Category: News

Trump is said to have discussed pardoning himself

President Trump has suggested to aides he wants to pardon himself in the final days of his presidency, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions.

The New York Times described it as a move that would mark one of the most extraordinary and untested uses of presidential power in American history.

In several conversations since Election Day, Mr. Trump has told advisers that he is considering giving himself a pardon and, in other instances, asked whether he should and what the effect would be on him legally and politically, according to the two people.

According to the New York Times, it was not clear whether he had broached the topic since he incited his supporters on Wednesday to march on the Capitol where some stormed the building in a mob attack.

Mr. Trump has shown signs that his level of interest in pardoning himself goes beyond idle musings.

He has long maintained he has the power to pardon himself, and his polling of aides’ views is typically a sign that he is preparing to follow through on his aims.

President Trump has also become increasingly convinced that his perceived enemies will use the levers of law enforcement to target him after he leaves office.

No president has pardoned himself, so the legitimacy of prospective self-clemency has never been tested in the justice system, and legal scholars are divided about whether the courts would recognize it.

But they agree a presidential self-pardon could create a dangerous new precedent for presidents to unilaterally declare they are above the law and to insulate themselves from being held accountable for any crimes they committed in office.

A White House spokesman did not respond to a request for comment, according to the New York Times.

Mr. Trump has considered a range of pre-emptive pardons for family, including his three oldest children — Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and Ivanka Trump — for Ms. Trump’s husband, the senior White House adviser Jared Kushner, and for close associates like the president’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani.

The president has expressed concerns to advisers that a Biden Justice Department might investigate all of them.

4 senior former Tigray leaders killed, 9 captured – Ethiopian army

The Ethiopian army has killed four senior members of the former Tigray region’s ruling party, state-affiliated media reported late Thursday.

Ethiopian National Defense Force’s Deployment Department Head, Brigadier General Tesfaye Ayalew told Ethiopian News Agency that they included TPLF spokesperson Sekoture Getachew.

The army claimed that Getachew had publicly admitted saying “lightning pre-emptive attack” against the Northern Command of the Ethiopian National Defense Force.

According to the army, former Ethiopian Television and Broadcast Authority General Director, Zeray Asgedom and several other top leaders of the TPLF have been killed.

The Ethiopian news agency reported that nine members of the TPLF, who led the region until being overthrown last year in the military campaign have been arrested.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced the military campaign against the TPLF on November 4, saying it came in response to TPLF-orchestrated attacks on federal army camps.

Abiy declared victory after federal forces took the regional capital Mekele in late November, but the UN says clashes persist in the region which remains very difficult to access for the media and humanitarians.

The leader of the TPLF, Debretsion Gebremichael, and other leaders of the party have been on the run since Mekele fell, and the army is offering a reward of 10 million Ethiopian Birr roughly $250,000 for information leading to their capture.

The TPLF dominated Ethiopian politics for three decades until the arrival of Abiy who was appointed in 2018 and progressively sidelined them.

Abiy has now appointed a new regional government in Tigray and declared an official end to the operation in November.

The fighting in Tigray has left thousands dead, according to the International Crisis Group (ICG) think tank, and sent tens of thousands of refugees streaming across the border into Sudan.

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