President pardons 9 for Clean Air violations for 'fixing their car' | Hacker News Reader

President pardons 9 for Clean Air violations for 'fixing their car'

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92 pointsOutOfHere61 comments

"Jonathan Achtemeier pleaded guilty in November 2024, admitting that between 2019 and 2022, he tampered with the monitoring devices on hundreds of vehicles nationwide so those trucks would not detect that their owners removed pollution control hardware systems. Achtemeier advertised his services on the internet and was able to tamper with the monitoring devices in diesel trucks remotely. Between 2019 and 2021 Achtemeier’s company grossed $4.3 million. "

Fixing his own vehicle... for sure...

I can't see any way in which a "Pardon Power" can ever result in anything except miscarriage of justice.

If you think there needs to be an escape hatch to fix injustices then you have a bigger problem.

I can. Let’s say for example that the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act was used to prosecute you for downloading JSTOR documents which you had already access to. And you are facing the cumulative maximum penalty of $1 million in fines, 35 years in prison, personal asset forfeiture. Now, would a pardon from the highest executive office be a miscarriage when the prosecution should never have happened in the first place? I don’t think so, I don’t think all laws are neutral (eg Patriot Act) or all prosecutions are equally valid, therefore a pardon may indeed be a way to tipping the scales to a more fair society.

That said, I have never seen the current administration do that.

But isn’t that what the parent says? Fix the underlying laws instead of relying on a single person to randomly overrule the law

I don’t think parent commenter says so, he only claims one thing for himself, that pardon power is always a miscarriage of justice. Then he asks another thing of us, which is explicitly excluding himself, indicating that he thinks all laws and all applications of law and justice is fair.

Fixing the laws takes time.

We will always find ourselves in situations in which our existing laws allow for people to fall through cracks. I can see pardoning as a way to address that partially, yet it doesn’t explain what an adequate judgment would be instead. It’s simultaneously important in niche situations and yet too coarse of a solution.

You can as easily use pardons to tip the scales to a more corrupt society.

If you assume, hypothetically, that the justice system is operating as it should, a pardon means giving one person the right to ignore the laws of the country for a select few acquaintances.

If one has to tolerate this blatant avenue for favoritism, I’d rather see the Supreme Court or judges themselves invested with this power, rather than the president.

I guess I am biased by believing in the separation of the executive and judiciary powers.

An argument against vesting pardons to the SC is that they are supposed to simply apply the law, not make quick corrections based on value judgments. If separation of powers is a concern, remember that checks and balances also exist.

If I may suggest anything, perhaps replacing the president should be made easier, either by making the people be able to recall the president, or by recalling the congressmen, and the congressmen then follow through with impeachment. Or both.

> If I may suggest anything, perhaps replacing the president should be made easier, either by making the people be able to recall the president, or by recalling the congressmen, and the congressmen then follow through with impeachment. Or both.

You may indeed suggest it. Now, how do we make it reality so that "We The People" can get some of our power back in this supposedly "Free" nation?

I don't have the way to fix the situation, for I am no seer, but I can suggest the classical solutions:

- Contact your representatives;

- Seek better representation;

- Participate in/organize local political movements;

- Become less reliant on the government and its private cronies.

> - Become less reliant on the government and its private cronies.

All great suggestions, but this last one is maybe the best one overall. ;)

I think they're more talking about systemic effects resulting from such a concept. When you have unchecked power concentrated at a single position, that position will inevitably use that power for their own personal gain, which in the case of pardons happens by enabling crime.

In your opinion, which administration have you known to have issued a pardon that was equally justifiable in the eyes of members of political parties from both sides of the isle?

NitPick: "aisle" ... and it doesn't need to be "justifiable in the eyes of members of [any] political parties" in orderto be Justice when a wrong has been commited by the "justice system".

Any time a President can use their pardon power to free any actually innocent person from a genuinely unjust act, they should do so.

Problem is, we've got Presidents who'd rather abuse it arbitrarily in unjust and fraudulent ways. Thus, "pardon power" probably just shouldn't exist at all I suppose, or at the very least it should have some sort of "guardrails" / oversight attached somehow...

This is not going to win me any new fans but first problem I see is who can truly prove "actual innocence?" Only way to do that is to use "Sodium thiopental". Last time I checked that is not allowed in the American Justice System, e.g., SCOTUS Townsend v. Sain (1963). Also, given that humans are emotional beings, I don't see a way for judges, politicians, jurors to be held accountable or subject to any "guardrails/oversight." Only way to do that is to devoid them of emotions e.g., temporary chemical emotion wipe, or replace them with cyber judges e.g., GORT from The Day the Earth Stood Still. Since that is unlikely to happen, in the short term anyway, things will not change. I suppose if communism becomes the new norm, then judges will be less impartial, as history has shown. But this leads us back to the same problem, doesn't it.

Chelsea Manning had her sentence commuted.

I think the fact that you use a very high profile and beloved person as your example is in fact why giving pardoning power to the executive branch is bad — the pardon goes to whoever is able to draw the attention and appear the most likeable to the person with the pardoning power.

