Trump's Covid Advisor Scott Atlas Has Resigned

[isla]

Rats and sinking ships spring to mind..

Scott Atlas has resigned as special adviser to Donald Trump, a White House official said on Monday, after a controversial four months during which he attacked science-based public health measures and clashed repeatedly with other members of the coronavirus taskforce.

“I am writing to resign from my position as Special Advisor to the President of the United States,” Atlas said in a letter to Trump dated 1 December, according to Fox News, which first reported his resignation. Atlas later confirmed his resignation in a tweet.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...-covid-adviser

[TomF]

Apparently hired on a 130 maximum timeline, per regulation... and the date was almost here. Resigning meant getting out before getting dumped on January 20, but also meant not having to risk a Senate confirmation travesty for the sake of 6 more weeks of garbage

[icyb]

Trump said he would hire the best now they can all just go away.

[Garret]

Rats and sinking ships spring to mind..

Scott Atlas has resigned as special adviser to Donald Trump, a White House official said on Monday, after a controversial four months during which he attacked science-based public health measures and clashed repeatedly with other members of the coronavirus taskforce.

“I am writing to resign from my position as Special Advisor to the President of the United States,” Atlas said in a letter to Trump dated 1 December, according to Fox News, which first reported his resignation. Atlas later confirmed his resignation in a tweet.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...-covid-adviser

I'm looking forward to an administration that does not do business via twitter.

[LeeG]

And he had so much to offer

[Hugh Conway]

Don’t worry he’s a job for life with the rest of the murderers at the Hoover Institute

[__floater__]

Trump Twitter break-down in 3...2...

[David G]

Just more chaos & dysfunction. I imagine it will continue to escalate for the final meltdown.

[TomF]

You saw the omnibus pardon for Mike Flynn? Pardoning not only what he pled guilty to, but anything that any investigation by any official or law enforcement agency or grand jury might have stumbled into, or might stumble into in the future. Expressly saying that all of those things are "moot" and can't be pursued in the least. It was quite a bit of writing, finding a way to pardon him not just for colluding with Russia at Donnie's request but also for whatever he could have done at Turkey's behest on his own time, without ever saying the word "Turkey."

NY Times now reporting that there are similar pre-emptive pardon chats occurring respecting Giuliani. Presumably to include chatting up Ukraine proxies for Russia, and also for doing whatever he's doing about this post-election b#llsh#ttery. Which God knows will be found to be illegal in some ways or other.

How big is the list of pardons going to be, eventually? Will Scott Atlas get pardoned for reckless endangerment leading to unnecessary mass deaths? It's a "given" that he'll try to insulate anybody named "Trump," but how much farther down the sewer will he go before he leaves the little people on the hook, as has been his business practice forever? Will his Cabinet members be pardoned, for instance, for the child abuse of causing hundreds of kids to be essentially orphaned at the border, and kept in confinement? Or for their various roles in lethal COVID f#ckery?

[skuthorp]

This 'pardon crap is just that CRAP. A travesty allowing crimes against the state and the people to be gotten away with, and then you have the crime boss himself who will also manage to weasle out from under, and Biden will say it's for the best to 'heal the nation'. donald is a murderer, a mass murderer, and he'll walk free.

[LeeG]

Don’t worry, Trump is still the president.


https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/...72740483026944


Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
We won Michigan by a lot!

[TomF]

This 'pardon crap is just that CRAP. A travesty allowing crimes against the state and the people to be gotten away with, and then you have the crime boss himself who will also manage to weasle out from under, and Biden will say it's for the best to 'heal the nation'. donald is a murderer, a mass murderer, and he'll walk free.

Biden won't say that. Biden will say that it's best that an independent Department of Justice - or perhaps an independent Special Prosecutor with the power to indict - investigates and indicts as the evidence leads.

He will not walk free. The present rush to do things like sell arms and shockingly advanced aircraft to the UAE for their joint use with Russia to destabilize Libya and install Russian influence there ... even if it's somehow blocked by Congress will almost certainly be found to be yet more collusion and quid-pro-quo exchange with foreign powers, by POTUS. Against US interests, but in his personal interests somehow.

This stuff will be found, and more. And prosecuted.

The larger question is whether his out-of-office power over his Trumpists will be sufficient to spark major civil violence. And what Republican governors might do with their National Guard contingents, were such to occur. I figure Trump is not gonna get much love from Kemp or Ducey in that regard, where he might have once.

[Hugh Conway]

I’m eagerly awaiting the people who say it’s hyperbolic to call Republicans criminals defending the blanket pardons

[David G]

I’m eagerly awaiting the people who say it’s hyperbolic to call Republicans criminals defending the blanket pardons

Can't imagine THAT ever happening. I mean... wouldn't that be hypocritical?

[Keith Wilson]

Remember: Anyone who is pardoned no longer has 5th Amendment protection against self-incrimination. They can be forced to testify under oath, jailed for contempt if they don't, and jailed for perjury if they lie. In theory, were Trump still president, he could pardon them for that too - but he won't be, when the time comes..

Interestingly, one can refuse a pardon, and maintain the right to not testify.

[TomF]

I think that the byzantine wording of Flynn's pardon is an effort to thread that needle, Keith. To pre-emptively pardon him for anything that he might do in front of law enforcement or courts or grand juries - including perjury not yet committed - in relation to any investigations of Trumpish crimes.

[Keith Wilson]

. . . the byzantine wording of Flynn's pardon is an effort to thread that needle . . .

Given the general level of competence of Trump's legal team, I'm skeptical that the thread will go where intended. I could be wrong.

