In Front of Our Noses: Weird Pardons
Pardoning just because he can?
Via The Athletic: President Trump pardons Hall of Famer Joe Klecko and four other former NFL players.
President Donald Trump pardoned former NFL players Joe Klecko, Nate Newton, Jamal Lewis, Travis Henry and the late Billy Cannon on Thursday, according to White House pardon czar Alice Marie Johnson.
“As football reminds us, excellence is built on grit, grace, and the courage to rise again. So is our nation,” Johnson posted on social media. “Grateful to @POTUS for his continued commitment to second chances. Mercy changes lives.”
Well, that will be news to Cannon, who died in 2018.
I have no specific knowledge about these cases in terms of whether there is actually some good reason to have issued these pardons, so I will allow, out of a sense of intellectual honesty, that maybe, just maybe, I am missing something.
Having said that, this just looks like a president who has a unilateral power that he loves playing with, and so decided to pull it out of his toy box.
He likes the NFL, so why not, right?
Keeping in mind that I have significant critiques of the Drug War as a general matter, I still can note that it is profoundly weird and deeply inconsistent for an administration that claims blowing up cocaine boats in the Caribbean is vital to protect American lives, and then pardoning a number of individuals involved in drug crimes, one of which was for cocaine trafficking specifically. (And yes, I know that the crimes here are nothing compared to those of former Honduran President, Juan Orlando Hernández, who was pardoned despite his involvement in a massive cocaine trafficking operation).
These pardons are just another example of the amoral and capricious nature of Trump and this administration. They are also a hallmark of his authoritarian impulses. He pardons people because he can, not because there is some compelling pro-justice or public good reason for doing so; it’s all about the exercise of power.
El Taco is concerned above all else about how he thinks people see him. So, it’s more about being seen exercising power.
There’s also grift. Many of his pardons were quite openly done in exchange for something.