If you think a law is bad, repeal it. Go through the same legislative process that made it happen in the first place. Trying to fix systematic issues with one off bandaids heavily impacted by personal judgement of whoever happens to be in power is just asking for corruption.

The problem isn’t always the law, sometimes it is the implementation. Pardoning someone who was later found to be convicted through a travesty of justice (corrupt prosecutor and/or judge) does not mean that the law is bad, only that the system is made up of fallible people.

If pardons need to happen with frequency to correct those errors, then the system is in serious trouble. Perhaps all pardons should trigger a Congressional review process to work on improving the system as a whole. (Not that Congress does anything good, these days.)

Local cops/AG persecuting groups they don’t like

I agree with the example given in the sibling comment, and this is why the framers believed there needed to be a final “safety valve” outside the courts. Legal systems are imperfect, and sometimes a pardon is the only practical way to remedy an egregious error.

Another example where pardons might be useful is when laws are changed after sentencing. If the new law does not provide for retroactive adjustments, a president or governor can grant clemency in order to correct disparities in sentencing outcomes.

Too bad the safety valve is corrupt and dishonest.

So is the judiciary at times

The judicial branch has a set of laws, a system of appeals, etc. Perfect? No.

But decidedly better than an incurious buffoon arbitrarily handing out get of jail cards in exchange for political gain and/or self-enrichment.

Given who's sitting at the top of the judiciary right now, the main difference is that there are a slightly larger but still single digit number of buffoons who handed the buffoon you're talking about his get out of jail card for their politican gain and self-enrichment.

A finite set of symbols (laws) can never express everything a reasonable person would want to be allowed to happen in the world.

There are hundreds of years of examples of it being used. How closely did you actually go through them before deciding that it's literally impossible for it to ever result in a just outcome?

Pardons are useful in a single specific way. As the laws cannot be changed retroactively (this would be against the principles of democracy), you need something to handle the case where a law was too strict or too dumb and is rescinded. In my country, pardons are mostly issued by judges, and presidential pardons are also reviewed by judges (and always transformed into 'commutation of sentence' instead of full pardon, so that the person is still guilty)

There's always going to be miscarriages of justice and laws which are morally wrong.

e.g. Alan Turing being prosecuted for homosexuality.

Take a look at the list of people pardoned by any president except the current one. Most (but not all) of the pardons are to correct clear miscarriages of justice.

It’s your politicians who are crooked beyond belief, and have been for a long time.

In the early 90s, Jean Chrétien was caught on a hot mike incident decrying that American politicians make sure that every vote they give has a local benefit for them. He was right to be incredulous that there is no party line in American politics; the only safety against pure cronyism is morals.

US politicians were appalled and reportedly threatened Chrétien with supporting the Québec separatists. He was never caught complaining again.

All that to say that Trump is the end result of the long tumble of US politics. Unless you rewrite your constitution I consider you guys toast. You’ll lose democracy in my lifetime.

All 9 should be immediately arrested again in 2029, I’m sure they’re planning to go back to their criminal ways. I’ll save this article to remind the next AG about it.

Sarcasm, presumably, but unless they're caught rolling coal[1] again, they can't be re-arrested as they've been pardoned for the previous cases. It's a tacky crime, hardly the most serious, but that makes a presidential pardon seem especially absurd here.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal

I thought that most of them were in for selling/commercially installing defeat devices so that others could roll coal or do other things with defeated pollution controls. I assume that would likely be easier to identify than just hoping to someday catching them rolling coal would be.

It is a serious crime. Diesel fumes are very damaging to the lungs and heart. Imagine a pregnant woman being exposed to them. There is no logical way to make light of it.

From your link:

> the practice can increase nitrogen oxide emissions as much as 310 times, non-methane hydrocarbons 1,400 times, and carbon monoxide 120 times

It's car manufacturers who should be held responsible for this. I used to be the owner of a diesel car.

Diesel cars used to be really reliable. And then, in a moment, they got that ecology thing. They leaped from 500k+ kilometers until the first major expenses to just 100k+. From a consumer point of view, you were just buying the next version of the same diesel car. But in reality you get nothing even close. If that's not a deception, then I don't know what a deception is.

Many modern diesel cars require very expensive replacement parts after just 100k kilometers. I mean really expensive. I had Fiat Tipo and the particle filter would cost me €5000+. Which is more or less half the car market price. After trying "cheaper" approaches that mounted to the same €5k over the 1.5 years, without resolving the problem, I decided to sell the car.

On the other hand, this is just an ecology thing. Your car can perfectly live without it. You can turn it off for a fraction of that cost. After a year of trying different approaches, my mechanic even offered to do it for free. The temptation is very strong. You didn't plan financially for this kind of repair costs when you were buying a diesel car. You need your car to keep going for another 2-3 years at the very least to make the purchase feasible.

Of course, you can call it a customer mistake. After all, the manufacturer didn't provide a warranty beyond 100k kilometers. But nobody tells you that the car takes €5000+ in repairs per 100k kilometers.

