Trump and the Power to Pardon

It is well known that the president has the power to pardon anyone who chooses for "...offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment." But who he chooses to pardon or how many pardons have people saying that he is only doing it because they are is cronies or some other corrupt reasoning for pardoning them.

For Trump, the main problem is that many of the people he has pardoned are ones that his opponents prosecuted as a direct result of Trump winning the election in 2016. But not entirely. A couple of examples of this is Scooter Libby and Susan B. Anthony. Scooter Libby was a lawyer for Dick Cheney Susan B Anthony was convicted of illegally voting during women's suffrage.

There have been a number of controversial pardons over the last few centuries, the first presidential pardon was by George Washington after the Whiskey Rebellion. Then there was President Andrew Jackson who pardoned a guy that robbed the mail train, only to refuse to accept the pardon, and he ended up hung for the offense. Andrew Johnson pardoned all the men who had participated in the civil war for the confederacy. When President Gerald Ford pardoned his predecessor, President Nixon, not everyone was happy with him, and it probably cost him his election. In 2001 President Clinton pardoned Patty Hearst, who was kidnapped and then was filmed participating in crimes with the terror group that she said had kidnapped her. Clinton also pardoned his half-brother Roger Clinton.

This brings us to Obama who prosecuted more whistleblowers than any other, but then after 7 years in prison, Obama commuted Chelsea Manning’s 35-year sentence. Trump could also show that he can forgive whistleblowers by pardoning Reality Winner, who his justice department prosecuted for leaking a document that did ultimately not matter. It is on par with his second pardon, the young soldier that had a few forbidden photos taken on a submarine. That young man ultimately got a pardon days after going on Fox and Friends to plead his case for a pardon. In fact, the document that Winner leaked is probably less damaging, and mostly just political than the photos of the actual submarine sensitive area. While the photos were not leaked, that was a serious security risk, and I can actually see why that man was prosecuted as compared to Winner. Well, maybe Winner was prosecuted for political reasons too. And to that, while I would understand it, I would ask that they use the same standard as they did with the photos in pardoning him.

President Trump has not pardoned nearly as many people as most modern presidents. the number is probably around 44 people pardoned by Trump so far of course that number will probably rise in the coming days as January 20th gets closer. and I hope he chooses to pardon many more people than he currently has. There are three people that would get many Libertarians to support Donald Trump if he were to pardon them.

The last 5 administrations and their pardons:

• Bush Sr.
• Clinton
• Bush Jr.
• Obama
• Trump

The first two would be Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. The third person has received over 370,000 signatures on Change.org for their clemency petition. Ross Ulbricht would be a prime example of what the libertarian voters would want to achieve, and even across the aisle to the Democrat party.

Finally, I would ask that Trump look into breaking all of his opponent’s toys, and by that I mean he should pardon all of the people that the opponents hate. Including himself. Pardon every Republican politician or activist even if they are not accused of anything. It would be similar to the Civil War pardons.

All the political opponents would not know what to do if that were to happen. But we all know that Biden, should Trump lose all of his last efforts to hang on to power, will be a lame-duck on day one, and while he may have some sway on a few issues, he will not actually have the power to do as much as he would have liked. And that is what would help Trump come back in 2024 and finish what he started four years ago.

-Joseph Slabaugh

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