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There’s no question that the pardon powers conferred upon the president in Article II of the Constitution are broad. Our founding document grants the occupant of the Oval Office great discretion in the exercise of this merciful prerogative, which the Supreme Court has characterized as “unlimited.” In the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton defended the plenary presidential pardon power, maintaining such authority “should be as little as possible fettered or embarrassed” to ensure “easy access to exceptions in favour of unfortunate guilt.”
Nevertheless, Americans expect our presidents to use discretion and good judgment when issuing commutations. Circumventing the normal course of the U.S. criminal justice system is serious business and should be handled with care and restraint. Recently, both Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden failed in that and abused their exoneration authority.
In December 2020, right before taking office and amid rumors that then-President Trump would grant blanket pardons to his family as he left the White House (something he never did), President-elect Biden said to CNN: “It concerns me in terms of what kind of precedent it sets and how the rest of the world looks at us as a nation of laws and justice … . You’re not going to see in our administration that kind of approach to pardons.” Biden was right that such remissions are antithetical to the rule of law and smell of corruption, but he was dishonest in pledging his administration would stay clear of them. We now know, of course, it did not. Not at all.
In the final weeks and even minutes of his — thankfully — single presidential term, President Biden, the self-proclaimed defender of democratic norms, granted unprecedented sweeping preemptive pardons to many of his fellow Bidens, including his own brother and son. It was a move even longtime Clinton adviser and Democratic pollster Mark Penn called an “unprecedented abuse of government power.” President Biden once crudely said: “No one f---s with a Biden.” He was half right and half wrong: the voters were able to last November, but the criminal justice system can’t — as it can with the rest of us. That’s not right in a country where no one should be above the law.
Seemingly to distract Americans from these mafia-style shenanigans, Biden doubled down on his presidential pardon malpractice, issuing grants of clemency to thousands of legitimately convicted criminals. They included Adrian Peeler, a Connecticut man who was accused of shooting an 8-year-old boy in the back of the head before killing his mother, and Leonard Peltier, a Native American activist convicted of killing two FBI agents. Thirty-seven death row inmates were also beneficiaries of Biden’s leniency, with their sentences commuted to life in prison. What a dangerous disgrace.
While I supported President Trump’s election and remain convinced four more years of his leadership will be better than a continuation of the last languishing four, his exoneration of anyone implicated in the Jan. 6 riots was wrong. It was a disgraceful moment in American history, and those that trespassed at the Capitol that day and disrupted the procedures of our democracy deserved to be punished. Trump promised voters that he would limit any such action to only those defendants unfairly treated by prosecutors and convicted of nonviolent offenses, which is fair enough. But he broke his word with such overly broad blanket pardons last week. That’s an offense to his voters who weren’t told that was part of the deal during the campaign. The move is especially disrespectful to law enforcement at a time when they need us to have their backs more than ever.
