The history of executive pardons has a Texas twist
On the final day of his presidency, Donald Trump issued 143 pardons amid a familiar noxious cloud of accusations of scandal and corruption. Leading up to the announcement of this final list of pardons, the New York Times described “a lucrative market for pardons” with lawyers collecting tens of thousands of dollars to lobby the president to pardon wealthy felons.
Apparently, this practice is not illegal, though it appears to be sordid and unseemly.
John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer convicted of illegally disclosing classified information, even claimed that an associate of Rudy Giuliani told him that Giuliani could help him secure a pardon for $2 million. (Giuliani denied the accusation.) Kiriakou turned down the offer, saying, “Even if I had 2 million bucks, I wouldn’t spend it to recover a $700,000 pension!”
Trump’s final list of pardons included Steve Bannon, indicted for fraud; fundraiser Elliott Broidy, convicted of foreign lobbying; Rick Renzi and Randall “Duke” Cunningham, two congressmen convicted of bribery; Jared Kushner’s friend Ken Kurson, arrested on cyberstalking charges, and other cronies, political allies and friends of friends.
Of course, this was not the first time in American history that scandal and controversy have followed pardons granted by presidents and governors. Bill Clinton’s pardon of fugitive financiers Marc Rich and Pincus Green in 2001 created an enormous uproar. Clinton was accused of having granted the pardons because Rich’s ex-wife, Denise, had given $450,000 to the Clinton Foundation. James Comey, of all people, as incoming U.S. attorney in Manhattan, investigated the charges against Clinton. Ultimately the office declined to prosecute.
Who can forget the infamous case of Gov. Ray Blanton of Tennessee who served time in prison, not for his cash-for-clemency program exposed by Marie Ragghianti, head of the State Board of Pardons and Paroles, but for mail fraud, conspiracy and selling liquor licenses? Among those Blanton pardoned were 20 convicted murderers.
And then there was our own homegrown scandal involving a native-born demagogue much in the model of Donald Trump, James “Pa” Ferguson. Ferguson had the gift of oratory. His following of small farmers and day laborers adored him. Will Rogers joked that if Ferguson blew up the Capitol in Washington, his thousands of followers would say, “Jim was right. The thing ought to have been blowed up years ago.”
In 1917, Ferguson was impeached and removed from office by the Texas Legislature for corruption and because he had vetoed funding for the University of Texas in a fit of pique. In 1924, the Texas Supreme Court confirmed his impeachment and the corollary that he could no longer hold office in Texas. So Miriam “Ma” Ferguson, Pa’s wife, was enlisted to run for governor instead and became Texas’ first female governor.But there was never a question in anyone’s mind as to who was really running things when Ma was governor.
In 1925 and 1926, Ma issued 3,595 pardons. Nola Wood, the pardons secretary, swore in later interviews that she had seen wads of cash floating around the governor’s office, some wrapped in newspaper as a rudimentary disguise. Sometimes Pa double-dipped by also acting as the inmate’s “lawyer,” advocating for a pardon, which Ma always granted.
The alleged selling of pardons by the Fergusons was so wellknown that it became part of Texas folklore. According to one story, a man went to see Pa Ferguson about getting a pardon for his son. Ferguson kept changing the subject to a certain swayback horse he wanted to sell the man for $150. Finally the man grew irate and demanded to know why Ferguson kept trying to talk him into buying a useless horse.
“Because,” said Ferguson, “your son could ride him home from the penitentiary.”
After Ma was defeated for re-election by Georgetown district attorney and anti-Klan crusader Dan Moody, Ma, out of pure spite, even issued a pardon to Murray Jackson, the first defendant Moody had convicted in the series of trials of Klansmen that had made Moody famous.
The Fergusons were never indicted for selling pardons because there wasn’t enough irrefutable evidence, but no one forgot. In 1936, under Gov. James Allred, an amendment to the Texas Constitution passed that established the Board of Pardons and Paroles and required that all new pardon applications had to be reviewed by this board first.
This same remedy should be applied at the federal level to end, once and for all, the president’s unfettered power to pardon and the scandals that have resulted. Something to add to Joe Biden and Congress’s to-do list.
Bernstein is a Houston publicist, writer and historian, author of “The First Waco Horror: The Lynching of Jesse Washington and the Rise of the NAACP” and “Ten Dollars to Hate: The Texas Man Who Fought the Klan.”