Pardoner-in-chief

Summary

Today, Explained: "Pardoner-in-chief"

Date: January 29, 2026
Hosts: Noel King
Guests: Ben Wallace-Wells (The New Yorker), Sai Krishna Prakash (University of Virginia, author)

---

Episode Overview

This episode dives into President Trump's record-breaking use of presidential pardons during his second term, examining the types of people who received clemency, why the pardon power exists, and whether recent presidential pardons represent an unprecedented politicization—or just a further stretching of a long-standing executive power. The discussion considers both the historical context and recent controversial uses of the pardon, exploring its implications for American democracy.

---

1. Trump's Pardons: Who, How Many, and Why?

Key Discussion Points

• Trump’s Second Term Pace

  • President Trump has issued over 1,600 pardons and commutations in the first year of his second term—a record-setting pace.

    "It's a little bit more than 1600, which is record setting pace." — Ben Wallace-Wells (02:45)

• January 6th Defendants

  • The majority—around 1,500—are January 6th participants and plotters (03:06).

• Categories of Clemency Recipients

  • Political Allies and Potential Allies:
    • Wanda Vázquez Garced (former Governor of Puerto Rico, convicted of bribery)
    • Juan Orlando Hernández (former President of Honduras, drug trafficking)
    • Rod Blagojevich (former Illinois Governor, tried to sell Obama’s Senate seat)
  • Wealthy White Collar Criminals:
    • AD Camberos (two-time fraudster)
    • Trevor Milton (electric vehicle fraud, Republican donor)
    • Changpeng Zhao (Binance founder, money laundering conviction; donated massively to Trump-linked crypto ventures)
  • Celebrities & Randoms:
    • Darryl Strawberry (former baseball player) and others like rapper NBA Youngboy (06:29).

• Influence and Access

  • Many recipients are wealthy and have donated to Trump or employed powerful lobbyists.
  • Pardons are often pursued through influential intermediaries—Roger Stone, Chris Kise, etc.
  • There’s no formal process; high-powered lobbying firms often collect millions to push cases (06:52).

• Trump’s Rationale and Narrative Control

  • Trump gives little detailed reasoning beyond allegations of "Biden witch hunts" or aligning cases with his grievances.

    “He was set up by a lot of bad people. Some of the same people that I...” — Donald Trump (07:56, paraphrased)

  • The pardons give Trump a direct, showy executive power he enjoys using (09:02).

Memorable Quotes

• “It’s just sort of a grab bag of grifters.” — Ben Wallace-Wells (01:56)
• “He can do it without a lot of procedure. And that seems to me just like a very, very friendly to Trump realm of power exercise.” — Ben Wallace-Wells (09:38)

Notable Timestamps

• [02:45]—Breakdown of 1,600+ pardons, most for January 6th offenses.
• [04:56]—Influence of donations and specific cases (e.g., Trevor Milton's donation).
• [07:56]—Lobbying and the informal pardon process.
• [08:54]—Trump’s vague justifications for pardons.

---

2. Limits and Omissions: Who's Left Out?

Key Discussion Points

• Some high-profile or particularly notorious figures are not being pardoned:

  • Sean Combs (Diddy, sex trafficking), Ghislaine Maxwell (child sex trafficking), and others (09:50).
  • Trump occasionally addresses refusals publicly.

    "People have asked me for pardons. I call him Puff Daddy has asked me for a pardon." — Donald Trump (10:14)

• There is a perceived informal boundary for crimes Trump is unwilling to touch, especially ones that are "too toxic" (10:32).

---

3. The Historical Context — Has the Pardon Always Been Like This?

With Guest: Sai Krishna Prakash (University of Virginia)

Founders' Intent

• Presidential pardon power is explicitly in the Constitution, inspired by the need to correct overly harsh punishments and to manage rebellions (16:54).

  "Every system of government has some ability to mitigate punishments imposed on people for violating the law." — Sai Krishna Prakash (16:55)

• There was substantial concern among the Founders about giving all this power to one person—unlike in many states, where legislative approval was required.

