OPINION:
As Cabinet nominees appear before relevant Senate Committees for their confirmation hearings, the questioning is as frequently presented to score partisan political points as it is to determine an office’s qualifications.
Such is the case for President Trump’s Attorney General pick, Pam Bondi, as headlines of her recent appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee reflect a determination to make the president’s pardon power a window to re-hashing the events of Jan. 6. Specifically, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin’s questioning utilized the imagery of the brave Capitol police officers to back Ms. Bondi into a precarious corner. He asked, “Do you believe that the January 6 rioters, who were convicted of violent assaults on police officers, should be pardoned?”
Ms. Bondi refused to take the bait, clarifying first that pardons are a uniquely presidential power. Still, if asked to look at cases, she would do so and advise on a case-by-case basis, as she has done throughout her impressive career as a prosecutor. Only later, under questioning from Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, did Ms. Bondi reframe the narrative, offering that she found the recent near-blanket commutations of federal death sentences by former President Biden “abhorrent.” She is not alone.
Among the unique constitutional powers preserved solely for the president, Article II bestows the power “… to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of impeachment.”
Mr. Biden invoked that authority on Dec. 23 when he delivered an early Christmas present to 37 out of 40 federal death row convicts by commuting their sentences to life in prison. Among those in the near-blanket commutation is Kaboni Savage. Before serving four terms in the U.S. Congress, I served as the U.S. Attorney for Eastern Pennsylvania and the elected district attorney for Delaware County. I made decisions to seek death sentences for numerous defendants, and never was it done lightly. I balanced my Christian beliefs about forgiveness against my office duties and acted as I believed I was obligated to do.
There were times when this duty caused me to struggle, as would any rational individual. However, there remains no doubt about Kaboni Savage. Still unrepentant to this day, Mr. Savage led a violent drug gang in Eastern Pennsylvania that used murder and intimidation to build a dominating criminal enterprise. Ultimately convicted of 12 murders, Mr. Savage carried out a campaign of violence and fear that affected everyone in our area. Mr. Savage ordered the firebombing of the home of a federal witness. That attack resulted in six deaths, including four young children. On tapes of phone calls from prison, he was recorded joking that the witness should pour barbecue sauce on the bodies of the family members who had been burned in the flames
Mr. Savage is pure evil. Interestingly, Mr. Durbin didn’t feel the need to mention Mr. Savage’s name while he cleverly threw his brush-back pitch about prospective presidential pardons at Ms. Bondi’s chin. Perhaps we ought not to be surprised that it is during presidential transitions that the president’s pardon power is given the most scrutiny, likely because it seems to be the period during which power is most frequently exercised. In some ways, it’s almost a right of passage, with precedents set by some pretty admired Americans.
As president, George Washington mounted his horse and led a government militia to western Pennsylvania to put down an insurrection of armed anti-tax protests in the Whiskey Rebellion. Later, he used his powers to grant amnesty to them. Thomas Jefferson railed against the Sedition Acts of the early 1800s, which he believed stifled political opposition, and upon gaining the presidency, he granted pardons to any convicted under the laws.
In 1863, Abraham Lincoln granted full pardons to Confederates who would take an oath of allegiance to the United States. I remember Gerald Ford prospectively pardoning his predecessor, Richard Nixon. He paid a political price, but he helped our nation heal. Bill Clinton pardoned fugitive tax-evader Mark Rich during his last hours in office, which seemed more than sordid when it was discovered Mr. Rich had donated more than a half-million dollars to the Clinton Library and his wife Hillary’s Senate campaign.
As a former prosecutor, I submit there is an earnest role for presidential pardons. An Office of the Pardon Attorney within the Department of Justice sifts through thousands of petitions to identify and investigate meritorious appeals for pardon or clemency consideration that might be recommended to the president.
Consistent factors like acceptance of responsibility, rehabilitative conduct after conviction, nonviolence and the passage of time enhance a petitioner’s case. Barack Obama granted clemency to more than 1,750 nonviolent drug offenders. A second route is through direct appeal to the president, usually through the efforts of high-powered insiders who can get the president’s ear. Those are far fewer in actuality, though Mr. Trump, with Michael Flynn, and Mr. Biden, with his son Hunter, are examples of each acting unilaterally.
Should Mr. Trump consider pardons for Jan. 6 activists, I hope he gives a very thoughtful investigation and analysis into each and any case before he acts. Something is unnerving about blanket commutations. I recognize he has an unfettered right to do so, and I suspect he may. Americans are still smarting from that day. I disagree with Mr. Biden’s commutation of federally convicted murderers, but I recognize he acted in his constitutional capacity, and he explained why he made that choice. It’s his prerogative.
In an incisive dialogue with Pam Bondi, Sen. Chris Coons suggested that there might be common ground with Congress and the Attorney General to institutionalize reforms to the clemency process that could be recommended to the president. It’s not clear why a president would welcome any guardrails. Still, perhaps the reformation of this process could benefit the American people and allow for a showing of bipartisan agreement at the outset of this new Presidency.
Former Rep. Pat Meehan (R-PA) served as the former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, former District Attorney of Delaware County, and currently runs Harvey Run Strategies.