There seems little doubt that Ivanka Trump is headed for prison time after reading recent articles by The Nation and an interview with Rep. Adam Schiff by ABC News.
The Nation dropped a pretty big bomb on Ivanka in March 2018 in the form of an article discussing whether or not she should be indicted.
The article never directly answers the question, instead it details her possible crimes.
More importantly, the article essentially shreds her usual defense.
Amy Wilentz, a longtime contributing editor at The Nation and former Jerusalem correspondent for The New Yorker, offered the following assessment:
- Here’s how her defense goes: She’s not smart enough. She’s a mommy, she’s too busy with the kids. She only cares about women’s issues. But that’s not how Ivanka has always represented herself in her books. There, she’s a fully viable member of the Trump Organization, in fact sometimes solely in charge of various projects. I just don’t buy the stupid-Ivanka theory. She may not be the world’s greatest intellectual, but she is a woman who knows how to do business.
Here is the final exchange between Wilentz and Jon Wiener who conducted the interview:
- JW: Maybe she’s just inexperienced and has poor judgment about public life—since really all she knows about is the Trump Organization, and the rules that the Trump Organization follows are a little different from the rules that the White House should follow.
- AW: But that doesn’t work as a justification. It’s something I’ve thought about a lot because I’ve studied the development of kleptocracies in other countries in the world, and this is how it works. People come in, they look like a little bit shady; they seem a little bit different from the leaders who preceded them. Then suddenly you realize they’re using the office to advance their own business interests.
- JW: We used to say that Ivanka and Jared were moderating forces. We wanted them in the Trump White House because they were social liberals, and because they were a lot more reasonable than Trump himself.
- AW: And indeed they are social liberals, but so what? So what if they think it’s bad for Trump to support Nazis or to kowtow to the NRA? Are they stopping Trump from pursuing those goals? No, and nor do they think they will. They are showing a nice face while they suck money from the job. Ivanka may be the mom of the Instagrammable Arabella, the cutest girl who has ever lived; but Ivanka is also a shark. The way Ivanka and Jared mix their business interests with their government jobs is a grotesque abuse of power.
And if she thinks her daddy can simply pardon her problems away, she likely has another think coming.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-C), the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, more than adequately covered that subject last October during an interview with ABC’s “This Week.”
“I don’t think the president’s power is all that absolute as people have been suggesting,” Schiff stated before explaining that a president cannot pardon someone as part of an effort to obstruct justice.
“The president cannot pardon people if it’s an effort to obstruct justice, if it’s an effort to prevent Bob Mueller, others, from learning about the president’s own conduct,” he said.
“If it were truly unlimited, it would have the effect of nullifying vast portions of the Constitution,” Schiff continued.
“The president could tell Justice Department officials, and other law enforcement, to violate the law and that if they did and it was ever brought up — they were brought up on charges — he would pardon them. And one principle of constitutional interpretation, is you don’t interpret one power as nullifying all the others,” he concluded
.@RepAdamSchiff says presidential pardon power not absolute: "The president cannot pardon people if it's an effort to obstruct justice." pic.twitter.com/Y6VN28xn1F
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) October 29, 2017
You must be logged in to post a comment Login