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No, pardons do not imply guilt.
Pardons can be issued when someone is believed to be innocent of any wrongdoing.
Legally the SCOTUS ruled that accepting a pardon is an admission of guilt
No, they didn't.
"Accepting pardon is an admission of guilt" is found as dicta (non-binding commentary) in Burdick v. United States (1915).
Recently, the courts explicitly rejected that interpretation.
Furthermore, "actual innocence" is among the criteria used to determine who should be pardoned.
in what world do they issue pardons (To release (a person) from punishment or disfavor for wrongdoing or a fault: synonym: forgive. from dictionary.com) to people that were never even considered to have been at fault or done no wrong??
The dictionary definition is not the legal definition.
A pardon can be issued to anyone, and it prevents any government punishment for the activities mentioned in the pardon.
It does not matter who, if anyone, considers them "at fault".
https://legaldictionary.net/pardon/
A pardon is a governmental decision to absolve an individual for a criminal conviction, often times freeing him from all or part of the punishment imposed at sentencing. Pardons are typically granted by the President, or by individual state governors, usually to absolve individuals, but may be granted, in certain circumstances, for groups of people. Federal pardons are granted by the President of the United States, and each state’s law dictates with whom the power to grant state pardons lies. To explore this concept, consider the following pardon definition.
Seems like it does indeed imply there is a crime and punishment .
Not according to the SCOTUS:
that by itself says before they legal proceedings, stating that they should/could be charged with wrong doing. Not just for being good people, they are believed to be charged soon. If its a frivolous lawsuit it should be allowed to play out no need for a pardon in something that NO ONE THINKS YOU DID ANY WRONG. By granting the pardon you are saying that something is at least legally questionable and they could be charged. Again this all means that something that was illegal was going on and people can talk about that, even editorialize with this information and have a better root to believably with that the person was pardoned, so if there is no crime then they shouldnt have power to pardon anyone.
No, it does not say "if they are believed to be charged soon".
A pardon ends any possibility of charges. It does not matter if charges are imminent, theoretical, or even realistic. Likewise, a pardon does not mean "something is at least legally questionable and they could be charged."
The power to pardon is unlimited (except for impeachment). That means it can be issued for anything (except for impeachment). So if the President felt like it, it would absolutely be within his power to pardon you for the crime of killing Abraham Lincoln even though you weren't alive at the time. He could pardon you for anything you might have done on New Years, even if everyone knows you didn't do anything at all on New Years.
So what was it issued for, if there is no crime at all, the president can just give you a hey you get one crime on me. And even in your thought process, they have to name it, what were the reasons given. Again these reasons would insinuate a crime was committed.
A pardon is issued to prevent any future punishment. It does not have to give any reasons and it does not have to acknowledge a crime was committed.
In our legal system, you are only considered guilty of something after conviction. So if a pardon prevents charges, then legally you were never guilty of anything.
Of course you are personally free to assume whatever you want. Some people assume only guilty people are arrested, others don't make that assumption. You can assume only guilty people are pardoned, but others don't make that assumption.
So you are saying they give them a free crime, if its not declared at the time of the pardon they can just be like no it was for this murder of 800 people and no one can say otherwise.
Sure, the president could do exactly that if he wanted to. For example, Hunter Biden was pardoned for anything he did between 2014 and today.
Of course pardons are always retroactive, so Hunter does not get a free crime spree after his pardon.
And presidential pardons only apply to federal prosecution. Murder is a state crime, so it is not covered by a presidental pardon.
But if Hunter lied on his IRS forms in 2018 or committed mail fraud in 2022 or hacked a federal database last week, then yeah he officially got away with it.