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The forgiveness debate – individual, group, partisan, preventive – is getting out of hand.
In his “Meet the Press” interview, donald trump mocked Joe Biden’s repeated assurances about Hunter: “‘I’m not going to pardon my son. I’m not going to give him any pardon under any circumstances.’ I look at that and I always knew I would give him a pardon.”
In a portion of that interview that didn’t air but was posted online, the president-elect complained to Kristen Welker:
“The press was obviously unfair to me. The press, no president has ever been treated by the press like I have.”
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Why did he appear on “Meet the Press”? “You’re very hostile,” Trump said. His response: “Well, hopefully you thought it was a fair interview. We covered a lot of political ground.”
“It’s only fair because you allowed me to say what I’m saying. But you know, the answers to the questions are, you know, pretty nasty. But look, because I’ve seen you interview other people like Biden.”
“I’ve never interviewed President BidenWelker responded. Trump said he was speaking “metaphorically.”
The pardon debate has been reinvigorated by President Biden’s decision to issue one to his son, Hunter, despite repeated assurances to the contrary. (Reuters/Getty/AP Images)
“I saw the George Stephanopoulos interview. And he’s a tough interviewer. It’s the softest interview I’ve ever seen. CNN interview. They give these soft, you know, what’s your favorite ice cream? It’s a whole different deal. I don’t. I don’t understand why.”
The strength of Welker’s approach is that he asked for as many as half a dozen follow-ups on important topics, making more news. When she asked him, for example, if he would really deport 11 million illegal immigrants, as he constantly said during the campaign, he said yes, which for some reason drove a lot of media attention. But a later question prompted Trump to say he didn’t think Dreamers should be kicked out and would work it out with Democrats.
As for Trump, he reminded me of the candidate I interviewed twice this year. He was sharp and serious, connecting on every pitch, missing some. This was not the candidate talking about sharks at rallies.
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In a major misstep, he argued that he was not seeking retribution, even retracting a campaign promise to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Biden.
That misstep, when Trump couldn’t hold back, was when he told members of the House Jan. 6 Committee, including Liz Cheney, “For what they did, frankly, they should go to jail.” .
He added the caveat that he would let his attorney general and FBI chief make that decision, but allowed the media to lead with Trump wanting his political opponents behind bars. For what it’s worth, there’s no crime in lawmakers holding hearings, and this business about withholding information seems like a real stretch.
Now back to pardons. Obviously, this debate was sparked because the president broke his repeated promise to grant a sweeping, decades-long pardon to his son, a 54-year-old convicted felon.
But then, as Politico first reported, we learned that the White House Biden is debating whether to issue a slew of preemptive pardons to people perceived as potential targets of Trumpian retaliation.
But the inconvenient truth is that anyone accepting such a pardon would essentially be admitting the appearance of guilt. That’s why Senator-elect Adam Schiff says he doesn’t want a pardon and won’t accept one.
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But many of these potential recipients don’t even know they’re being considered for blanket pardons that cover anything they may or may not have done.
It’s a truly horrible idea, and with Biden and Trump agreeing that the DOJ is engaged in unfair and selective prosecutions, which in the Republican’s case drove up their numbers, the stage is set for endless rounds of retaliatory strikes against each administration. previous
I remember first thinking about the unchecked power of presidential pardons when bill clinton delivered a last-minute one to ally and super-rich Marc Rich.
Former President Bill Clinton used his pardon power to let out Marc Rich, a very wealthy ally of his. (Photo by Julia Beverly/Getty Images)
So it’s time to listen to Alexander Hamilton, who put it in the Constitution. Keep in mind that in that era of horses and buggies, there were very few federal crimes because most law enforcement was done by the states.
In Federalist 74, published in 1788, Hamilton said that a single person was better equipped than an unwieldy group, and that such decisions should be widely applied to help those in need.
“In times of insurrection or rebellion,” wrote the future Secretary of the Treasury, “there are often critical moments, when a timely offer of pardon to the insurgents or rebels may restore the tranquility of the Commonwealth.”
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Otherwise, it might be too late.
But another founding father, George Mason, opposed it, saying that a president “might frequently pardon crimes which he himself counseled. It may happen, at some future day, that he will establish a monarchy and destroy the republic. If he has the power to grant pardons before indictment or conviction, cannot he stop the investigation and prevent detection?”
An excellent argument, but Hamilton won.
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Just as Hamilton envisioned, George Washington in 1794 granted clemency to the leaders of the Whiskey Rebellion to calm a difficult situation.
Something tells me Biden, Trump and their allies don’t study the federal papers. But it is still very broad power to put in the hands of a chief executive, for which the only remedy is impeachment.
