The Danger of White Knight Pardons: Biden Could Fundamentally Change Presidential Power

[rangerrebew]

Columns, Constitutional Law, PoliticsDecember 17, 2024

The Danger of White Knight Pardons: Biden Could Fundamentally Change Presidential Power

Below is my column in the New York Post on the news reports that President Joe Biden is seriously considering preemptive pardons for political allies. In granting what I have called “White Knight pardons,” Biden would achieve more of a political than legal purpose. Democrats are worried about the collapsing narrative that President-elect Donald Trump will destroy democracy,  end future elections, and conduct sweeping arrests of everyone from journalists to homosexuals. That narrative, of course, ignores that we have a constitutional system of overlapping protections that has blocked such abuses for over two centuries. Ironically, preemptive pardons would do precisely what Biden suggests that he is deterring: create a dangerous immunity for presidents and their allies in committing criminal abuses.

Here is the column:

There are growing indications that President Joe Biden is about to fundamentally change the use of presidential pardons by granting “prospective” or “preemptive” pardons to political allies. Despite repeated denials of President-elect Donald Trump that he is seeking retaliation against opponents and his statements that he wants “success [to be] my revenge,” Democratic politicians and pundits have called for up to thousands of such pardons.

While there is little threat of any viable prosecution of figures like the members of the January 6th Committee, the use of “White Knight pardons” offers obvious political benefits. After many liberals predicted the imminent collapse of democracy and that opponents would be rounded up in mass by the Trump Administration, they are now contemplating the nightmare that democracy might survive and that there will be no mass arrests.

https://jonathanturley.org/2024/12/17/the-danger-of-white-knight-pardons-biden-could-fundamentally-change-presidential-power/

[Fishrrman]

As I mentioned elsewhere in the forum yesterday, it's going to become de rigueur for future leftist presidents to issue a bunch of "pre-emptive pardons" on their last days in office...

[The_Reader_David]

"Premptive pardons" are not pardons at all, but grants of immunity.  The Constitution provides no such power to the President.  Plainly Trump's DOJ needs to find a solid case against one of those granted one of these "pardons" and bring an indictment so that the SCOTUS can rule them invalid.  We have originalist judges in the majority, and none of the Founders would recongize these as pardons. Personally, I favor finding an indictable case against Fauci, simply because his misconduct in allowing the funding of gain-of-function research to be funded overseas killed millions, and was not a personal attack on Trump, so that prosecuting him cannot be portrayed as venial "revenge".

Of course, if the SCOTUS for some reason rules them valid, then every one of the beneficiaries should be dragged in front of every relevant Congressional committee and forced to testify about whatever it was that made Biden think they might be targetted, with referrals for contempt of Congress forthcoming and pursued by the DOJ if they don't (cf. the treatment of Steve Bannon).