Historical Use

• George Washington: Used pardons cautiously, consulting extensively and giving reasons when issuing them (18:42).

  “His pardons actually mentioned the reasons why people were being pardoned, because he wanted people to know that he had reasons.” — Sai Krishna Prakash (19:29)

• Highly Controversial Pardons:

  • Andrew Johnson (pardoned Confederates, possibly for personal political gain)
  • Gerald Ford (pardoned Nixon post-Watergate)
  • Jimmy Carter (pardoned Vietnam draft dodgers)
  • Bill Clinton (pardoned Mark Rich, among others, in ways linked to donations and politics)

Modern Era: Heightened Politicization

• Under Clinton and especially with Biden and Trump, the pardon is now often a tool to reward allies, settle scores, and fulfill campaign promises (21:42).

  “The real politicization of the pardon power obviously begins with Biden and with Trump....” — Sai Krishna Prakash (22:16)

• With Biden, notable moves included:

  • Wide pardons for marijuana offenses, commutation of life sentences.
  • Post-election, a broad and controversial pardon for his son Hunter Biden and others tied to his administration (23:59-24:54).
  • Pardons as tools to insulate administration allies from prosecution, especially from a returning Trump DOJ.

Systemic Consequence

• Increasingly, presidents of both parties use the pardon to protect ideological allies or preempt the incoming administration’s reprisals.

  “Are we now going to have every administration end with pardons for ideological allies, including members of the president's administration?” — Sai Krishna Prakash (25:08)

• The public’s deep partisanship encourages use of the pardon power in this maximalist way (26:10).

---

4. Key Takeaways & Memorable Moments

• Trump’s pardons are “record setting” in speed and scope, and amplify the historical trend of presidents using the power for allies, donors, and personal connections.
• The modern presidency has transformed pardons into a much more public, overtly transactional, and spectacle-driven act.
• The Constitution offers virtually no real-time checks on this power; only public reaction or Congressional investigation after the fact.
• The drive to wield pardons as a political shield is not unique to Trump, suggesting a persistent shift in the presidency rather than a Trump-only phenomenon.

  "I think this is maybe an extreme example... But I don't necessarily think this is going to stop." — Ben Wallace-Wells (12:13)

---

5. Recommended Listening Timestamps

• [02:45]—Statistical breakdown and categories of Trump's clemency.
• [06:41]—Discussion of who can get a pardon and the informal process.
• [09:46]—On who Trump has not pardoned, and why.
• [16:54]—Sai Krishna Prakash explains the original purpose of the pardon power.
• [18:42]—How George Washington used pardons, and how that’s changed.
• [22:16]—Rise of politicized pardons in the modern era.
• [23:59]—Detailed account of Biden’s end-of-term pardons.
• [25:08]—Broader consequences for future presidencies.

---

6. Notable Quotes

• "It’s just sort of a grab bag of grifters." — Ben Wallace-Wells (01:56)
• "He can do it without a lot of procedure. And that seems to me just like a very, very friendly to Trump realm of power exercise." — Ben Wallace-Wells (09:38)
• "Every system of government has some ability to mitigate punishments imposed on people for violating the law." — Sai Krishna Prakash (16:55)
• "His pardons actually mentioned the reasons why people were being pardoned..." — Sai Krishna Prakash, describing Washington (19:29)
• "Are we now going to have every administration end with pardons for ideological allies, including members of the president's administration?" — Sai Krishna Prakash (25:08)
• "Presidents reflect the partisanship that permeates our society, and people want their president to do things that reflect their partisan goals." — Sai Krishna Prakash (26:10)

---

7. Tone and Style

The episode blends wry humor, a direct discussion of contemporary politics, and sober constitutional analysis, in line with Today, Explained’s accessible-but-serious approach. There are moments of levity—“call me a messy bitch”—but the overall discussion is grounded in reporting and legal scholarship.

