President Joe Biden's senior aides are conducting a vigorous internal debate over whether to issue preemptive pardons to a range of current and former public officials who could be targeted with President-elect Donald Trump's return to the White House, according to senior Democrats familiar with the discussions.
Biden's senior aides are debating whether to issue preemptive pardons to a range of current and former public officials -- including Cheney, Schiff and Fauci -- whom Trump could target upon returning to the White House. www.politico.com/news/magazin ...
-- Tim O'Brien (@timobrien.bsky.social) December 4, 2024 at 5:53 PM
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"didn't know a preemptive pardon was possible."
Talk Of 'Preemptive' Pardons By Trump Raises Questions: What Can He Do?www.npr.org
December 2, 20201:27 PM ET
A presidential preemptive pardon sounds unusual, but it has been done before, most famously when President Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon, who resigned because of the Watergate scandal in 1974 but had not been charged with any crimes.
"A preemptive pardon is a presidential pardon granted before any formal legal process has begun," American University professor Jeffrey Crouch tells NPR.
In an email, Crouch, author of The Presidential Pardon Power, says that "someone must have committed a federal offense, but as soon as that happens, the president can grant them clemency. He does not need to wait until the alleged offender is charged, stands trial, and so on."
Crouch continues: "These pardons are not common, but they do happen occasionally."
Biden has some catching up to do on pardons
www.axios.com
... President Biden's pardon of his son Hunter ignited a debate over whether Biden was abusing his power for personal reasons, but he'll have to issue well over 100 more in his last few weeks in office to come close to his predecessors' totals. ...[emphasis mine]
By the numbers: Biden actually has been reluctant to show mercy " handing out just 26 pardons and commuting 135 criminal sentences since he took office in January 2021. He's granted just 1.2% of the requests he's received, according to data from the Justice Department's Office of the Pardon Attorney.
- - - President-elect Trump -- who had fewer acts of clemency than his recent predecessors during his first term -- had granted 29 pardons at this point in 2020.
- - - But in the final weeks as the nation's 45th president, Trump nearly quintupled his number of pardons, ending with a total of 144. ...
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