Pardon Obama NOW -- the Brilliant Strategy for Trump

There is, as everyone knows (or should know), a new classified memo, a copy of which is being held in a secure area of Congress.  The memo describes, we are led to believe, efforts on the part of people in the Justice Department and FBI to conduct a program of spying on the 2016 Trump campaign on behalf of the Obama Administration, which was engaged in an effort to ensure the election of Hillary Clinton.

That the effort failed is pretty ironic -- if the top law enforcement entity in the world couldn't find anything worthy of feeding to the press to bring down the Trump campaign, and had to hire people to make it up and then use the fiction to justify further spying to a FISA court -- well, maybe our FBI isn't as good as we thought.  Or they were, but the nation's commitment to draining the swamp was even stronger.

At any rate, most of the Republicans in Congress, and as I write this I believe exactly one Democrat, have gone to the secure facility to read the memo.  They cannot talk about it, of course, and it is a bit surprising that more has not leaked to date (which tells you about which party can keep secrets, I guess), but we are hearing some things.

What we are hearing is not pretty.  If most of it can be inferred and believed, the Obama Administration, in the form of senior officials in the Justice Department and the FBI, conspired to destroy the candidacy of Donald Trump, an American citizen, by spying on him.  They misused the FISA process by commissioning the creation of a work of fiction about Mr. Trump and then using it to obtain a FISA warrant for the spying.

This is pretty awful.  Corruption is bad, and gross, politically-motivated corruption is appalling and must never be allowed to happen again.

So let us stipulate that the above happened, and that former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former FBI Director James Comey were aware of it, and officials in the Hillary Clinton campaign, including the candidate herself, likely would been aware as well.  If that is the case, it is hard to see where the former president would not also have been somehow aware, unless there was a second conspiracy among Lynch and Comey and others to insulate Obama -- even if they were convinced Hillary would win and nothing would ever happen to him.

We stipulate the above, and we know that some pretty familiar names -- Lynch, Comey, Rosenstein, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Ohr and others -- are going to be charged with whatever crimes apply, and those still in government will be summarily dismissed (why are they still working now?).  They should be, if it turns out they are involved, as we know Strzok, Page, McCabe and Ohr certainly are.

OK, so say that I am President Trump.  I know that it is likely that the guilty will be punished eventually; the president knows that.  A lot of the subsequent news will be about who does or does not get punished, and how long the sentences are.  So let's think of this from the most advantageous perspective for President Trump.

I did, and I have an absolutely brilliant strategy for him.

President Trump, I recommend that as soon as the memo comes out, you issue a pardon to Barack Obama for any Federal crime associated with the corruption of the Justice Department and FBI in conspiring to destroy the 2016 election by illegally spying on the Trump campaign.

Sure, Obama may or may not have had anything to do with the spying.  But in a purely political way, a pardon is exactly what is needed.

First, it gives President Trump the high road -- instead of a constitutional crisis, or whatever you would call a trial involving a former president abusing his role, we are left with a presumption of guilt, without having to go to trial, make a case or risk an acquittal.  Obama, along with Richard Nixon the only president ever pardoned, will be diminished forever in the eyes of the public, while Trump will look like the better man.  And that's OK, because we really don't care if Obama goes to jail; we just want the stain of the scandal appropriately and deservedly applied to him.

Second, it increases the likelihood of 100% guilty verdicts on those for whom there is a case and who don't plead out their sentence.  Juries and judges like to see the top dog get his due, and if they see Obama walk, they're less likely to let the actual perpetrators get off.

Third, it will keep the corruption story in the news far longer than it might be otherwise.  Pardons of an ex-president are the kind of news even CNN has to keep talking about, and there's no spin on it that is going to make the left sound good.  Hardly any Democrat is going to want to concede that it is ever OK for the awesome power of the American Federal judiciary to be co-opted for political purposes to damage a political opponent's campaign.

I could probably write a book on this, but I'm sure your mind is taking this in some further directions, and they're all good.

President Trump -- I strongly urge you to consider this simple pardon.

Copyright 2018 by Robert Sutton
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