---

8. Conclusion

This episode provides a comprehensive, sometimes unsettling view of how presidential pardons—once perhaps viewed as rare acts of mercy or reconciliation—have become a high-stakes, highly politicized tool of modern American governance, with Trump’s conduct as the most extreme but not isolated case. The power seems poised to remain a fixture of partisan conflict and presidential privilege for years to come.

---

For further listening:

• [16:54–26:10] for Sai Krishna Prakash’s historical and legal deep dive
• [02:45–09:46] for Ben Wallace-Wells’s rundown on how and why Trump’s pardon process functions

Produced by Avishai Artsy, edited by Jolie Myers & Jenny Lawton. Fact-checked by Andrea Lopez Cruzado. Distributed by WNYC.

Transcript

[Noel King]

The justice department website justice.gov has a list of people that President Trump has granted clemency during the first year of his second term. It runs the gamut from the, if we're being honest, kind of funny.

[Sai Krishna Prakash]

You can call me a messy bitch.

[Ben Wallace Wells]

I've been called worse.

[Noel King]

But I'll take it. Former Congressman George Santos in prison for wire fraud and identity theft. To the genuinely unfortunate. This is Christopher Moynihan on January 6th. And this morning, nine months after receiving a pardon from President Trump for ransacking the Capitol, he's back in custody, charged with threatening to kill House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. After January 6th, Emily Hernandez ended up driving down I44 trunk. She killed a mother. Hundreds of people on this list. A lot of fraud, a little cocaine, some tampering, a shoplifter. So is this Donald Trump's latest unprecedented or is he really not that much worse than his predecessors? We're going to look into it. Ahead on TODAY Explained.

[Ben Wallace Wells]

Close your eyes, listen to Monday.com feel the sensation of an AI work platform so flexible and intuitive it feels like it was built just for you. Now open your eyes, go to Monday.com, start for free, and finally breathe.

[Noel King]

I am the president of TODAY Explained.

[Sai Krishna Prakash]

Clothed in immense power.

[Ben Wallace Wells]

I'm Ben Wallace Wells and I'm a staff writer at the New Yorker magazine.

[Noel King]

Okay, so here we sit. January of 2026 and this month alone, President Trump has issued some pardons who.

[Ben Wallace Wells]

Well, he has pardoned, notably Wanda Vasquez Garcett, who's the former governor of Puerto Rico, who had been convicted of accepting bribes to appoint a particular financial regulator who a bank had chosen. Trump also pardoned the banker who was convicted of bribing her. He also pardoned the former FBI agent who was convicted of helping to set up the deal. He pardoned AD Camberos, who was a two time fraudster. Trump had commuted her sentence at the end of his first term for a separate crime in which she had made tens of millions of dollars selling fake five hour energy drinks. And then eventually she got free on that commutation and then a couple years later was convicted again for a completely separate fraud. And now she's being pardoned for that right now. The batch right now, aside from Vasquez Garcet, it's largely fraudsters like Camberos. It's largely white collar. People often have donated a lot of money to affiliated political committee or have a lawyer or advocate who's close to Trump. It's just sort of a grab bag of grifters.

[Noel King]

We're like 12 months in. Do we know how many people he's granted clemency to this term?

[Ben Wallace Wells]

We do. It's a little bit more than 1600, which is, which is record setting pace. The most significant population of that though are about 1500 January 6th participants and schemers. And so, you know, beyond that we do have a couple hundred, which is highly unusual still, but not quite as eye catching a number.

[Noel King]

So 1,500 of them are J6ers and then there's about another hundred and they. What type of people are they?

[Ben Wallace Wells]

Well, we got a couple categories. I think one is political allies or politicians who might become allies. You know, maybe the most salient example there is Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former president of Honduras who had been sentenced to 45 years in federal prison for overseeing while in office an absolutely massive drug trafficking conspiracy.