[TomF]

I surely hope that it has a spectacular flameout. As dangerous as IMO the pardon power is in the first place, it would be hugely moreso if it was a pardon which not only vaporized criminality that had already occurred, but also kept on pardoning crimes indefinitely which had yet to be committed.

[CWSmith]

I don't imagine Atlas' career will benefit from his actions with Trump. I certainly would not want him for a doctor or to be in any way involved in my health care.

[Keith Wilson]

. . . . but also kept on pardoning crimes indefinitely which had yet to be committed.

You think? That relic of the Divine Right of Kings can cause enough trouble if it only goes back into the past; going into the future would be WAY too much.

[TomF]

I don't imagine Atlas' career will benefit from his actions with Trump. I certainly would not want him for a doctor or to be in any way involved in my health care.

You're not alone making that observation, for any of the Trumpist ranking staff. Rick Wilson's joked that people will go to job interviews and say they'd spent 4 years in jail, rather than cop to working the West Wing.

[Hugh Conway]

Remember: Anyone who is pardoned no longer has 5th Amendment protection against self-incrimination. They can be forced to testify under oath, jailed for contempt if they don't, and jailed for perjury if they lie. In theory, were Trump still president, he could pardon them for that too - but he won't be, when the time comes..

Interestingly, one can refuse a pardon, and maintain the right to not testify.

that is not settled law.

[David G]

Given the general level of competence of Trump's legal team, I'm skeptical that the thread will go where intended. I could be wrong.

Yes eventually. I wouldn't be surprised if that needle also got lodged crosswise into an uncomfortable locale.

[Keith Wilson]

that is not settled law.

Well, sorta settled, maybe. Burdick v. United States (1915) is pretty clear, but there are never any guarantees. Some discussion here.

[skuthorp]

Well, sorta settled, maybe. Burdick v. United States (1915) is pretty clear, but there are never any guarantees. Some discussion here.

Paywall.

[David G]

1. A friend of mine asked me this question, so I researched it; the answer, turns out, is yes: A person may refuse to testify, even when subpoenaed, on the grounds that the testimony may expose him to criminal liability. But if the prospect of criminal liability disappears — whether because he has been granted adequate immunity by prosecutors, or because he has accepted a presidential pardon — then the privilege against self-incrimination also disappears. “[I]f the witness has already received a pardon, he cannot longer set up his privilege, since he stands with respect to such offence as if it had never been committed.” Brown v. Walker (1895); see also, e.g., Nixon v. Sampson (D.D.C. 1975) (yes, that Nixon). (Remember that, as with President Richard Nixon, a pardon can preclude future criminal prosecutions, and not just erase past ones.)

2. Of course, that only works to the extent that the pardon does indeed foreclose the possibility that your testimony will be used against you in a criminal prosecution. A presidential pardon, for instance, only applies to federal crimes; if the conduct could also be prosecuted as a state crime, the witness can refuse to testify about it. The same is true if a governor pardons someone for committing a state crime, but there remains a risk that the person could be prosecuted by the federal government for the same conduct.


3. Here’s a twist, though: A person can refuse a pardon, precisely to maintain his privilege against self-incrimination. Indeed, in Burdick v. U.S. (1915), a newspaper editor who was using the privilege to avoid testifying about the sources for a story — on the theory that his testimony would incriminate him personally, and not just the source — refused a pardon from President Woodrow Wilson and thus retained his right not to testify. In the words of the court,

[T]he grace of a pardon, though good its intention, may be only in pretense or seeming; in pretense, as having purpose not moving from the individual to whom it is offered; in seeming, as involving consequences of even greater disgrace than those from which it purports to relieve. Circumstances may be made to bring innocence under the penalties of the law. If so brought, escape by confession of guilt implied in the acceptance of a pardon may be rejected, — preferring to be the victim of the law rather than its acknowledged transgressor, — preferring death even to such certain infamy. This, at least theoretically, is a right, and a right is often best tested in its extreme.

4. The witness cannot, however, preserve his privilege by refusing a statutory grant of immunity; once that immunity is granted, he must testify, or face punishment for contempt of court if he doesn’t testify. Here’s the Supreme Court’s explanation for why a pardon can be refused but immunity cannot be:

This brings us to the differences between legislative immunity and a pardon. They are substantial. The latter carries an imputation of guilt; acceptance a confession of it. The former has no such imputation or confession. It is tantamount to the silence of the witness. It is noncommittal. It is the unobtrusive act of the law given protection against a sinister use of his testimony, not like a pardon, requiring him to confess his guilt in order to avoid a conviction of it.

Eugene Volokh
Eugene Volokh teaches free speech law, religious freedom law, church-state relations law, a First Amendment Amicus Brief Clinic, and an intensive editing workshop at UCLA School of Law, where he has also often taught copyright law, criminal law, tort law, and a seminar on firearms regulation policy.Follow

[Hugh Conway]

Well, sorta settled, maybe. Burdick v. United States (1915) is pretty clear, but there are never any guarantees. Some discussion here.

From your link

A presidential pardon, for instance, only applies to federal crimes; if the conduct could also be prosecuted as a state crime, the witness can refuse to testify about it.

there’s further broadening as well. Suffice to say “compelled to testify” is at best a hope.

[CWSmith]

You're not alone making that observation, for any of the Trumpist ranking staff. Rick Wilson's joked that people will go to job interviews and say they'd spent 4 years in jail, rather than cop to working the West Wing.

Oh, that is good! That is very good!

[Chip-skiff]

Maybe he'll return to the family business.