Joe Biden will not be the 46th President of the United States. Yes, Joseph Biden is the duly elected president-elect of the United States — there is no doubt about that. The votes have been counted and recounted, the totals certified. The electoral college totals are clear. Biden won www.nytimes.com/.... Legal challenges have failed to change the outcome. The facts of the 2020 presidential election are unambiguous. Trump lost the electoral college and popular vote. It wasn’t even close.
When the noise abates and the dust settles and the insane antics of more than 100 Republican member of Congress and more than a dozen of their ethically and constitutionally challenged nut job colleagues in the Senate have failed to change that math, Mike Pence has one last dirty deed to do in service to Donald Trump. It won’t be to dispute the electoral college vote and declare Trump the ‘true’ winner of the election. It will be the presidential pardon Mike Pence issues to Donald Trump after Trump pardons Pence, resigns from office in the 11th hour and Mr. Pence momentarily assumes the duties of the President for how ever long Trump thinks Pence needs to hold that job in order to do the one last thing he needs Pence to do, pardon him. That will be the surprise ending of Trump’s reality show presidency. A seemingly endless tragic farce.
So the 46th president of the United States will not be Joe Biden but instead it will be Mike Pence — Biden will be the 47th president. The Pence presidency will be the shortest on record, a brief historical footnote at the end of the Trump saga, one final stain on the office of the presidency, a presidential pardon issued by President Mike Pence absolving Donald Trump of the numerous crimes he as committed during his lifetime.
That shameless maneuver — resigning the presidency in the last hours to allow your VP to assume the presidency for the sole purpose of pardoning you — that ploy should never be permitted to happen again. In the months that follow, there must be an amendment to the constitution to prevent all future presidents from abusing that aspect of their pardon power.
Pence’s pardon cannot shield Donald Trump from the legal jeopardy he faces in state court. I expect the state court battles to be long and drawn out, Trump and his family and businesses will one day face the music and pay the piper. Although the penalties will be largely financial, in the end, the Trump’s will pay. It won’t be justice, but they will pay.