[Noel King]

A Manhattan jury found Hernandez guilty of accepting millions of dollars in bribes to protect cocaine shipments bound for the United States.

[Guest/Caller]

If you have some drug dealers in your country and you're the president, you don't necessarily put the president in jail for 45 years. That was a Biden inspired witch hunt.

[Ben Wallace Wells]

Trump let him go. There's the former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, a corrupt Democrat with phenomenal hair. You know who you may remember in real the door. And he was left free in February.

[Noel King]

Rod Blogojevich was convicted in 2011 of trying to sell then President Barack Obama's vacated Senate seat and was sentenced to 14 years in prison.

[Guest/Caller]

I didn't know him other than I believe he was on the Apprentice for a little while. He was a just a very nice person.

[Ben Wallace Wells]

That's one category. You know, there's political allies and potential political allies. A second is just the rich people who have committed just base white collar fraud. In addition to Camberos, a guy named Trevor Milton, who is an electric truck entrepreneur who was convicted of defrauding his own investors by effectively faking that his trucks worked. When they didn't, he cut one video with them in neutral so rolling downhill so it looked like they were actually driving.

[Noel King]

He is a huge Republican donor and his pardon came roughly five months after he and his wife donated nearly 2 million DOL to the Trump campaign.

[Guest/Caller]

They say the thing that he did wrong was he was one of the first people that supported a gentleman named Donald Trump for president. He supported Trump. He liked Trump. I didn't know him, but he liked him.

[Ben Wallace Wells]

And maybe most significantly, a really important guy named Changpeng Zhao, who is the founder and head of the Crypto exchange Binance, the biggest crypto exchange in the world. He's one of, by Forbes estimate, the 30 wealthiest people in the world. And he'd been convicted of effectively making it possible for people to launder money on his exchange. So a money laundering conviction. And significantly, he had, just prior to his pardon, conducted a massive deal where he underwrote Trump's family's crypto coin, which has been estimated as giving them a value of more than a billion dollars. So that's the second category. Just like base white collar fraud, a fair amount of Medicare and Medicaid fraudsters in there. And then you also have some random famous people thrown in on the back end, like Darryl Strawberry. The former Met baseball star was convicted of tax evasion and later became an evangelical preacher. President Trump has gone to bat for Daryl Strawberry, pardoning the Mets legend for his tax evasion conviction from 30 years ago.

[Guest/Caller]

And he said, you did some very bad things.

[Noel King]

But you know what?

[Guest/Caller]

You have straightened your life out and you have given your life back to helping other people.

[Ben Wallace Wells]

A real figure from my own childhood, six foot six, really elegant right fielder, and be a young boy, the rapper. So, you know, there's a grab bag, but there are still these kind of boxes, pockets, you can identify.

[Noel King]

I am assuming, tell me if I'm wrong, that many of these people have money, many, if not all of them have money. What is the process like for actually getting a pardon? How do you come to Trump's attention?

[Ben Wallace Wells]

There's not a formal process, but the Wall Street Journal, the political reporting website, notice others have documented a really extensive lobbying effort where lobbyists, people close to the president, are taking millions of dollars from the families and allies of people in prison to try to name before the president. And when you look at these individual cases and you go through the names that pop up who are involved in the lobbying, Roger Stone is involved in one. Chris Kai is the president's former defense lawyer, was also the defense lawyer for one of these figures. There's often some element of just straightforward money, like a lot of these people have donated to political committees associated with the president. But there's also some element of connection. You know, and I would say this is less remarked upon, but I would say there's also often a narrative element. You know, there is often something that might grab the president's attention. You know, he might be able to say, this person was charged just as I was, by an overreach by the Biden administration.

[Guest/Caller]

He was set up by a lot of bad people. Some of the same people that I.

[Ben Wallace Wells]

Had to deal with, or it might, you know, illuminate some issue. He wants to, you know, he pardoned a few people at the outset of his term who had been convicted of various crimes against abortion clinics. So anti abortion protesters. So, you know, there's the straightforward money part of it, there's the connections part of it, and there's the narrative part of it.

