In an effort towards promoting bipartisanship, I’m going give my take on the Presidential pardons we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks.
Note: In this post, I’ll use the word “pardon” to mean pardons and/or commutations.
The Biden Pardons
The Biden pardons were, top-to-bottom, pretty bad. First, there were the blanket pardons for everyone in his family (with the exception of Jill? Really?) for:
- Potential crimes that hadn’t even been charged, nonetheless resulting in conviction
- Potential crimes that covered years in time span
I was not surprised Biden made these pardons. I was not surprised that Biden lied when he said he would not do the pardons and then went ahead and did them anyway. I was not surprised when Democrats and the Media pretended to be surprised by these the pardons. I was surprised when Democrats and the Media assumed I, along with the rest of American adults, would be surprised by these pardons.
Then there were the blanket pardons and commutations for thousands of criminals. Here’s Newsweek’s take on this:
Biden granted pardons and commutations to more than 8,000 individuals, which is more than any other modern president. Thousands of Biden’s clemency grants were to serious criminals, including murderers, child killers, child abusers, and the biggest municipal embezzler in history, Rita Crundwell.
Why did Biden do this? Does Biden, himself, know he did this?
And then there was the last group of Biden Pardons: The Fauci / Liz Cheney / Etc. group. To this group, I just shrug my shoulders. Does Biden think Cheney broke the law? Is Biden worried that there might actually be an investigation into the origins of covid? What was the point of these pardons other than to make this group look shady?
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The Trump Pardons
While I thought the Biden Pardons were crazy, I wasn’t a fan of the Trump J6 Pardons, either. My main issue with the Trump J6 Pardons is that they were blanket pardons. I think these pardons should have been triaged into three distinct groups:
- Knuckle-headed Hall Wanderers — It appears that up to 900 of the 1,500 J6ers that Trump pardoned fall into this category. The door was open, they walked past security that made no effort to stop them or turn them around, they wandered the halls for a while, and left at some point without ever engaging in violence or property damage. This group was deserving of the blanket pardon
- Crazy Q-Shamans — This group forced their way in and/or did some property damage. Some of these might deserve pardons. Others might deserve some commutations, based on time already served. But this should have been done on a case-by-case basis with some broad guidelines for the type and extent of clemency granted.
- No Better than Antifa — This the group who attacked cops or otherwise plotted to do violence. These should have been handled on a strict case-by-case basis with most of them getting no relief. I have little to no sympathy for this group.
The excuse given was that there wasn’t enough time to go through all the cases. I don’t buy it. The first two groups could have been handled by a half-dozen people over the course of an afternoon or two. The third group could be left to chill while their cases were adjudicated. I think Trump believes that anyone that likes him can’t be bad.
This also connects to another Trump pardon: that of the operator of the black market Internet drug bazaar, Silk Road. Trump did this because he’d promised the Libertarian Party that he would pardon the Silk Road operator if he were elected.
One caveat to the treatment of the J6ers: Incoming Attorney General, Pam Bondi, needs to take a close look at the resources the DoJ expended going after the first two groups. If a couple of heads of some over-zealous investigators need to roll, I’d back that move 100%.
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Is There a Fix?
I don’t know if there is a way to modify the President’s pardon power, but I’d like to see it limited. Maybe by requiring Congressional approval or by time-barring it (e.g., no pardons between June of an election year and March the following year). These pardons that are handed out as a President walks out the door are largely awful. That would probably require a Constitutional Amendment though.
Oh well…