USA TODAY International Edition
Trump pardons take corruption to new high
A personal tool to reward cronies and roil waters
It could’ve been worse. Former President Donald Trump’s last- minute flood of pardons could have included many more controversial grants of clemency. That he did not pardon himself, his children or Rudy Giuliani is a pleasant surprise. Nor were controversial possibilities like Julian Assange or Edward Snowden on the pardon list.
What we got from Trump is something more akin to the traditional way in which presidents have used and misused their pardon power on the way out the door — but as with so much about Trump, he sank past practice to a new level of corruption and connection. The pardons of Steve Bannon and Albert Pirro Jr., in particular, both echo historical practices and fracture them.
To be sure, past presidents have misused their pardon powers in their final days. In one recent example, Bill Clinton pardoned Susan McDougal, who had kept silent rather than testify against him in the Whitewater cases. Clinton also infamously granted a pardon to financier Marc Rich, who was a fugitive from justice abroad and whose family made significant political contributions to the Democratic Party.
Those pardons, like many of Trump’s, had the whiff of inappropriateness and corruption about them. But none broke the norms of presidential behavior as severely as Trump’s.
Pardons were conceived by the framers of our Constitution as a way to guard against overreaching by the legislative and judicial branches. They allowed the president to do justice in cases where the law was overly harsh or the judicial system had failed to render an equitable judgment.
Some of Trump’s pardons this week have that character. His sentence commutation for Jawad Musa ( serving life in prison for a nonviolent drug offense), seems to have arisen at least partially out of a genuine concern for the harshness of the criminal justice system.
Stoking division
The framers also saw the pardon as a way to smooth political waters and end contentious social disputes. Jimmy Carter’s pardon of those who resisted the Vietnam draft was an effort to move past the war. Most famously, Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon was a well- intentioned attempt to end the trauma of Watergate. None of Trump’s pardons this week seem intended to heal the political turmoil in the country — indeed, they will only exacerbate it.
And so, most of Trump’s final pardons do not reflect either of the framers’ stated goals for the pardon power. Rather, coming on top of his other postelection pardons of cronies like Roger Stone and Michael Flynn, they largely reflect the worst instincts of earlier pardon abuses. Collectively, they embody an affinity for corruption and a willingness to use the pardon power as a personal tool to benefit or punish people.
In this last round, corrupt political operatives like Paul Erickson ( a GOP adviser who defrauded investors in an oil company) and Ken Kurson ( a friend of Jared Kushner, charged with cyberstalking his ex- wife) got clemency. So did Sholam Weiss, who was serving an 800+ year sentence for a massive insurance fraud, and Elliott Broidy, a Trump donor who pleaded guilty to acting as an unregistered lobbyist for foreign interests.
Less than an hour before Joe Biden took the oath of office, Trump gave a reward to Fox News host Jeanine Pirro for her sycophantic support: a pardon for her tax- evader ex- husband. But even that couldn’t top Trump’s pardon of Bannon, his former political adviser, as the most perfect example of Trump’s affinity for power and corruption.
Rubes lose again
Bannon was awaiting trial on charges that he defrauded Trump supporters by soliciting more than $ 25 million in donations for a fundraising campaign called “We Build the Wall.” Instead of funding construction of Trump’s border wall, some of that money went to fundraising executives — including $ 1 million to Bannon.
Though Bannon was, in times past, critical of Trump, he has returned to the Trump fold. Indeed, one reason for the pardon is that he could be particularly useful if Trump follows through on his reported decision to form a new party. On the other hand, Bannon could still face fraud charges in various state courts, so his pardon might be uniquely Trumpian in nature — political dynamite yet only partially effective.
More to the point, it is perfectly “on brand” and emblematically “peak Trump” for him to reward a vital elite political supporter like Bannon even though Bannon defrauded Trump’s own base. In the con man’s last con, the rubes lost again.
The broad nature of presidential pardon power was an intentional choice made by the Founders. They hoped and expected presidents would use it judiciously. Trump’s exploitation of it calls into question the assumption of reasonableness in its exercise.
The Trump pardon extravaganza was ( thankfully) different more in degree than in kind from those that came before. Perhaps we have dodged a bullet, and should be grateful. Even so, that the nation has had to even contemplate the possibility of a corrupt selfpardon — or preemptive pardons for family members — shows the potential for abuse. We must consider whether we need a constitutional correction to the framers’ vision of this power.