Presidential Pardons 🪶A Telling Tale

Gearóid Ó Loingsigh ☭ writing in Substack on 5-December-2024.

Biden is in his last days as president and as is usual the media focus on his presidential pardons and commutations of sentences, though in actual fact, all presidents award these throughout their presidency and not just at the end of their term.[1] However, they do sometimes keep the more controversial ones till after the November elections, when there are no electoral consequences to their decisions.

Biden’s decision to pardon his son for crimes he has not even been charged with says a lot about the nature of the justice system. He is afraid that Trump and those he empowers may seek vengeance and go after his son, regardless of the merits of the case. No such concern exists for the mass of the population, many of whom are bullied into accepting charges under threat of more serious charges being levelled or more serious sentences being sought. The Plea Bargain Task Force saying that nearly 98% of convictions are through plea bargains.[2] Were US court dramas to reflect this reality, episodes would last minutes with no incisive cross examination or forensics. This says a lot about the supposed impartiality of the system. It is not and never has been. Working class people, black people, Native Americans, left wing activists know this all too well. The use and abuse of the presidential pardon just confirms it.

Of course, the Reprobates are busy condemning the DemoRats, though some of the latter are reportedly not happy with Biden either.[3] It is all a bit rich when Trump himself had pardoned Ivanka’s father-in-law Charles Kushner. Kushner was convicted of illegal campaign donations, tax evasion, witness tampering, arranging to have a prostitute have sex with his brother-in-law in a room he had installed cameras in. A real jewel, one who was not only pardoned but has now been nominated as US Ambassador to France.[4] Justice is about power, not about truth, fairness or any of the other attributes liberals ascribe to it.

Obama knew this more than most. In the dying days of his second presidency, with absolutely nothing to lose as Trump was coming into power, liberals lobbied publicly for a presidential pardon for Leonard Peltier the Native American activist serving a life sentence having been framed for the murder of FBI agents.[5] There is nothing wrong with lobbying and publicly calling on the likes of Obama to exercise such power, after all he did commute the sentence of Oscar López Rivera, a Puerto Rican nationalist who had served 35 years, cutting just six years off his sentence at the age of 74. But believing your own propaganda is a bridge too far. Too many liberals, and lots of people who wave about their Marxist credentials believed that Obama would do so, as he was a black president. But Obama knew that justice was about power and had profitable experience of identity politics and knew it for the scam that it is. It is as useful to the elite as racism is in dividing the working class and sowing false illusions amongst minorities to prevent them from seeking common cause with the working class and each other. The sentimental appeals to Obama were embarrassing.

All presidents have pardoned people, and all of them had questionable criteria in doing so. When you look at those pardoned or who had their sentences commuted you will see a long list of people serving time on drug charges, many of them for large quantities, whilst young kids on the block served out sentences for a few joints. Clinton also pardoned the mining magnate and tax evader Marc Rich but the president who had launched Plan Colombia commuted the sentence of New York lawyer Harvey Weinig who had laundered a US $19 million for the Cali Cartel. The headline in the New York Times described the process very well Special Pleading; A Felon's Well-Connected Path to Clemency.[6] There was no doubt it was all down to his connections. Even liberals were shocked.

''The prosecution of Harvey Weinig, probably more than most cases, sent a message that the law applies equally to everyone, regardless of their wealth, status and influence,'' said Lev L. Dassin, a former prosecutor in the case. ''I think that President Clinton's actions perverted that message.”

''It's troubling because the pardon power is designed to correct injustices in the system,'' Mr. Dassin said, ''and when it's used in such a glaring example of where it should not be, it undermines the credibility of the system.''[7]

But of course, it wasn’t really an abuse, it was a question of power. He had also pardoned his own brother Roger, another convicted drug trafficker. All presidents have pardoned very questionable people. George H.W. Bush pardoned those involved the Iran Contra Scandal[8] e.g. those who bore some responsibility for the Crack epidemic in the United States, all with the aim of overthrowing the Sandinista government which had won the 1984 elections in Nicaragua.[9] To be clear, what these men did was to use drug money to finance a terrorist campaign in Nicaragua. But there were other questionable pardons, like Nixon’s infamous pardon of trade union bureaucrat and gangster Jimmy Hoffa, and Gerald Ford’s pardon of Nixon himself.[10]

The justice system, including presidential pardons is as the character Martin Fierro put it like a knife, it doesn’t hurt those who wield it. If Biden’s pardon is of any use, it is this. It has once more shown the real nature of justice in capitalist courts. There is one law for the rich and their lackeys and another for the working class.

References

[1] Presidential pardons and commutations can be consulted at.

[2] ABA (22/02/2023) 2023 Plea Bargain Task Force Report urges fairer, more transparent justice system.

[3] The Guardian (05/12/2024) Biden library reportedly under threat by Democrats enraged by Hunter pardon. Robert Tait.

[4] MSNBC (03/12/2024) Charles Kushner isn't the only presidential in-law getting a boost from Trump. Jen Psaki.

[5] For information on the Peltier case see.

[6] NYT (14/04/2001) Special Pleading: A Felon's Well-Connected Path to Clemency. Benjamin Weiser.

[7] Ibíd.

[8] Politico (04/12/2024) 4 Presidential Pardons From History That Were Way More Controversial Than Biden’s.

[9] Jacobin (12/11/2021) What We Really Know About the CIA and Crack. Daniel Finn.

[10] The Independent (03/12/2024) From Hunter Biden to Richard Nixon: Most controversial presidential pardons in history. Ariana Baio.

⏩ Gearóid Ó Loingsigh is a political and human rights activist with extensive experience in Latin America.