Joe Biden's last-minute pardons have been nothing short of scandalous—and his son Hunter's pardon wasn't even the worst.
Biden's pardons are terrible on their own, but taken together they illustrate a larger point. Pardons apply to individual cases; Pardons are not for policymaking.
First of all, holy crap, some of these pardons are insane, including Biden's grant of clemency to the corrupt judge at the center of the “Kids for Cash” case, in which former Pennsylvania judge Michael Conahan accepted bribes in exchange for being He wrongfully sentenced children to prison in for-profit juvenile prisons, where he padded his own bank account while simultaneously helping the prisons pad theirs.
Around 4,000 juvenile convictions had to be overturned after the bribe payments were discovered.
And Biden pardoned Rita Crundwell, a corrupt local official in Illinois who ran the largest municipal fraud scheme in U.S. history.
Also on the list: Meera Sachdeva, a Mississippi doctor who committed large-scale Medicare fraud, including by shortchanging cancer patients by giving them diluted medications.
She also reused needles, which appears to have led to HIV infection in at least one patient.
(Biden's release of a Chinese citizen convicted of truly horrific child pornography charges was part of a separate operation, a prisoner swap with the tyrants in Beijing.)
Of course, these pardons and commutations cannot be justified – which is why Biden and his team are not trying to defend them.
Rather, they say the president did not consider these measures on a case-by-case basis, but instead relied on categorical language (in this case, nonviolent, non-sexual offenders who were eligible for a home confinement program during COVID). .
And that is exactly the problem.
Pardons, properly understood, should not be a policy-making tool.
Biden should have learned the lesson from his old boss Barack Obama, who issued more than 1,700 pardons and commutations on the way out, mostly for federal drug offenders.
I personally support the legalization of drugs and would prefer there to be no federal drug prisoners, but the decision is not mine – nor is it the president's.
The decision lies with Congress. This may sound like redundancy, but somehow our political leaders keep missing this fact: It's up to them Legislature To makes the laws.
The United States has all kinds of bad laws. I would like to see them changed.
The president can propose changes to laws and veto bills that he believes would result in bad laws. But he can't legitimately do it cancel the laws passed by Congress – he is bound by an oath to faithfully carry out those laws.
A completely legal presidential action may still amount to an abuse of power. Imagine a president who thinks taxes are too high and who announces on Inauguration Day that he will categorically pardon Americans who refuse to pay their income taxes in full while he is in office.
Imagine a president who finds OSHA rules too strict and simply pardons all violators—or who abuses another executive power and announces that his administration will simply refuse to investigate or prosecute such cases.
The president acts within his formal powers to pardon whomever he pleases or to give priority or subordination to executive actions.
But that does not make the abuse of these powers legitimate, even if such abuse is not illegal.
Pardons apply on an individual basis and in exceptional cases: a wrongdoer who has dramatically improved or achieved a remarkable achievement can have his sentence commuted or his offense expunged from the record.
For very old or sick offenders, mercy can be offered out of compassion. Pardons are not intended to resolve political differences between the president and Congress.
If Democrats had any self-respect — or any real instinct for political self-preservation — they would censure, if not impeach, Biden while they still have time.
There's a lesson here for Republicans, too: Donald Trump has indicated that he intends to pardon those convicted in the January 6 riots.
There may be grounds for pardon in this or that individual case, but a categorical pardon would be tantamount to repealing the law, a post hoc Legalization of insurrection and not a special act of mercy.
The fact that these rioters believed they were acting on behalf of Trump makes this case particularly ugly, but even if Trump had nothing at all to do with the events in question, it would not be the president's job to explain away groups of people who were outside the criminal's reach lies within the code.
No matter how much they whine about Biden's pardons today, don't expect the Republican invertebrates in Congress to laugh it off.
Republicans in Congress like to play courtiers of the quasi-monarchy the presidency is being transformed into. But if Congress doesn't stand up for its most basic power – the power to make laws – who will?
Trump's inauguration is in 29 days. Democrats should think about the precedent they want to set by then. They can stand for vulgar Woodrow Wilson-ism—“the President is free, both legally and in his conscience, to be as great a man as he can be”—or they can stand for the Constitution and Congress and, not coincidentally, for yourself.
They should make an example of Biden. No one can say they won't succeed.