NEW - Biden says "The president wrote a very generous letter," referring to Trump. "Because it was private, I won't talk about it until I talk to him. But it was generous."
This taken from the US Military Voice Telegram Channel.
I'm betting the 'generosity' was the deal Biden cut with Trump...
What would you be pardoning?
Are you hearing yourself? You pardon people for crimes they were convicted of. Are you suggesting Presidents just go around pardoning people for no reason? To shield them from some future prosecution maybe? Are you aware of that ever happening? How many people have US Presidents pardoned that weren't found guilty of a crime? Of what value would be the pardon.
You pardon people for crimes they have committed, whether there's been a conviction or not, whether there's been an indictment or not, whether they've been charged or not. The individual can choose to accept the pardon or not. Accepting it is seen as an admission of guilt.
A notable example would be Jimmy Carter preemptively pardoning the 500,000 Vietnam draft offenders (causing many of them who had fled abroad to return home).
More on-the-nose, perhaps, would be Ford's pardoning of Nixon. His very broad preemptive pardon literally reads "a full and unconditional pardon for any crimes that he might have committed against the United States as president."
The word you're looking for is amnesty.
"A pardon is distinguished from "a commutation of sentence," which cuts short the term; "a reprieve," which is a temporary halt to punishment, particularly the death penalty, pending appeal or determination of whether the penalty should be reduced; "amnesty," which is a blanket forgiving of possible criminal charges due to a change in public circumstances " https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/pardon
I'm sure you're smart enough to spell it out. Pardoning is a legal act that undoes another legal act (conviction). What has the Supreme Court said about pre-pardoning people for crimes they haven't even been convicted of and what would I even type in to find that?
And fuck Google.