Presidential Pardons
By Habib Siddiqui
Remember Lewis "Scooter" Libby who served as an adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney?
Remember Lewis "Scooter" Libby who served as an adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney?
From 2001 to 2005, Libby held the offices of Assistant to the
Vice President for National Security Affairs and Chief of Staff to the Vice
President of the United States and Assistant to the President during the
administration of President George W. Bush.
In October 2005, Libby resigned from all three government
positions after he was indicted on five counts by a federal grand jury
concerning the investigation of the leak of the covert identity of Central
Intelligence Agency officer Valerie Plame Wilson. He was subsequently convicted of four counts
(one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of perjury, and one count of
making false statements), making him the highest-ranking White House official
convicted in a government scandal since John Poindexter, the national security
adviser to President Ronald Reagan in the Iran–Contra affair.
After a failed appeal, President Bush commuted Libby’s
sentence of 30 months in federal prison, leaving the other parts of his
sentence intact. President Donald Trump fully pardoned Libby on April 13, 2018.
Remember Joe Arpaio who made a name as "America's
Toughest Sheriff"? He was the 36th Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona for
24 years, from 1993 to 2017. Arpaio has been accused of various types of police
misconduct, including abuse of power, misuse of funds, failure to investigate
sex crimes, improper clearance of cases, unlawful enforcement of immigration
laws, and election law violations. A Federal court monitor was appointed to
oversee his office's operations because of complaints of racial profiling. The
U.S. Department of Justice concluded that Arpaio oversaw the worst pattern of
racial profiling in U.S. history, and subsequently filed suit against him for
unlawful discriminatory police conduct. Arpaio's office paid more than $146
million in fees, settlements, and court awards.
Over the course of his career, Arpaio was the subject of
several federal civil rights lawsuits. In one case he was a defendant in a
decade-long suit in which a federal court issued an injunction barring him from
conducting further "immigration round-ups". A federal court
subsequently found that after the order was issued, Arpaio's office continued
to detain "persons for further investigation without reasonable suspicion
that a crime has been or is being committed." In July 2017, he was convicted
of criminal contempt of court, a crime for which he was pardoned by President
Donald Trump on August 25, 2017.
The latest white-collar convicted criminal to get the
presidential pardon is Dinesh D’Souza. Born in Bombay, D'Souza came to the United States
as an exchange student and graduated from Dartmouth College. He became a
naturalized citizen in 1991. He made a notoriety of being a hate provocateur
since his Dartmouth College days. His neo-conservative views made him a darling
among the right-wing Christians within the Republican Party.
In August 2010, D'Souza was named president of The King's
College, a small, Christian liberal arts college in Manhattan. On October 18,
2012, he resigned his post at The King's College following a press report that
he had shared a hotel room at a Christian conference with a woman whom he
introduced as his fiancée, despite still being married to his wife of 20 years.
On May 20, 2014, D'Souza pleaded guilty in federal court to
one charge of using a "straw
donor" to make an illegal campaign contribution to a 2012
United States Senate campaign, a felony. On September 23, he was sentenced to
eight months in a halfway house near his home in San Diego, five-years of probation,
and a $30,000 fine. On May 31, 2018, D'Souza was issued a full pardon by
President Donald Trump.
By pardoning three high-profile neocons, is Trump sending a
message to his former aides or accomplices with the Russia-gate?
Anthony
Zurcher tries to provide the answer. He says, “The president
could be sending a message to his people that he views that they - like Libby,
Arpaio and D'Souza - are the targets of out-of-control federal prosecutors.
Perhaps he is offering a very visible display of his willingness to use his
sweeping authority to remedy what he perceives not just as wrongs in the past -
but also those that may come.
At the very least, with his actions and Thursday's comments
that he is entertaining pardons for former Democratic Illinois Governor Rod
Blagojevich (abuse of power) and home-decor guru Martha Stewart (obstruction of
justice and lying to investigators), the president is demonstrating that he is
willing to exercise a much freer hand with his presidential powers.
Over the years the presidential pardon authority has been governed by an extended (some would say overly bureaucratic) process of review and approval by Department of Justice lawyers.”
Over the years the presidential pardon authority has been governed by an extended (some would say overly bureaucratic) process of review and approval by Department of Justice lawyers.”
By the way, the presidential pardons are neither an innovation
nor an abuse. As the executive head of the state, in accordance
with the United
States Constitution's Article II, Section 2, Clause 1, the president is entitled to pardon anyone.
George HW Bush pardoned Reagan-era Defense Secretary Casper
Weinberger. He also pardoned Eliott Abrams who was convicted of withholding
information from Congress about the Iran–Contra affair while serving under
Reagan. Abrams remains a die-hard Zionist and continues to play a major
promoter for war against Muslim countries in the Middle East.
Bill Clinton pardoned financier and deep-pocketed political
donor Marc Rich who was charged with tax evasion. He also pardoned his brother Roger Clinton, Jr.. after serving a year in federal
prison for cocaine possession.
Both Weinberger’s and Rich’s pardons came in the final days of
a presidency and were met with controversy and outcry.
Barack Obama
granted official mercy to 1,927, and that was down from Franklin Roosevelt’s
(the longest-serving president) whopping 3,687 pardons and commutations.
Richard Nixon
is the only president to have both issued pardons and received one (from his
successor, Gerald Ford).
While many in the opposition see Trump’s pardons as eroding political
norm and flexing political power the scope of which, in the US Constitution, is
largely undefined, his supporters find his actions are ones of liberation,
absolving those who had been unjustly punished - even for crimes they have
admitted committing. Conservative commentator and Trump critic David Frum of
The Atlantic has a more blunt assessment. "The most effective way for an
authoritarian leader to abuse the law is not by prosecuting the innocent, but
by protecting the guilty," he
tweeted.
Roger
Stone, the longtime friend and former aide to President Trump, said that his
presidential pardons are a message to special counsel Robert Mueller. “It
has to be a signal to Mike Flynn and Paul Manafort and even Robert S. Mueller
III,” Stone told the Washington Post. “Indict people for crimes that don’t
pertain to Russian collusion and this is what could happen.”
“The
special counsel has awesome powers, as you know,” he explained, “but the
president has even more awesome powers.”
Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.) agreed with Stone’s assessment,
but he saw it as a dangerous development. “But the possibility that he may also
be sending a message to witnesses in a criminal investigation into his campaign
is extremely dangerous,” he added. “In the United States of America, no one is
above the law.”
I wish Senator Warner is right and Trump is impeached for his
crimes, even though he may later be pardoned by Pence, his VP, a la Nixon-Ford
style! Where is America heading to?
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