On pardoning power

With President Trump’s pardons of Roger Stone and Michael Flynn, the question can legitimately be asked if presidential pardons for close friends and campaign staff are what the founders intended when the U.S. Constitution was written. Frankly, the answer is “no.”

There was a debate of whether to include presidential pardons; the ideas had evolved from the royal power of English kings that had such powers. In the debate, there were two plans. George Mason argued against including presidential pardons. He argued that it was a mistake to grant such power to a single person, and said the new country had witnessed the tyrannical power of English kings. But Alexander Hamilton, in his Federalist Papers, argued that in a large, powerful government in times of insurrection or rebellion, there might be a need for such presidential powers. Hamilton did recognize the danger of the misuse of pardoning power, so he recommended that a president could be impeached for abusing pardoning power.

We know that Hamilton won the debate and presidents do have the absolute pardoning power. But we also know that while some presidents have used the pardon as it was intended, many presidents, like the current president, have abused this power as George Mason feared. Historians mostly agree that after the Civil War, when President Andrew Johnson pardoned the Confederate soldiers to reunite the country, this was proper use of the pardoning power. And to help heal the nation after the Vietnam War, when President Jimmy Carter pardoned young Americans who escaped to Canada to avoid military service, while this displeased many citizens, it was considered proper use of such power.

Unfortunately, the threat of impeachment for misuse of the pardoning power is mostly ignored. And even worse, there is now a debate about the question if a president can pardon himself. Clearly, the founders that wrote the Constitution would be disappointed.

JIM LANCASTER Sheridan