STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Let's bring in Rachel Barkow, an expert on clemency, who teaches law at New York University. Welcome to the program.
RACHEL BARKOW: Good morning.
INSKEEP: I'm just going through some of the president's recent pardons. It's quite a variety. Michael Grimm, former New York representative who pleaded guilty to felony tax evasion. Trump had compared Grimm to himself. Army lieutenant convicted of violating COVID protocols, a labor union leader who had failed to report $300,000 in gifts, and also a Florida man - two men convicted of freeing sharks and a giant grouper from what they believed to be an illegal fishing line. So quite a variety of people there, along with the people that Mara mentioned. How, if at all, is this unusual?
BARKOW: Well, it's unusual in a couple ways. One is that it doesn't appear that these people were vetted through the normal Department of Justice process that has been used by modern presidents, where people would file a petition. It would go to the office of the pardon attorney. The office of the pardon attorney would make sure there was no red flags in a prison record or somebody's background before recommending a grant to the president.
So it's unusual in that way, and it's unusual in the way that it seems very partisan. You know, it seems that most of the people, if not all of the people on the list, have some kind of connection to the president, to the president's cronies, or, you know, it's used in a way as a messaging so that if someone was convicted of a crime similar to the ones that President Trump himself had been charged with, he can cast doubt on that kind of entire enterprise of focusing on a crime like that.
INSKEEP: When Ed Martin, the administration official, writes on social media, no MAGA left behind, about this, is that beyond what other presidents have done?
BARKOW: Well, you can imagine what the reaction, I think, would be had, under Joe Biden's administration, someone in his administration said, no Biden supporter left behind. You know, I think there would be outcry. People would justifiably question whether or not this authority, which should be even-handed and equally available to all Americans, was somehow being used for partisan ends.
INSKEEP: Let me follow up on that because somebody listening is saying, well, they're all corrupt. I mean, I hear this when I talk with voters. I hear this when I talk with Trump supporters, all kinds of people. They all do this. They're all corrupt. Trump is actually more open about it. We just heard Mara use the phrase - or the word transparent. Is there something to that, that this pardon power is often or always misused?
BARKOW: No. I mean, historically, you know, it's a venerated power that the framers thought was really important for us to have as a country because laws would be excessively severe, and it was important to have a mechanism to check that. And historically, it's been used in a kind of nation-healing way. So you have President Washington pardoning people involved in the Whiskey Rebellion, again, in an attempt to kind of bring the country together.
Abraham Lincoln gave clemency to people who had deserted - soldiers who had deserted that he had great sympathy for. President Carter, in his first day in office, gave clemency to people who had evaded the Vietnam War and the draft. So there's lots of examples of presidents who have used this authority in a kind of bring the nation together way. And more recently, President Obama had a big clemency initiative to try to address excessive drug sentences. So I don't think it's accurate to say it's always partisan, it's always used based on who people know. You know, we've seen really good examples of presidents using the power in an effort to try to heal some of the country's wounds.
INSKEEP: You mentioned the founders' intent. Can you expand on that a little bit? What was the point of having the pardon power in the Constitution in the first place?
BARKOW: Well, it comes from the king's ability to bestow mercy. And when the framers kind of translated that to our own country, the idea was that it is important for the leader of the country, in some instances, to be able to heal the nation by giving mercy and clemency to people. But they were also very well attuned to the fact that there is a tendency among the populace to be too severe in giving punishments and sentences to people, and, therefore, there needed to be some kind of check on that undue severity.
INSKEEP: Does there now need to be some kind of check on the president's pardon power? President Trump, in his first term, said, my power is absolute. He seems to have been upheld in that.
BARKOW: Yeah, and the voters knew that he was - you know, they had a record from the first administration, which looks a lot like what we're seeing now. So it's not as if it was a secret. You know, I think the greatest check on the pardon power is making sure you elect somebody with the good character to exercise it prudently.
INSKEEP: Meaning that if we did not like this, we should've thought about it before November of 2024.
BARKOW: Yeah, that would've been the hope.
INSKEEP: Rachel Barkow, thanks so much. Really appreciate your insights.
BARKOW: Thank you.
INSKEEP: She is a law professor at New York University and an expert in clemency. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
