Free Speech For People Seeks to File Amicus Brief in U.S. v. Stone

[Nevilledog]

Free Speech For People Seeks to File Amicus Brief in U.S. v. Stone on Behalf of Constitutional Law Professors


https://freespeechforpeople.org/free-speech-for-people-seeks-to-file-amicus-brief-in-u-s-v-stone-on-behalf-of-constitutional-law-professors/

Free Speech For People just filed an urgent motion before the federal district court in U.S. v. Stone on behalf of constitutional law Professors Jed Shugerman and Ethan Leib seeking permission to submit an amicus brief arguing that the court should not automatically accept the executive grant of clemency but rather should consider whether it may be unconstitutional.

Mr. Stone was convicted of seven felony counts, including obstructing a congressional investigation and witness intimidation, and sentenced to serve forty months in prison. The convictions stemmed from Stone’s efforts to impede Congress’s investigation into Russia’s interference with the 2016 presidential elections, crimes that Stone carried out in order to protect President Trump. As the sentencing judge, U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson, explained in her closing remarks, Mr. Stone “was prosecuted for covering up for the president.”

“When the Framers added the phrase “faithful execution” to the Constitution, for the president to ‘take Care that the laws be faithfully executed’ and for the presidential oath, they were drawing on a long English tradition of this phrase signifying limited powers on behalf of the public interest, and rejecting the unlimited prerogatives of kings,” says Jed Shugerman, Professor of Law at Fordham Law School. “These republican limits are similar to fiduciary duties against self-dealing. Thus, pardons and commutations that are in self-interest and against the public interest are unfaithful execution of the office and are constitutionally invalid.”

“The pardon power is not above constitutional scrutiny and is not some absolute royal prerogative,” says Ethan J Leib, Professor of Law at Fordham Law School. “The President took an oath to “faithfully execute” his office and that can limit his ability to pardon himself, his co-conspirators, or his friends and family–when that power is not exercised in the public interest.”

*snip*

[SharonClark]

1. Good for them.

Trump must be opposed on every issue and from every angle.