Trump can’t pardon himself out of this one.
If the former president is convicted in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s new criminal case against him, he’ll have to serve five years before he can be pardoned.
Willis’s case, brought in Georgia, accuses Trump and 18 of his associates of forming an illegal enterprise to keep him in power, breaking numerous laws along the way. Trump was personally charged on 13 different counts. The top charge for racketeering, or RICO, carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.
Unlike in his two federal criminal cases, Trump can’t expect a Republican president to pardon him before or after he goes to trial. Nor can he rely on a Republican governor in Georgia to pardon him and get rid of the criminal charges.
Georgia is one of five states that doesn’t grant pardon power to the governor. Instead, the state’s constitution gives pardon power to the state’s five-member Board of Paroles and Pardons.
It’s a little more than that. Felons in Georgia can apply for a pardon after fully serving their time, paying their fines, and then waiting 5 years without committing additional crimes. There are additional requirements, but those are the big ones.
The RICO charge alone carries a minimum sentence of 5 years. Trump is looking at 5-20 years if convicted.
So really, at best, Trump could be pardoned in 10 years.
Well that’s a pretty stupid rule. What good is a pardon after your life is already ruined?
People with past felony convictions have a much harder time finding work and are often denied opportunities such as college admissions and scholarships. The pardon board exists to reward non-recidivism by scrubbing away those past felony convictions.
Speaking as an Atlanta resident, this type of bizzaro policymaking is super on-brand for GA. It’s somehow progressive towards the reformed and regressive against the wrongly convicted. One confident step forward and one confused step backward… as usual.
I think most states call that expunged, as in removed from your record after the punishment is served. This is the first time I’ve heard it called a pardon after the fact. You make some good points though. It’s definitely way better to not have a record than to have one.
That just gives them more time to sell “TRUMP 2032: HE’S BACK!” Hats
Lets be real, he will more than likely not make it to 2032 with the way he lives.
Don’t know why OP left out the part which explains why he’d have to wait five years for a pardon, but here it is:
The Georgia pardon application guidelines say the board will only consider applications from people who have completed a “full sentence obligation,” paid all fines, and “has been free of supervision (custodial or non-custodial) and/or criminal involvement for at least five consecutive years thereafter as well as five consecutive years immediately prior to applying.”
That seems like a pointless pardon, why have them in the first place?
Woo-hoo, we pardoned that corpse.
A pardon takes the crime off your criminal record, which is good for job applications and background checks.
I mean, Trump would probably be dead before he could be pardoned, but a 19 year old who got jailed for some weed can get a clear record at a fairly young age.
IDK, 25-30 isn’t particularly young imo, especially if you’ve been locked up for a lot of that time (and I say this as someone who is older than that). I don’t know the law in Georgia, but I’d much rather see felonies only need to be reported if they’re directly related to the job duties. Weed possession shouldn’t impact pretty much any jobs (unless you’re applying to a dispensary or something), though something like stealing company property would.
So instead of a pardon, they should require businesses to detail which felony convictions they need to know about during the hiring process, and perhaps that could be handled through an automated system where the applicant provides their details and an authorization to pull their record only for listed classes of felonies.
Perhaps I’m just being pessimistic, but I fully expect he’d permanently leave the country rather than spend a single day in jail. That said, perhaps it’s not all bad. We’d at least be rid of him finally.
I love that for him.