[Noel King]

Does Trump ever talk about why he's pardoning specific people? I guess he does sometimes. You said January 6th is the obvious one, right? Yeah, but what does he get out of it? Like, there's a sense that if he's pardoning people, they must be, I don't know, paying him directly. What is the deal?

[Ben Wallace Wells]

I mean, I guess I'd say a couple things. The first is like a lot of things with Trump. He sort of talks around it a lot without actually addressing why he's pardoning people a lot of the time. You know, when 60 Minutes asked him why he was pardoning Zhao, he said he didn't know anything about that case.

[Guest/Caller]

Okay, are you ready? I don't know who he is. I know he got a four month sentence or something like that, and I heard it was a Biden witch hunt.

[Ben Wallace Wells]

I think that one thing that is striking and I think a real vulnerability for him is that in a lot of cases, he doesn't give a real reason. What does he get out of it? You know, I think that the way that Trump has operated in the second term, there's not a lot of legislation. He's leaned very heavily on things that he can make a kind of show of and do directly, you know, and that's executive orders and it's deals made with foreign countries and universities. And the pardons feel to me very much of a piece with that. It's a place where he has enormous leverage and he can seem beneficent and he can do it without a lot of procedure. And that seems to me just like a very, very friendly to Trump realm of power exercise.

[Noel King]

Who is he not pardoning? Like, who's. Who's asked and has been told no.

[Ben Wallace Wells]

A bunch of white collar criminals, but notably Sean Combs, the rapper Diddy, you know, convicted of sex trafficking crimes. Ghislaine Maxwell has been reported to be publicly preparing. It was a number of months ago, but she was reported to be publicly preparing a commutation application. And he sort of, I'm not going to do that. You know, I have a lot of.

[Guest/Caller]

People have asked me for pardons. I call him Puff Daddy has asked me for A pardon.

[Noel King]

But she was convicted of child sex trafficking.

[Guest/Caller]

Yeah. I mean, I'm going to have to take a look at it. I have to ask doj and I.

[Ben Wallace Wells]

Think that that is just a sign that there is some boundary here, that there are some cases that are just.

[Noel King]

Sort of too toxic to be fair to Trump. The situation around pardons has felt unprecedented for a while now. I remember when Biden was on his way out and pardoned some of his family members. Anthony Fauci, Mark Milley. There was criticism that, like, this has gone too far. Presidents are just willy nilly issuing pardons, you know, to protect themselves on their way out. Do you think Trump is fundamentally changing the way presidents will decide to issue pardons in the future? Like, have we hit a point here where it's like, I'm on my way out and anybody who I want to protect from the next administration, I'm gonna pardon them? Or do you think this will get back to normal at some point?

[Ben Wallace Wells]

No, I don't know that this will get back to normal. I think that this is a kind of odd. I think you're very right to point out that this did not start with Trump. And there was real grossness at the end of the Clinton administration and the Biden administration. And this is also something that the Constitution explicitly allows is not really a murky area. The president can pardon basically whoever he wants for whatever reason. The only on him as politics. Trump has proceeded his whole presidency on a kind of assumption of impunity, you know, especially in the second term. And I think this is maybe an extreme example of what we'll see. But I don't necessarily think this is going to stop. I suspect that presidents will keep finding it in their interests, in discreet ways, to let allies or contributors or people that might convey some political meaning for them off the hook and to wave their crimes away. And to think either there will be no political consequence or I can take the hit.

[Noel King]

Benjamin Wallace Wells, he's with the New Yorker. Coming up. Why on earth did the founding fathers give presidents this kind of power? Mama, let's.

[Guest/Caller]

Foreign.

