WASHINGTON: At a campaign event shortly before the November election, President Trump gave an answer that offers the best explanation for the pardons he announced on Monday. Asked at a Univision town hall about the riot by his supporters at the Capitol on Jan 6, 2021, he said, “There were no guns down there. We didn’t have guns.”
For starters, the statement was false; according to the Justice Department, at least 180 people have been “charged with entering a restricted area with a dangerous or deadly weapon,” including guns, knives, batons, baseball bats and chemical sprays. But it’s the pronoun — “we” — that gives Mr Trump’s game away. By pardoning the rioters, he was, in every real sense, pardoning himself.
The president repeatedly promised during the campaign that he would pardon what he called the “J6 hostages,” but he was vague about the details. It has become clear that Trump decided to go big. He pardoned a vast majority of the 1,600 who were arrested, including those who assaulted police officers. (About 140 police officers were injured during the riot.) Further, Trump ordered all pending cases, including those for defendants charged with violent crimes, to be dismissed.
In simple terms, this means that in a few days, there will be no one in prison or facing any sort of criminal penalty for their actions at the Capitol on Jan 6, 2021. Some, including Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys who was pardoned after being sentenced to 22 years for seditious conspiracy, have already been released from their sentences.
The pardon recipients now join Trump himself as former Jan 6 defendants who are in the clear for their actions on that day. (After his victory in November, the Justice Department dropped its prosecution of him for conspiracy to overturn his 2020 loss by putting forth phony slates of electors on Jan 6.)
There is no check or balance on the president’s power to pardon. Neither a court nor Congress can overturn an act of clemency. It is the provision of the Constitution most directly descended from the authority of the British monarchy.
Because presidents exercise such unfettered discretion in granting clemency, these actions provide useful insights into their true character.In his final days in office, President Joe Biden used pardons to undo some of his own political history.
As a senator, he was a leader in the tough-on-crime programme of the 1990s, which contributed to the era of mass incarceration. As a form of penance, he issued clemency to 2,500 individuals who received “disproportionately long sentences” for nonviolent offenses.
Biden tried to stem Trump’s promised legal onslaught against his allies, with pardons for Anthony Fauci, Gen. Mark Milley and others against whom the new president had vowed vengeance. Also, in his final days, Biden’s oft-stated love for his family curdled into an obsessive protectiveness.
In December he pardoned his son Hunter (after repeatedly denying that he would) and then, in his final hours in office, issued pardons to five family members who have little or no chance of being investigated for any crime.
Trump’s Jan 6 clemencies underline the differences between the two men. Biden built a cocoon around his family and a handful of allies, Trump rewarded his entire movement; Biden played defence, Trump offense.
Trump established this pattern in his first year in office. Joe Arpaio was the long time elected sheriff of Arizona’s Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix. He was a notorious anti-Hispanic bigot, with a special interest in creating harsh and demeaning prison conditions, especially for undocumented immigrants.
Arpaio was also a leading spokesman, as Trump was, for the lie that Barack Obama was not born in the United States and thus was ineligible to be president. In 2017, Arpaio was convicted of criminal contempt for failing to follow court orders to stop racial profiling.
While he was awaiting sentencing, on Aug 25, 2017, Trump issued his first pardon to him, declaring in a tweet that Arpaio was an “American patriot” who “kept Arizona safe!”
After Arpaio, Trump pardoned Dinesh D’Souza and Conrad Black. D’Souza was a right-wing provocateur (who became a 2020 election denier) who was convicted of making fraudulent campaign contributions to a Republican Senate candidate in New York.
In a political gesture, Trump pardoned military officials who were accused of war crimes in Afghanistan. For example, Lt. Clint Lorance was serving a 19-year prison sentence for ordering the killing of two unarmed Afghan villagers.
Maj. Mathew Golsteyn was awaiting trial, charged with the premeditated murder of a Taliban bomb-making suspect. Trump pardoned them and later brought them onstage at one of his political fund-raisers. The Jan 6 clemencies were not the first that Trump granted to violent criminals.Excerpted: ‘Trump Just Pardoned Himself’ (Opinion Guest Essay). Courtesy: —The New York Times