Pardon Power Is Corrupted: Time To Amend The Constitution

And no, it won't get better when Trump is gone

I typically do not take amending the Constitution lightly, and the framers made it a complicated process on purpose. When people complain about the lack of amendments, I think it’s odd because if the process were easy, it would create a gigantic mess.

Look at states that leave state constitutional amendments in the hands of voters. It’s how states end up with terrible laws or just silly ones. In Florida, for example, the “Save Our Homes” amendment caps the assessed value of a homesteaded property so it cannot increase by more than the lower of 3% or the percentage change in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) from the previous year.

That sounds great, and someone who purchased a five-bedroom home with an in-ground pool in a gated community on half an acre in 2000 for $200,000 — and whose home is now worth $750,000 — benefits big time. However, that comes at the expense of the new homeowner who purchases a $450,000 three-bedroom home on a quarter-acre lot, as they bear the brunt of higher property taxes to fill the gap left by those whose value increases have been capped. Also, Florida has it in its constitution that the University of Florida and Florida State University football teams must play each other every season.

Thankfully, amending the federal Constitution requires much more work: two-thirds passage in the House and Senate, followed by ratification from three-quarters of the states.

Trump made some questionable — for lack of a better word — pardons in his first term. Steve Bannon, Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos, and Roger Stone were all recipients. Trump also pardoned people who likely deserved it, such as Fred Keith Alford, who was convicted on a firearms-related charge in 1977 and served only one year of supervised probation.

Joe Biden threw caution (and norms) to the wind when he decided to issue a blanket pardon to his son Hunter, despite promising not to do so. Biden laughingly said he did it because Hunter’s prosecution was “political.” The laughter stems from the fact that Hunter’s father’s Justice Department prosecuted him — yet it was supposedly “political.”

Biden also pardoned other family members and issued preemptive pardons, all under the guise of necessity so that Trump couldn’t go after them. He also commuted the sentence of Michael Conahan, a former judge convicted in the “kids for cash” scandal for accepting millions in kickbacks to send juveniles to for-profit detention centers. And worse, he commuted the sentence of Rita Crundwell, a former comptroller who embezzled over $53 million from the city of Dixon, Illinois.

In his second term, Trump hasn’t bothered with the pretense of responsibility, handing out pardons like someone with an unlimited budget tossing candy to children on Halloween. It’s a level of political corruption that would make Nixon’s Plumbers gasp and blush.

Trump pardoned the former CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, despite claiming he didn’t know who he was and knew nothing about him other than that the Biden administration prosecuted him — which was apparently good enough.

He pardoned January 6th participants and a slew of corrupt politicians. He hilariously pardoned reality stars Todd and Julie Chrisley after their daughter spoke at the Republican National Convention and called the prosecution political. The funny part? They were prosecuted during the first Trump administration.

Perhaps the most egregious pardon he is considering is for former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández. He was like a Hollywood production — similar to one of the plots in the movie Traffic — where the supposed ally of the United States in the war on drugs was actually taking over the trade. Convicted and sentenced to 45 years in prison for trafficking cocaine into the United States, Hernández is now being portrayed by Trump as someone “treated very harshly and unfairly.”

Can you imagine? The guy slapping tariffs on other countries he claims are importing fentanyl into the United States is ready to give a pass to the man caught making sure deadly drugs made it into the country.

I could waste everyone’s time detailing all of the pardons, but I think you get the point. The real issue is that the pardon power is absolute. Democrats can promise all the hearings they want. They can threaten impeachment. But the idea of impeaching a president over exercising power clearly within his constitutional purview is absurd. It’s as reckless as how Trump is using his power.

This is one where Congress will have to stand up and say, “Enough is enough.” Democrats have no excuse after what Biden did, and only those Republicans who cannot see, hear, or discuss what Trump does — since their heads are perpetually stuck up Trump’s keister — will object until the next Democrat uses that power, naturally.

It’s also a no-brainer, and I cannot see how states will oppose it, since this power would be removed from both parties equally. It doesn’t have to be complicated, but there has to be a way to rein in that power and correct a process that has clearly become so corrupt it cannot continue as it stands.