A nuanced discussion of various aspects of Prez Biden’s late-term clemency actions
A few days ago, Slate ran this new commentary from Frank Bowman discussing the latest reporting on Prez Biden’s clemency actions on his way out of the Oval Office. I recommend the piece in full, and here is how it starts and concludes:
The controversies created by Joe Biden’s late-term pardons were reinvigorated this week by a story in the New York Times describing the White House processes that generated some of those pardons. On the right, the article produced harsh criticism of Biden’s judgment and mental competence as well as renewed calls for investigation into his pardons by Congress and the Justice Department. On the left, the principal theme was exasperated dismissal of the pardon story as a baseless attempt to distract attention from Donald Trump’s never-ending cascade of scandal and outrage.
As an academic student of the presidential pardon power, I think the new information deserves a more nuanced and dispassionate treatment than partisan combatants have given it. Taken as a whole, the Times reporting debunks many of the Republicans’ wilder claims. But it also raises one fairly debatable question about the validity of some of Biden’s pardons and, more importantly, reinforces the impression that the process that produced a number of these pardon decisions was irregular, hurried, and sometimes poorly executed….
The bottom line on the Biden pardons is that all of them were almost certainly constitutionally authorized and legally valid. Some, particularly those of his family, were probably ill advised, though the final judgment on that will depend on future developments. And the group commutations, whatever one thinks of them as criminal justice policy, suffered from defects stemming from hasty execution that open the door to legal quibbles and political exploitation
Some prior related posts:
- Updated (but still partial) accounting of Prez Biden’s (and others’) clemency record
- Notable accounting and accounts of Prez Biden’s last mass commutations and their implementation
- Trying to understand Prez Trump’s unclear claims about former Prez Biden’s pardons
- New reporting from the New York Times on Prez Biden’s out-going clemency actions