No he did not have an additional two weeks. He was not allowed to pardon who he wanted or anything like that. Essentially it was a still 24th amendment process. Pelosi and Milly and pence took power. Most of his cabinet immediately resigned. Millie told military leaders not to execute any order he gave without checking with him. Trump was told that if he stayed quiet for two weeks he would be allowed to depart. If he did not play ball his children would be arrested, and he would be impeached and removed from office by the end of the day in disgrace, and probably also arrested. He was no longer giving orders. The government was overthrown on January 6 and 7. Nobody was taking orders from him anymore. He was allowed a few pro forma pardons, and that’s it. It’s silly to pretend Trump is actually in power as president anymore. He literally did not control anything beyond the control of his voice, not DOJ, not the military, not nuclear weapons, nothing.
This is pretty accurate.
He could have written a pardon late on the 19th or morning of the 20th, and they wouldn’t have time to impeach/convict before his departure. Whether or not his chain of command would have still taken orders from him anymore between Jan 6-20 is irrelevant. Courts would later have been forced to abide by a lawfully issued presidential pardon, and practically all of these kangaroo court cases could have been prevented.
If McConnell and his cronies convicted him out of spite over the pardon, he could have appealed to SCOTUS since impeaching departed presidents is technically illegal anyway. He just didn’t want to risk his political future over saving these people.
a good synopsis with distressing details
That's simply not correct. The President's pardon power is absolute. He does not even need to run it through DOJ, etc. A signed letter would have been sufficient.
I’m sure you have documentation of all of this... Surely Trump released memos, recordings, other evidence of such activity, right?