[Noel King]

Explained comes from talk iatry. If you're managing anxiety, depression or adhd, therapy might only be part of the solution. If you've been stuck on a wait list for an appointment with a psychiatrist or you're bouncing between online mental health sites trying to find medication support, you might want to check out Talkyatry. Talkyatry says Toky is a 100% online psychiatry practice that provides comprehensive evaluations, diets, diagnoses and ongoing medication management for conditions like adhd, anxiety, depression, bipolar, ocd, ptsd, insomnia. So much more. Unlike therapy only apps psychiatry is psychiatry. That means you are seeing a medical provider who can diagnose mental health conditions and prescribe medication when appropriate. They say you'll be able to meet with an experienced licensed psychiatrist who takes the time to understand what's going on, builds a personalized treatment plan, and can prescribe medication when it's right for you. And they say you can schedule your first visit in days, not months. You can head to to to complete the short assessment to get matched with an in network psychiatrist in just a few minutes. That's talkiatry.com explained to get matched in minutes. Support for Today explained comes from 1-800-Flowers. Love is allegedly in the air, and perhaps you're planning an elaborate romantic surprise for your significant other. Or you're just going to wing it right before the holiday. Either way, 1-800-FLowers has you covered with an exclusive Double Blooms offer. You can buy one dozen roses and they will double that two dozen for free. Free. Twice the impact without breaking the bank. Here's Patty Diaz. I think flowers from 1-800-Flowers are a great gift because there's so many ways to personalize it. I think like a lot of florists, you might just end up with kind of standard arrays of roses. But 1-800-FLowers really lets you organize options by color by particular flower varieties. So there's a lot, there's a lot of great ways to kind of make it unique to the person you're sending them to. You can make this Valentine's one they'll remember. Get your double blooms offer by one dozen. Get two dozen roses f r e e. You can go to 1-800flowers.com explained. That's 1-800-flowers.com explained. To double your roses for free. Support for today's show comes from Indeed. Indeed says right now there is someone out there in the world who could help you take your business to the next level. And if you want to find that person, you can do it with Indeed's Sponsored Jobs. Indeed's Sponsored Jobs can give your job posting the best chance to be seen by quality candidates, says Indeed. And their data shows it works, says Indeed. Indeed says Sponsored Jobs posted directly on indeed are 90% more likely to to report a higher than non sponsored jobs. Why? Because apparently you reach a bigger pool of people. With Indeed, you can spend more time interviewing candidates who check your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. Now with Indeed Sponsored Jobs, listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves. At indeed.comtodayexplained you can go to indeed.comtodayexplained right now and support our show by saying you heard about it on this podcast. Indeed.com todayexplained terms and conditions do apply. Guys hiring do it the Right way with Indeed. Noel King with Sai Krishna Prakash of uva. He teaches law there and his book came out last week. It's called the Presidential Pardon, the Short Clause with a Long Troubled History. He has great timing, Sy oh, I'm.

[Sai Krishna Prakash]

Very grateful to President Trump for doing all the pardons he's issuing because it makes it quite likely that this will sell more than it otherwise would. He has not disappointed, right? He's just been incredibly aggressive with the pardon pen.

[Noel King]

The Presidential pardon is written into the Constitution, which means the founders were thinking something when they did this. What were they thinking?

[Guest/Caller]

It.

[Sai Krishna Prakash]

So every system of government has some ability to mitigate punishments imposed on people for violating the law. And they do this for several reasons. One, it's often thought that standing laws are just too harsh. The punishments are too harsh. So they thought that they needed to have some means of modifying the sentence. They had also seen that in rebellions, a well timed pardon could nip the rebellion in the bud. It enables people to step back from what they're doing and stop doing it. And so it's a combination of this need to PAC rebellions, a sense that criminal punishments are too harsh, that we have a pardon power across not only American jurisdictions, but across the world.

[Noel King]

The framers were worried that any branch of government would have too much power. That's why we have three of them, right? No kings. We do a president. Did anyone at the time they were drafting the Constitution say this is just giving the president too much power?

