The last couple of months in a presidential term usually holds little interest, as the lame-duck executive rarely has enough clout to push through any part of his agenda in his final hours. The one area in which a President has total control, though, is in the power to pardon — and after the controversial Clinton pardons in January 2001, people have begun to speculate who will get official forgiveness from George Bush:
With a backlog of applications piled up at the Justice Department, high-profile criminals and their well-connected lawyers increasingly are appealing directly to President Bush for special consideration on pardons and clemency, according to people involved in the process.
Among those seeking presidential action are former junk-bond salesman Michael Milken, who hired former solicitor general Theodore B. Olson, one of the nation’s most prominent GOP lawyers, to plead his case for a pardon on 1980s-era securities fraud charges. Two politicians convicted of public corruption, former congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Calif.) and four-term Louisiana governor Edwin W. Edwards (D), are asking Bush to shorten their prison terms.
It remains to be seen how Bush will respond to these requests as his term ends. The president has used his broad pardon powers rarely during seven years in office, granting 157 pardons out of 2,064 petitions, and only six of 7,707 requests for commutations, according to an analysis by former Justice Department lawyer Margaret C. Love.
Bush has received criticism for his small output of presidential pardons, but that has been largely in keeping with his tough-on-crime policies. He may decide to loosen up as his term nears an end, but if he does, he’ll probably get more criticism from the same people who felt he hasn’t pardoned enough people. Some speculate that he’ll use the pardon power pre-emptively for those involved in terrorist interrogations to keep them from potential prosecution for efforts conducted in good faith under DoJ opinions on the limits of interrogation.
Carrie Johnson buries the lede in one sense. It takes almost half the article to discover that Scooter Libby has not filed a formal pardon request, despite a widely-held belief that Bush waited until now to take action. Bush commuted Libby’s sentence for obstruction of justice and perjury but refused to pardon him outright, stating that the appeals process should determine the justice of the conviction. Bush doesn’t have to get a formal request from Libby to issue him a full pardon, but it seems unlikely that he would act without such a request, and the time has grown short to initiate one.
Johnson doesn’t mention two other big names in clemency speculation: Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. The two Border Patrol agents were convicted for the discharge of a firearm in the commission of a violent crime, violation of civil rights, assault charges, and on charges of tampering with evidence. Their case has become a cause celèbre among border-security activists, and the demands for clemency have been loudly heard for months. The DoJ is currently reviewing the requests to see whether they will recommend some sort of clemency action to Bush, and this will almost certainly be among the most noteworthy of these decisions.
No matter who gets or doesn’t get clemency, the decisions will stir controversy right up to the moment of Barack Obama’s inauguration. I’m guessing that Bush will keep the pardons to a minimum, just as he has throughout his presidency. I suspect that Duke Cunningham and Edwin Edwards will be disappointed.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member