The Guardian view on US presidential pardons: go
no further
Editorial
Clemency is a noble quality, but in Donald Trump’s
hands it risks being a self-serving abuse of law and due process
‘The legal power he wields should be used very
sparingly, and only in line with a proper and transparent process. Mr Trump has
no interest in such things.
Thu 3 Dec 2020 18.22 GMT
A US
president’s power to pardon and commute sentences for federal offences seems to
explode America’s claims as a nation of laws and proper process. Donald Trump
is no respecter of laws in any aspect of his life, so there is no surprise that
he may now be gearing up to make extravagant use of the power before he is
prised out of the White House in January.
Two things
should be remembered here. First, the pardon power does not extend to state
laws, only federal ones. Second, other presidents have been here too. Barack
Obama, who issued 212 pardons in eight years, granted 330 commutations on his
very last day as president in 2017. At this stage of his own presidency, Mr
Trump is a remarkably light pardoner and commuter. At the time of writing, he
has issued a mere 28 pardons and 16 commutations, although all that could
change soon.
One
explanation, and a difference between Mr Trump and his predecessors, is that a
high proportion of his acts of clemency have directly involved his own allies
and staff. The latest of these included commutation for his friend Roger Stone,
and a pardon for his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, both of
whom were convicted of obstructing the Robert Mueller investigation into the
2016 Trump campaign.
As the end
nears, Mr Trump may be planning to break new ground in other ways. He has
sometimes mused that he can pardon himself, something no president has ever
done and which many lawyers think is unconstitutional. But he is widely
reported to be eyeing “pre-emptive” pardons to his children, Donald Jr, Eric
and Ivanka, as well as to his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his lawyer,
Rudolph Giuliani. This week, it has been confirmed that the justice department
is investigating an alleged “bribery for pardon” scheme at the White House. Any
of these actions, never mind all three, would plumb new depths in Mr Trump’s
four-year abuse of the presidency.
Shocking
though such possibilities are, there is an established legal argument for
pardons. In this country, a royal pardon was issued in 2013 to the scientist
Alan Turing, who took his own life after being convicted under anti-homosexuality
laws in 1952. This leads to a wider moral point. “Pardon’s the word to all,”
pronounces Cymbeline in the final scene of Shakespeare’s late play. The former
archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has described Cymbeline’s line as a
moral clarion call. The ability to pardon a person helps to elevate human
beings, the archbishop argued. The human capacity for compassion and
reconciliation is, he has said, evidence of the hand of the divine.
There is,
though, nothing remotely divine or compassionate about Mr Trump. The legal
power he wields should be used very sparingly, and only in line with a proper
and transparent process. Mr Trump has no interest in such things. He may not be
able to put himself beyond the law, but he can do massive damage along the way.
That would indeed be unpardonable.
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