A pardon like Nixon's could be Trump's only way out

Reposted from 9/30/2020:

Given sore loser Trump's announcement Friday that he will not attend Biden's January 20th inauguration, and no doubt will be holed up in Mar-a-Lago with the drawbridges pulled up to deter various process-servers and prosecutors, I'm now more convinced that Trump will pardon himself (and more allies and family members, too) to escape the avalanche of federal charges he knows is more of a certainty after the riot he incited this week left at least five people dead and the Capitol defiled.

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From 9/30/2020.

Two more thoughts after watching the entire Tuesday debate night Presidential self-immolation.

1. It's really too bad Wisconsin voters can't cast a ballot on Nov. 3rd against GOP Senator and key Trump enabler Ron Johnson. Lucky voters in Maine, South Carolina, Kentucky and elsewhere get to punish a Senator who kept excusing Trump and failed to remove him after he was deservedly impeached.

Gerrymandered...and COVID-wracked...(a record virus hospitalization and death toll were reported today, thank you GOP)...and Foxconned Wisconsin sure has earned it. As Trump would say, it is what it is.

2. What came through Trump's uncontrolled self-destructiveness

was fear.

A lot of it.

Fear of a more appealing Biden, who is the tip of the people's spear. 

Fear of humiliation and defeat.

And fear of losing the incumbency's legal protections which he and AG Bill Barr and other administration enablers have stretched and corrupted to fit him for the last four years.

Which is why he's willing to upend absentee voting, crush the Constitution and obliterate what remains of American political normalcy by openly scheming to poison the election and/or remain in office even if Biden is certified the winner. 

And which is why he just might print and play his his own 'Get Out of (Federal) Jail Free' card by resigning and handing things off to VP Pence-the-Pardoner just prior to the January 20th transition with the compliant Pence having made the same kind of deal Richard Nixon made with then Vice-President Gerald Ford in 1974 - resignation in exchange for a full and complete pardon for any and all federal crimes committed - known or yet to have been discovered.

Because if Trump simply heads off on Air Force II to Mar-a-Lago a defeated ex-President, subpoenas and prosecutors from the Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service (and probably separately from New York State which are beyond the scope of a Presidential pardon) are coming for him, and he knows it.

A pardon would not stop state prosecutions.

A side bonus for Trump: he doesn't have to sit there in the January cold while Biden and Kamala Harris are sworn in and be a witness to his own disgrace.