Missing old-fashioned pardons

December 18, 2024 by Silvio Canto Jr.

Maybe pardons will be President Biden's legacy. In other words, he will be remembered as the president who made a mockery out of pardons. How did that happen? Well, it did as Professor Jonathan Turley points out:

There are growing indications that President Biden is about to fundamentally change the use of presidential pardons by granting “prospective” or “pre-emptive” pardons to political allies.

Despite repeated denials by President-elect Donald Trump that he is seeking retaliation against opponents and wants “success [to be] my revenge,” Democratic politicians and pundits have called for up to thousands of such pardons.

While there is little threat of any viable prosecution of figures like the members of the House’s Jan. 6 committee, the use of “white knight pardons” offers obvious political benefits.

After many liberals predicted the imminent collapse of democracy and that opponents would be rounded up by the Trump administration, they are now contemplating the nightmare that democracy might survive and that there will be no mass arrests.

The next best thing to a convenient collapse of democracy is a claim that Biden’s series of pre-emptive pardons averted it -- to preserve the narrative.

Biden’s pardon list has replaced the usual Inauguration Ball lists as the “must-have” item this year. Pardon envy is sweeping over the Beltway, as politicians and pundits push to be included on the list of presumptive Trump enemies.

Getting on the pardon list is the new place to be in Biden's Washington. Make sure you get on the list before the mean Trump comes in and declares war on all his critics.

It makes you long for the good old days when presidents pardon a dying man in prison so that he could spend the last few months of his life at home. Or maybe when he commuted a long sentence because the penalty was too harsh or harsher than it is now. A little humanity.

Good old-fashioned pardons, the ones that made you feel like the Founding Fathers got this power of pardon just right.

As the professor points out, no president "...has seen fit to go as far as where Biden appears to be heading."

And that will be his legacy and the legacy of those who kept telling us that Trump was a threat to democracy.

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