Trump again promises pardon for convicted rioters of January 6

Former President Donald Trump has promised to support amending an existing constitutional amendment as part of his attacks on Democratic opponent Vice President Kamala Harris and his claims that President Joe Biden is unfit for the Oval Office.

“I will support an amendment to the 25th Amendment to make clear that when a Vice President lies or engages in a conspiracy to cover up the incompetence of the President of the United States – when it is done with a cover-up by the President of the United States – that is grounds for immediate impeachment and immediate removal from office, because that is exactly what they have done,” Trump's baseless accusation said.

The 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution regulates the succession of the president in the event of his resignation or death. It allows the president – or his cabinet, by majority vote – to temporarily transfer the duties of the president to the vice president. It also provides Congress with the ability to decide who holds presidential power in the event of a split between the president and his cabinet.

In this case, Trump appears to be trying to create a mechanism for a situation he has no evidence of occurring – that Democrats covered up Biden's difficulties in performing his duties. But a mechanism for removing an official already exists – the power of Congress to initiate impeachment proceedings and then have them tried in the Senate. Trump has experience with this, as the only president to be impeached twice.

Trump was a hit at Saturday afternoon's rally in Wisconsin. His grand entrance from his campaign jet, Trump Force One, led straight to a crowd eager to hear him. He quickly came into form, promising his supporters that they would defeat “Comrade Kamala Harris” – his new favorite name for his Democratic presidential rival – and turn around a “failing nation” that he said was “a laughingstock around the world.”

“Over the past four years, our country has seen the disease and corruption of the Washington swamp exposed like never before,” Trump said, reviving his 2016 promise to drain the “swamp” of Washington bureaucrats.

For Trump's supporters – including a group of women he says follow him across the country, as well as a handful of men known as the “Front Row Joes” – the rally was an opportunity to cheer as he called Harris and Biden “stupid” and the worst elected politicians “in the history of our country,” insisting that “nobody has done as much damage as these people.”

To prove this point on Saturday, Trump argued that Biden and Harris had weaponized the government and abused law enforcement, saying that “Christians and pro-lifers are in prison for the crime of praying in public.” (During the rally, he did not give examples, but previously referenced the arrest of Paula Harlow, a woman convicted of obstructing access to a reproductive health clinic in Washington, D.C.; in that case, a group Harlow was a member of blocked patients from entering the clinic, injuring a nurse in the process.)

Trump argued that “good people” like Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro were locked up because they followed the advice of their lawyers. (Both were sentenced to four-month prison terms for contempt of Congress; both refused to sit before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.) And he said Democrats wanted to see him in prison because he “exposed their corruption.” (Trump was convicted in New York of 34 counts of fraud related to a cover-up of hush-money payments and faces counts of obstruction of justice and attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election; a third case, dismissed by a Trump-appointed federal judge, is currently under appeal.)

Trump claimed in a statement that his conviction was in the hush money case “because everyone recognizes there is no case because I did nothing wrong.” In a ruling, Manhattan District Court Judge Juan Merchan wrote that the delay in the verdict was to prevent the impression of election interference.

The former president also twice mentioned the name of his minor rival and later ally Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who he said will serve on a “panel of top experts to study the causes of the decades-long rise in chronic health problems and childhood diseases” and will develop a plan to “fight corruption” in government and international health organizations. The Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control, the World Health Organization and others, Trump claimed, “are dominated by corporate power and, in fact, China.”

Trump also promised to “sign an executive order prohibiting any federal employee from engaging in the restriction of free speech and to fire any federal bureaucrat who engages in domestic censorship,” as he claims there is no “free speech” in America because it has been taken away from us. (He said this, of course, from a podium in the middle of a field, surrounded by thousands of people, in a speech broadcast by some of the largest social platforms in existence worldwide today.)

His planned promise of an executive order appears to be tied to a lawsuit filed by two Republican attorneys general against the Biden administration's attempts to restrict misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccine. That case, Murthy v. Missouri, was dismissed by a 6-3 majority of the U.S. Supreme Court. Two Trump-appointed justices joined the court's liberal wing and Chief Justice John Roberts in saying the plaintiffs had failed to show a connection between the misinformation restrictions and official government actions.

Trump also promised to quickly review the cases of “all political prisoners wrongfully detained by the Harris regime” – that is, those convicted of crimes during the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol – once he takes office.

This week, two Capitol Police officers who were present at the Jan. 6 attack signed a letter supporting Harris's presidential candidacy.

“He put my life and the lives of my fellow Capitol Police officers in danger on January 6th. He doesn't care that five police officers died that day because he encouraged a mob of violent insurrectionists to march on the Capitol, and now he's trying to pardon those very same insurrectionists, pardon the people who pleaded guilty, who were on trial,” former Capitol Police Sgt. Harry Dunn told reporters. “He doesn't care about the Capitol Police or any other law enforcement agency.”