Pardon Me, Sir

by · January 20, 2021

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Andrew Donaldson

Born and raised in West Virginia, Andrew has been the Managing Editor of Ordinary Times since 2018, is a widely published opinion writer, and appears in media, radio, and occasionally as a talking head on TV. He can usually be found misspelling/misusing words on Twitter@four4thefire. Andrew is the host of Heard Tell podcast. Subscribe to Andrew'sHeard Tell Substack for free here:

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12 Responses

  1. Michael Cain says:
    January 20, 2021 at 9:23 am

    How does a pardon work in a case like Levandowski’s? His big money problem and now bankruptcy was all civil proceedings, so that’s not affected. Does he get the restitution and fine moneys that were part of his plea bargain on the criminal charges back?Report

  2. Jaybird says:
    January 20, 2021 at 9:55 am

    Looking for interesting names… a Joe Exotic, maybe. A Shkreli. A Snowden. An Assange. A Winner.

    Nope.
    Nope.
    Nope.

    Scrolling down the list of names, I saw “Pelletier” but it was Michael and not Leonard (and it’s not spelled that way anyway).

    Kilpatrick might be interesting? I guess? (Was there a Trump holding in Detroit?)

    Bummer.Report

    • fillyjonk in reply to Jaybird says:
      January 20, 2021 at 1:45 pm

      I know it is perhaps exceptionally petty of me but living in J. E.’s home territory, I was moderately delighted to see no pardon listed. Even more so when apparently he had a limo and a hairdresser waiting for what he thought would be his triumphal return.

      Like I said: I know it’s petty and unbecoming of me. But after 10 + months of limited human contact, maybe my petty side comes out a littleReport

      • Jaybird in reply to fillyjonk says:
        January 20, 2021 at 1:54 pm

        I remember you saying something like “OH MY GOSH PLEASE STOP TALKING ABOUT THESE AWFUL, AWFUL PEOPLE” and remembering that you lived local-news-distance away from that whole story.

        Maybe we can finally stop talking about them.

        It is, after all, 2021.Report

    • Jesse in reply to Jaybird says:
      January 21, 2021 at 1:54 am

      I think

      His longtime political adviser (Stone)
      His campaign chairman (Manafort)
      His later campaign CEO (Bannon)
      His campaign foreign policy adviser (Papadopoulos)
      His national security adviser (Flynn)
      His son-in-law’s dad
      3 GOP congressmen convicted during his term

      Is interesting, but not interesting in the way a contrarian like you would be interested.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Jesse says:
        January 21, 2021 at 9:26 am

        I’m used to the pardon power being used in a corrupt way. That sort of thing has already been well-established by precedent.

        I’m on record as being one of the people who understands that if a president is going to issue a pardon, he’s probably going to be pardoning someone who was found guilty of something.

        I mean, I love the idea of pardoning people for things that were crimes back a while ago but now it is the current year and we now understand that those things used to be crimes but now we know that they’re not bad and so those people should be pardoned.

        Hell, under that paradigm, I think that the pardon power is probably one of the most powerful tools in the president’s toolkit. If you don’t think that X ought to be a federal crime but the law is still on the books? Pardon everybody who gets found guilty of it. Like, set up the autopen. Have the pardon be finished by the time the guy walks down the courthouse steps.

        But, in practice, that’s not what the pardon power is.

        In practice, the pardon power is given to cronies. This has been well-established already.

        Would that it hadn’t been.

        (Remember when Bush pardoned John Forté? At first I thought it was a good step forward when it came to the onerous drug laws. As it turned out, nope. It’s just that Forté went to Exeter.)Report

  3. Oscar Gordon says:
    January 20, 2021 at 10:00 am

    He’s like the Oprah of Pardons.

    You get a pardon! And you get a Pardon! And you get a Pardon!

    You ALL get Pardons!

    Muahahahahahahaha!Report

    • Brandon Berg in reply to Oscar Gordon says:
      January 21, 2021 at 5:14 am

      Garfield granted 0 pardons. Since him, only the Bushes have granted fewer pardons than Trump. One can reasonably object to the selection, but the quantity is the opposite of what “The Oprah of Pardons” suggestst. Carter, with his pardoning of draft dodgers, is the undisputed Oprah.Report

  4. Kazzy says:
    January 20, 2021 at 12:04 pm

    The whole Presidential pardon thing has always struck me as weird and just as likely to be an act of injustice as an act of justice. Without doing too much digging, I can’t really get worked up about what Trump did here as it just seems like what tends to happen. Basically, nothing to see here. But I’m open to being wrong.Report

    • InMD in reply to Kazzy says:
      January 20, 2021 at 12:35 pm

      It’s intended to be a safety valve and I think many instances of its use, even by Trump, are consistent with that. But like everything else in government the way the power is used reflects the character of the person wielding it.Report

      • Kazzy in reply to InMD says:
        January 20, 2021 at 1:57 pm

        That makes sense. I should clarify my statement to say that “The way Presidents handle pardons at the end of their terms has always struck me as weird…”

        Like, there will always be some that will make us say, “Yea, that was the right thing to do,” and there will be some that will make us say, “I can’t believe THAT person got a pardon!” and there will be some that leave us scratching our heads and say, “How does Trump even know who Lil’ Wayne is?”

        Unless or until someone really abuses the system (which for all the worrying that Trump would, he doesn’t seem to have), it is what it is as far as I’m concerned.Report

  5. Kolohe says:
    January 20, 2021 at 4:45 pm

    Someone on Twitter pointed out that Bannon got a pardon, but his accomplice in the We Build The Wall scheme, Brian Kolfage, did not.Report

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