[Sai Krishna Prakash]

Many people made that exact complaint, Noel. They thought that if you look at the state constitutions, they have all kinds of constraints on the pardon power. Some crimes can't be pardoned. Other crimes, you can suspend the sentence and the legislature has to decide. When you give a power to one person, it just makes it easier to exercise. And as you know, the Constitution doesn't impose any checks on its exercise. You don't need the Senate's consent, you don't need the House's consent. The courts can't review the merits of the pardon. And so a lot of people looked at this and said this is just far too much power in one person. But the Constitution was an all or nothing. Question. And even if you thought this particular part of it was problematic, you voted on the entire thing up or down. And so if you liked the other things enough, you voted for it.

[Noel King]

All right, so which American president was the first to use the power of the pardon?

[Sai Krishna Prakash]

Well, George Washington used it first. You know, he was the first kind of, you know, it's not obvious because, you know, you don't have to give out a pardon if you're president. But he got applications and, you know, he granted some of them, and he was very cautious about it. He did a lot of research. He would talk to the judge, he would talk to the prosecutor, he would read the petition filed by the prisoner, and he would talk to other judges, and he talked to people in his cabinet. Then he would reach a decision that reflected all that deliberation and caution. And his pardons actually mentioned the reasons why people were being pardoned because he wanted people to know that he had reasons. It wasn't just, I like this person or I had a good meal yesterday and I feel happy. He wanted to make it clear that he had had public policy reasons for what he was doing.

[Noel King]

All right, so walk me through some of the historical highlights, the big ones.

[Sai Krishna Prakash]

Some of the more, maybe more famous episodes, was Andrew Johnson pardoning confederates, including Jefferson Davis. This is immensely controversial because they had fought a bloody war against the United States. And so some wanted them to be punished.

[Guest/Caller]

Right.

[Sai Krishna Prakash]

With the death penalty or worse. Johnson pardons them, and he's told, if you pardon these people, there's a greater chance that you will get the Democrats Democratic nomination for president. Now, he doesn't get the nomination, but it seems clear that he's using the pardon pen to help secure the nomination. You know, it's of course, Gerald Ford's pardon of Nixon. And by these presents do grant a full, free and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon. You know, Jimmy Carter pardoned all the draft dodgers. And that was controversial because it was done, you know, very soon after the Vietnam War. I think that now is the time to heal our country after the Vietnam War. And I think that what the people are concerned about is not the pardon.

[Guest/Caller]

Or the amnesty of those who evaded.

[Sai Krishna Prakash]

The draft, but whether or not our.

[Guest/Caller]

Crime system is fair.

[Sai Krishna Prakash]

And then, you know, that continues on into the last couple of administrations. We can talk about that if you want to.

[Noel King]

Yeah, yeah. Bring us into the present day.

[Sai Krishna Prakash]

So with respect to President Clinton, he pardoned Mark Rich, who had contributed to his library, or more precisely, his ex wife had contributed to his library. And there was A claim that Clinton thought about the donation in the context of whether to pardon Mark Rich. There were pardons of FALN terrorists. FALN was a group trying to secure Puerto Rican independence. The claim was that if Clinton pardoned them, a lot of people of Puerto Rican descent in New York would vote for Hillary Clinton. Hillary was running for the Senate, and President Clinton wanted to do everything in his power to help her campaign. And the same thing was said of Clinton's pardons of Hasidic Jews. And this caused a firestorm. He was investigated by the Justice Department after he left office, and he was investigated by both the House and the Senate. It kind of resurfaces. And Trump won, right? Trump is president, and he starts paying a lot of attention to whether celebrities are. Are seeking a pardon or whether they're trying to lobby for a pardon for someone else. He sees it as a way of getting a lot of good press. If you pardon someone that Kim Kardashian wants to have pardoned, then Kim Kardashian's going to say nice things about you and her followers are going to think nice things about you. That was. Trump won. I think the real politicization of the pardon power obviously begins with Biden and with Trump. Trump, Trump's second term.

