How come no one’s pardoning me?
Turkeys, draft dodgers, and Jimmy Hoffa walk into a bar…
In 1984 Los Angeles hosted a spectacular Summer Olympics that the Soviet Union boycotted. Ronald Reagan won a sweeping reelection bid, and Michael Jackson’s hair caught fire while filming a Pepsi commercial. Also in 1984, a bushy-haired man in Arkansas was arrested for selling a gram of cocaine to an undercover cop. He would be convicted and serve one year in prison for the crime. His name is Roger Clinton Jr. The person who authorized the sting operation was Arkansas Governor William Jefferson Clinton, his half-brother.
On January 20, 2001, President Clinton, on his last day in office, pardoned 140 people, including his brother. Believe it or not, that wasn’t even the most controversial pardon of the day. That honor was reserved for Marc Rich the billionaire fugitive who made illegal oil deals with Iran. Before his pardon, his wife, Denise Rich contributed more than $1 million to the Democratic Party and its candidates, $450,000 to Clinton’s library fund, $100,000 to a fund supporting Hillary Clinton’s Senate campaign, $10,000 to the president’s legal defense fund, and $7,375 worth of furniture to the Clintons. She also presented a gold-plated saxophone to the president at a charity ball.*
Believe it or not, Clinton was the second consecutive President to grant a pardon for shady deals with Iran. George H. W. Bush granted pardons to Casper Weinberger and four others for their role in the Iran-Contra scandal. The special counsel overseeing the prosecution would later note that President Bush was a subject of the investigation*.
In 2005, Charles Kushner hired a sex worker to seduce his brother-in-law. He then filmed the pair having sex in a motel room on a hidden camera and sent the tape to his sister on the day of her son’s engagement party to make sure they would not testify against him in a case involving illegal campaign contributions. He later pleaded guilty to his crimes and went to prison. In 2020 President Donald Trump pardoned Kushner for his crimes*. Kushner’s son, Jared, is married to President Trump’s daughter Ivanka. Last month President-Elect Trump nominated Kushner to be the next ambassador of France where he will live in a 19th-century estate in Paris. You can donate to the preservation of his next home here.
This past Sunday President Joe Biden pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, for any crimes possibly committed in the last 10 years. This decision came after a Thanksgiving spent on Nantucket before jetting off to Angola for some presidential business. Honestly, as someone who has also run away after making an unpopular decision to avoid criticism, I respect it.
Head-scratching pardons are nearly as old as the nation. Andrew Johnson pardoned every Confederate soldier who took up arms against the Union. Richard Nixon pardoned Jimmy Hofa. Jimmy Carter pardoned all the Vietnam draft dodgers and the singer Peter Yarrow of the folk group Peter, Paul, and Mary after he was convicted of assaulting a 14-year-old girl in a D.C. hotel room in 1969. I could go on and on but I promised 2000 words or less.
The pardon power being delegated to the executive branch was a choice, and making it absolute except in cases of impeachment was never going to be perfect. Is a single “man of prudence” a better arbiter for granting grace than a body of people? Hamilton thought so*, and he could also spit bars. I’ve never seen the musical but I assume it’s accurate.
There has been a lot of pearl-clutching this week about pardons. The truth is we’ve been living under the leadership of tragic figures for some time. At the risk of sounding like our lame-duck President, my dad always said, “It’s not what you know but who you know.” But we ask more from our leaders than we ask of ourselves. I’m not a father, but I understand wanting to save a son. I don’t have a daughter with a convict father-in-law, but you can imagine how those conversations went. And certainly, no one has ever given me a gold-plated saxophone. But DM me if you want to send one my way.
We all have moral courage until we wield power ourselves. Most of us will never seek absolute power and we’re not weird enough to look in the mirror and say “I could be president”. And if you are, let me borrow some confidence. There isn’t an equivalence between one President using his power to protect his son, and the next guy probably pardoning the QAnon Shaman. But there are always in-groups and out-groups and even factions within groups. People feel pressure to help the people they know. Maybe we should demand more from our leaders, but we shouldn't be surprised when our leaders remind us they are mortals too. They are corrupt and vulnerable and just trying to keep their cliques happy.
I don’t see how we can hate from outside of the club. We can’t even get in.
See you Thursday.
Sources and further readings
Albert W. Alschuler, Bill Clinton’s Parting Pardon Party, 100 J. CRIM. L. & CRIMINOLOGY 1131, 1137–38 (2010).
n.122; Albert W. Alschuler, Unequal Justice for Girtha Gulley, CHI. TRIB.(Jan. 13, 1993), https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1993-01-13-9303161543-story.html.