Not one senator objected to a nonbinding resolution declaring that Donald Trump should not pardon or commute Ghislaine Maxwell’s sentence.
Finally, Senate Republicans have discovered a Trump action they will not defend. No senator objected when Jacky Rosen asked the chamber to pass a resolution declaring that Ghislaine Maxwell should receive no pardon, no commutation, or any other clemency. The measure is nonbinding, but its message is unusually unambiguous. The president’s position remains less so.
Donald Trump has repeatedly noted that he has the power to pardon Ghislaine Maxwell while declining to rule out exercising that power. The Senate cannot stop Trump from pardoning Ghislaine Maxwell, but it has now made the political terms plain. A nonbinding resolution opposing any form of clemency passed without objection, placing every senator present behind a sentence the White House has avoided: Maxwell should remain in prison.
For once, Senate Republicans declined to hold the door open.
Of course they will leave her in prison-as a woman she can take the fall for all of the men who are walking around free of consequence. She deserves to be in prison for her acts, but she will stay there because of her sex.
After all, they have yet to even charge one of those men.
Keeping her in prison keeps her under control. Let her out and she might be tempted to talk to the ‘wrong’ people and tell the world what she actually knows. Better for Trump and co. to keep holding out the possibility of a pardon.