not been charged. Never before has a president issued mass pardons of government officials for fear that a successor would seek to prosecute them out of partisan vindictiveness.
But the choices of Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general and Trump surrogate, to run the Justice Department and Kash Patel, a former Trump aide and far-right provocateur, to be director of the F.B.I. have put the issue front and center. Mr. Patel has vowed to “come after” Mr. Trump’s critics and even published a list of about 60 people he considered “members of the executive branch deep state” as the appendix to a 2023 book.
Democrats on Capitol Hill have been pressing Mr. Biden to do what he can to protect targets of Mr. Trump. Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, one of the president’s closest allies, urged the White House to consider pre-emptive pardons shortly after Mr. Trump’s election last month, and likewise recommended that the president pardon his son.
“I think there are a lot of people who are coming into this next administration who are telling us who they are,” Mr. Clyburn said in an interview on Thursday. “I’ve seen Kash Patel saying who he’s going after, and so why should we not believe them? And that’s what I said to the president’s staff: You all got to believe these people.”
He added: “I think it will be less than an honorable thing to do to leave this office and not do what you can to protect the integrity of their decision-making, especially when they were carrying out these responsibilities as patriots to this country, doing the things that are necessary in pursuit of a more perfect union.”
Ed Siskel, the White House counsel, is leading the discussions as part of a broader plan to issue pardons and commutations to more traditional recipients, including those convicted of nonviolent drug offenses, as is customary in a president’s final days. Among other aides participating in the discussions is Jeffrey D. Zients, the White House chief of staff.
But as White House officials weigh the matter, they are concerned that such a move would fuel the impression spread in conservative media that the recipients had actually done something wrong. At least some of those who would be obvious candidates for such pardons have said privately that they would not want one because of such an implication. Others who are concerned about retribution have lobbied for their own pardons.
Among those whose names have been floated are former Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, who was vice chair of the bipartisan committee that investigated Mr. Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol; Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the former top infectious disease expert for the government whose advice on Covid-19 made him a target of far-right attacks; Jack Smith, the outgoing special counsel who prosecuted Mr. Trump; and Senator-elect Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, who was a lead House prosecutor at Mr. Trump’s first impeachment trial.
Ms. Cheney and Dr. Fauci did not respond to requests for comment. Mr. Schiff said he did not think blanket pardons would be a good idea. “I would urge the president not to do that,” he told Politico. “I think it would seem defensive and unnecessary.”
Others said they were torn. Olivia Troye, a former adviser to Vice President Mike Pence who has been a leading critic of the president-elect, was threatened by a lawyer for Mr. Patel just this week in a letter saying that “litigation will be filed against you” if she did not retract her criticism of him during a television interview.
“I haven’t committed a crime,” she said in an interview. But “these are very different times. Is it something that we’ve considered and are concerned about? Yes. But all I’ve done is tell the truth. I’ve not done anything wrong, and I haven’t committed any crimes, and that’s where it’s a complicated issue. These are unprecedented times. That’s what makes this so hard.”
Mr. Trump, who has argued that the many criminal and civil cases against him are part of a sweeping “witch hunt” that has “weaponized” the justice system, has done little to disguise his desire to use the law enforcement system to get back at his foes. He has threatened to prosecute Democrats, election workers, law enforcement officials, intelligence officials, reporters, former members of his own staff and Republicans who do not support him.
He has said on social media that Ms. Cheney “should be prosecuted for what she has done to our country” and that the whole Jan. 6 committee “should be prosecuted for their lies and, quite frankly, TREASON!” He said that Vice President Kamala Harris “should be impeached and prosecuted.” He has promised to “appoint a real special prosecutor to go after” Mr. Biden and his family. He has suggested that Gen. Mark A. Milley, the retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, deserved execution.
He has said that Letitia James, the attorney general of New York who won a $450 million judgment against him for business fraud, and Justice Arthur F. Engoron, who presided over the trial, “should be arrested and punished accordingly.” He shared a post saying that the police officers who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6 “should be charged and the protesters should be freed.” He has said that if Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, does anything deemed illegal, “he will spend the rest of his life in prison.”
Mr. Patel’s own list of “deep state” enemies includes not just Democrats but former Trump appointees who broke with him or were seen as obstacles, including John R. Bolton, the former national security adviser; William P. Barr, the former attorney general; Mark T. Esper, the former defense secretary; Pat A. Cipollone, the former White House counsel; Gina Haspel, the former C.I.A. director; and Christopher A. Wray, the current F.B.I. director.
“Trump and Patel’s threats of prosecution are real,” said Paul Rosenzweig, a homeland security official under President George W. Bush and a senior counsel to the independent counsel Ken Starr in his investigation of President Bill Clinton. “Biden has a moral obligation to defend all of those who risked their livelihoods for him and protect them, as best he can, from Trump’s authoritarian impulses. He should issue a pardon to anyone on Trump or Patel’s enemies list. It’s the least he can do.”
Some Democrats have echoed the argument. “The people they’re targeting include law enforcement officers, military personnel and others who have spent their lives protecting this country,” Representative Brendan F. Boyle of Pennsylvania said in a statement. “These patriots shouldn’t have to live in fear of political retribution for doing what’s right.”
But other Democrats said it would reflect badly on the party, making it look as though it were only protecting its own rather than the most powerless in society.
“The Democrats should be for reforming and curtailing the pardon power,” Representative Ro Khanna of California said in an interview. “Black and brown individuals incarcerated because of marijuana possession have faced and continue to face far more injustice than some of the most privileged individuals who have served in the Congress or Senate.”