[Noel King]

All right, let's talk about President Biden, because he took a lot of flack for pardoning his son Hunter, and some others, including members of his family, when he was on his way out the door. What did Biden do that was different or notable?

[Sai Krishna Prakash]

So there's actually several pardons before that that are really interesting that people don't focus on. One is that Biden ran on a campaign of pardoning marijuana offenders.

[Guest/Caller]

As I said when I ran for president, President, no one should be in jail just for using or possessing marijuana.

[Sai Krishna Prakash]

And that's not controversial because many people don't have a problem with pardoning marijuana. They don't think it should be criminalized in the first instance. He also commuted a bunch of death penalty sentences, like, I think, more than 32 life sentences. That's a little more controversial. But if you step back and think about what he was doing, most promises the president can make or make as a candidate cannot be kept because they require congressional action or the action of. Of other people. This is a unilateral authority that he can always deliver on. And so imagine Trump saying, tax penalties are too high. I'm going to pardon all tax penalties. Vote for me if the IRS is hounding you, and I will relieve you when I come into office or Someone else saying environmental penalties are too high, I'm going to pardon all the environmental fines. It opens up this possibility of campaign promises for pardons, and it also lets presidents just essentially undermine or nullify or vitiate statutes or policies reflected in statutes that they don't like. And that takes us to, you know, the Hunter Biden pardons and the pardons of other family members. You know, as you know, President Biden said for more than a year or two years that he would not pardon Hunter Biden.

[Guest/Caller]

And I am satisfied that I'm not going to do anything. I said, I abide by the jury decision. I will do that, and I will not pardon him.

[Sai Krishna Prakash]

But after the election, when, you know, a pardon wouldn't affect his electoral future, in part because he declined to actually finish the campaign for presidency, he gave him a pardon. And at that point, he knew there would be no sort of fallout from it or very little fallout from it. And it was a remarkably broad pardon. It was 10 years for all offenses violent or nonviolent. The final set of controversial pardons by Biden are all the people that were at odds with President Trump or who investigated President Trump in the final hours of his presidency. President Biden pardoning multiple people. Those pardons include Dr. Anthony Fauci, the House committee that investigated the January 6th attack, and retired General Mark Milley.

[Guest/Caller]

And I was going to talk about the things that Joe did today with the pardons of people that were very, very guilty of very bad crimes, like the unselect committee of political thugs.

[Sai Krishna Prakash]

Some of these people Trump had threatened to prosecute if he won reelection. And of course, he did win re election. And so Biden said, I don't think these people should be prosecuted. I think it's inappropriate to prosecute them, and I'm going to safeguard them. But the bigger question there is, well, are we now going to have every administration end with pardons for ideological allies, including members of the president's administration? If we think about this in a broader sense, we can see that presidents are certainly part of the problem, but they're not the entire problem. Presidents reflect the partisanship that permeates our society, and people want their president to do things that reflect their partisan goals. And if you are a MAGA Republican, you think it's absolutely wonderful that January 6ers were freed because, as Trump says, they're patriots. Trump knows that. And so he wants to ingratiate his base. And so it's not merely that we have presidents that are drunk on unilateralism. We have parties that want their presidents to utilize their power in maximal ways in order to advance their party's interests.

[Noel King]

Sai krishna prakash's brand new book is the presidential pardon, the short clause with a long, troubled history. Today's show was produced by avishai artsy and edited by jolie meyers and jenny lawton. David tadashore is our engineer. Andrea lopez crusado is our fact checker. The rest of the team patrick boyd, bridger dunnigan, aminah el saadi, hadi muagdi, pray for him. Miles bryan, danielle hewitt, ariana espudu, dustin de soto, kelly wessinger, peter balanon rosen, miranda kennedy, estad herndon and sean ramasuram. We used music by breakmaster. Cylinder today explained is distributed by wnyc in the show. Show is part of the vox media podcast network. Podcast.voxmedia.com I'm noel king. It's today explained.