I'm all hands for the ecology. Don't get me wrong. I didn't accept the offer to remove the insides of the particle filter. However, if I didn't have the money to buy a new car, I would certainly do that. With my conscience being clear, because I'm 100% sure that the manufacturer is the one who is responsible for this. And the governments who allowed this manufacturer to behave like that. I'm OK with paying the "ecology tax", but it should be clearly stated in the papers, and not shadily emerge after 100k kilometers.

I'm not being sarcastic at all. I think it's obvious that most or all of these men will interpret the pardon as permission to violate the Clean Air Act, and it's absolutely essential to the rule of law that they be punished harshly for doing so. They must understand that they are not above the law. Perhaps some of them have learned the error of their ways, and won't be rolling coal ever again; if so I wish them well.

Note that at least one of the men, Jonathan Achtemeier, was caught doing much more than "rolling coal" himself. He led a nationwide conspiracy to "roll coal", charging money to help hundreds of people do it although he knew it was a crime. Career criminals like Mr. Achtemeier rarely stop when they get caught the first time.

Ah, sorry to have imputed sarcasm then - and I agree that helping hundreds of monster-truck owners to roll coal is more serious and polluting than the individual yahoos doing it, so more deserving of doing time (eventually, maybe).

It is a serious crime. Diesel exhaust is s IARC type 1 carcinogen. Somehow people go nuts when companies pollute water but not when they pollute the air they breathe

These laws are extremely counterproductive to start with. They require mining huge amounts of rare earth metals and building toxic lakes to manufacture, and they do a poor job of cleaning emissions and reduce engine efficiency. Base diesel engines are much better.

i am under the impression King Donald is missusing his might here

I discovered an interesting glitch in California DOT law. If you register a vehicle in CA, you can do so with an out of state mailing address (there is no check or verification needed).

Doing so automatically exempts you from CA SMOG because SMOG is a county by county law. If your address is out of state, you have no county smog obligation.

I went to get my vehicle smogged and was told I didn't need to.

The biggest problem with diesel engines is that they tend to last nearly forever by virtue of their design (tolerating high compression ratios).

I see a lot of ancient big trucks on the road today that are completely legal in Texas but would probably get you sent straight to jail in Europe. The owners of these vehicles are oftentimes also diesel mechanics to some degree and can make their machine run much longer than they can.

The problem with all of this is that there is this entire niche of the market that you simply cannot penetrate with policy. I think some of these old trucks should be taken off the road, but I also sympathize with the owner/operators of these vehicles. I don't think many people drive a big dump truck around for fun (even in Texas). That's mostly a phenomenon on the consumer side. Rolling coal out of your Ram 3500 isn't something that really bothers me. The optics are horrible, but the actual impact is not. The thing that concerns me is the fleet of old Kenworth trucks from 1988 that the local construction company uses all day every day. Straight pipes and a constant rumble the USGS could monitor tend to drown out the broader concerns regarding emissions, but those also pop into your mind if you happen to be riding behind one.

I think a lot of the defeat device stuff is blown out of proportion for political reasons. Something approximating this has been going on since the 70s. Anything pertaining to consumer vehicles makes me roll my eyes. The studies they ran around VW are absolutely hyperbolic (hundreds of billions in damages, 100k+ dead eventually). Compare the marginal impact of slightly cheating emissions standards in a family sedan with one supermax cargo ship or a data center parking lot full of gas turbines and you'll probably find you are wasting your energy on the car thing. The deception is what makes most people angry. Not the actual impact.

> The problem with all of this is that there is this entire niche of the market that you simply cannot penetrate with policy.

I don't really understand how the rest of your comment provides evidence for this claim. Not wanting to address it with policy, sure, I can see you seem to feel that way, but it's not clear why you're convinced it can't be addressed.

Why couldn't it have been penetrated with policy?

As you note, Europe did this quite successfully with successively-tighter diesel emissions standards for new vehicles being introduced every few years since 1992. Other countries - China, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Indonesia, Australia, etc - have either adopted the Euro standards wholesale or tweaked them slightly for their local market conditions.

That was backed up by measures such as testing individual vehicles for continued compliance at their annual inspections, banning commercial vehicles that fail to meet recent standards from using public roads, charging private vehicles which fail to meet recent standards when they enter dense urban areas, and scrappage schemes to mop up the remaining non-compliant vehicles.

It took a while to produce results, but eventually resulted in pretty dramatic improvements in air quality - and we now have good evidence of improved health outcomes, particularly in children with asthma or other respiratory conditions.

Perhaps too late for the US to start now given the switch to EVs, but it ought to be kept in mind for the next time a "we can't possibly do anything about this" issue comes up.

>get you sent straight to jail in Europe

I'm in the UK and no one goes to jail but it's more expensive tax wise to run the more polluting ones. As a result you don't see many.

Isn’t it heartwarming to see Trump lend a hand to uplift his fellow criminals and get the message out that crime pays?

For some reason, he acts as if environmental crimes of any kind are not real. In effect he goes so far as to strongly encourage them.

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