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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   23324 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 24, 2025

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And no, having Biden stating they were done on his order now doesn't cure the issue; he would have had to have said so during his term.

Sorry, can you explain more about this? I thought that the issue at hand was that we didn't know whether Biden had approved the autopen usage, whether his staff had used it and he had later approved it, or whether his staff had used it without his knowledge? I would've thought that he could say now "Oh yeah, I had definitely approved that" and then it counts as approved (as we can't really tell the difference between him approving before or after).

The rest of what you said makes sense to me - so even though he claims the executive orders are invalid, it doesn't actually matter because in all likelihood he can just cancel them anyways using his current presidential authority.

I think Nyb is talking about cases where it could be clearly demonstrated that the President was not involved in the approval process. Later saying he would have approved it anyways wouldn't cure that.

Are there any cases where this has been established beyond reasonable doubt?

I would consider even a short verbal exchange ("Mr President, we have another ten pardons ... " -- "Just sign the damn things!") to be sufficient that the president had granted approval.

So the only cases where the non-involvement of the president could be established beyond reasonable doubt would be either with a staffer confessing or them bragging in writing about being able to bypass Biden.

Given Trump's history of outrageous claims on little to no evidence going back to Birtherism, I would be very surprised if he had any evidence which would convince a jury, rather than just blabbering.

Perhaps not, but you are the one bringing up the context of a criminal trial, which does not otherwise seem relevant.

Pardons are, for better or worse, a topic in the realm of criminal procedure in that they decide if someone will go to prison or not. I think it is reasonable that the standard for forged pardons applied is the same as for other criminal evidence.

How about Biden at the time asserting he didn't sign an executive order.

I think Nyb is talking about cases where it could be clearly demonstrated that the President was not involved in the approval process. Later saying he would have approved it anyways wouldn't cure that.

Thank you, that clears things up - I didn't realize there were any such cases.

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