President Donald Trump and former President Joe Biden are poles apart politically, but this week they became Partners in Pardons.
That’s not a good thing.
In one of his first acts as president, Trump granted blanket pardons to the more than 1,500 defendants facing prosecution for the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan 6, 2021. This included those convicted of assaulting Capitol Police officers.
That’s a bad move.
Trump’s campaign platform included a return to law and order, which can’t be maintained without the men and women in law enforcement. We recall the sickening footage of a police officer crushed in a doorframe of the Capitol building.
Patrick McCaughey III, who used a stolen riot shield to crush MPD Officer Daniel Hodges, was sentenced to seven years and six months in prison. He should have finished out his sentence.
It sends the wrong signal to members of law enforcement who cheered a president not beholden to a progressive agenda that calls for cutting their funding. Trump let them all down.
We’ve written before about Biden’s clemency spree last month which included traffickers peddling fentanyl and other opioids. The premise was that these are “non-violent crimes.” Tell that to the families who’ve buried overdose victims.
We joined in the outrage over Biden’s pardon of son Hunter — a pardon he promised not to make. Credibility isn’t a big part of Biden’s legacy.
But in a squeaker to end all squeakers, Biden pulled off a Family Plan pardon with 20 minutes left in his presidency Monday.
Receiving the legal golden ticket were brother James B. Biden; Sara Jones Biden, James’s wife; Valerie Biden Owens, Biden’s sister; John T. Owens, Owens’s husband; and brother Francis W. Biden. His justification is a masterpiece in mental gymnastics.
They didn’t do anything wrong, Biden said, but they might be charged with something as part of a political attack from the Trump administration. If so, they’re pre-emptively in the clear.
As the saying goes, it’s not what you know, but who you know.
“It was perhaps a constitutional mistake to give the president this one unchecked, unilateral power,” Mark Rozell, a George Mason University expert on presidential power told Politico. “Madison believed that any power granted without institutional checks would be abused. The recent exercises of the pardon power by two presidents proves he was right.”
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told The Hill he thinks “it’s probably time for us to take a look at the way the pardon system is being used.”
“I don’t think any of us can be satisfied with the way that Trump or Biden used the pardon authority, one of the most extensive and sweeping executive powers that are available today.”
He added “it’s probably time for us to take a look at the way the pardon system is being used.”
It’s time for pardon reform.
There needs to be a checklist of individuals who can not be granted clemency: family members, people who’ve committed violent acts, people who’ve committed violent acts against members of law enforcement and government agencies, political donors and their relatives and those who trafficked in opioids.
Pre-emptive pardons are off the table.
It could take years before a bipartisan deal on pardon reform is done, if it happens. But after this week, it’s vital that we start.
