Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2021 | 2 a.m.
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Not content with botching the country’s response to the coronavirus and waging war on our democracy by calling into question the legitimacy of our election, President Donald Trump is now making a mockery of the pardon power.
The framers of the Constitution granted the president broad powers to pardon and commute sentences, and expected presidents to use this power judiciously to right wrongful convictions and unjustifiably harsh sentences.
Over time, strict guidelines were developed by the Justice Department that outlined the conditions for issuing pardons. With rare exception, every president strictly adhered to those guidelines.
But the framers did not anticipate a president as ethically challenged as Trump.
He saw the power not as a means to right a wrong but as a valuable bargaining chip, a way to influence behavior beneficial to himself and his allies.
He has openly mused about granting himself a pardon. So much for the concept “No man is above the law.”
Of the Trump pardons/commutations granted, the vast majority have been to his political supporters, including those who lied to obstruct special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. And it is not as if a miscarriage of justice was being righted. Most had pled guilty to the crimes with which they were charged. And none of these pardons have gone through the rigorous Justice Department review process normally conducted.
Trump has infected his office and our body politic with his corruption. These pardons are but the latest in a long line of abuses of power.
