Is Donald Trump the only president to pardon controversial figures?

President Trump’s pardon of his former national security adviser, General Michael Flynn, convicted of lying to the FBI, has understandably provoked outrage. House speaker Nancy Pelosi has publicly condemned it as “an act of grave corruption and a brazen abuse of power”. Fair or not, Trump’s controversial act of clemency is hardly unprecedented. Over the centuries, the traditional power of pardon has benefitted the good, the bad and the ugly.  

As a sort of continuation of the old British royal prerogative of mercy, the presidential pardon was enshrined in article two, section two, clause one of the constitution of the United States in 1789. The power is described broadly and imprecisely: “...he shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offences against the United States except in cases of impeachment”.

The Supreme Court has confirmed that this includes commuting death sentences to imprisonment, early release, and broader amnesties. These bulk pardons covered confederates after the civil war (Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson and Jimmy Carter), petty drug users (John F Kennedy) or Vietnam war draft dodgers (Carter). It also covers hypothetical but major crimes and misdemeanours not yet charged (Gerald Ford). However the clause only applies to federal offences rather than those in state courts, which has particular relevance for President Trump. Whether a president can pardon themselves has not been tested legally, though common sense suggests not. A pardon can be rejected; and of course it is not the same as quashing a conviction, and some argue acceptance implies guilt. Otherwise the power is unfettered, and there is no easy remedy for apparent abuse, which has been often claimed.

Thus, the latest Trump pardon is not even the first one he has granted related to those around him or high profile supporters. Roger Stone, for example, a former Trump campaign manager, was convicted in 2019 of making false statements to Congress and witness tampering. His sentence of at least 40 months imprisonment was swiftly commuted in July. The judge had stated that Stone had been “prosecuted for covering up for the president himself”. The commutation was bitterly attacked by the president’s opponents.

There may be more such pardons and commutations in the remaining time left of the Trump administration. Other high profile pardonees include the media baron Conrad Black, financier Michael Milken and Arizonan county sheriff Joe Arpaio, an immigration hardliner who’d been held in contempt of court.  

On the other hand, Trump also pardoned the feminist hero and suffragette Susan B Anthony, funnily enough for voter fraud. Anthony was found to have voted unlawfully, as a woman, in the presidential election of 1872. She refused to pay a $100 fine for the offence, because it implied guilt. For that reason some of her devotees now have symbolically “rejected” the pardon on her behalf. The attempt to celebrate the centenary of votes for women in August 1920 thus backfired a little. What Ms Anthony would have made of Donald Trump can be easily guessed – an unforgiving stance.  

Most of Trump’s predecessors have used the pardon to clear up political scandals, and in a quite partisan manner. The most celebrated was when President Ford took office in 1974, after the resignation of Richard Nixon over the Watergate affair. Ford moved swiftly to give Nixon immunity from prosecution for crimes he might have committed during his presidency, ie over Watergate. Some claimed a corrupt deal, though Ford always insisted that it was part of a national process of healing, and that Nixon was in poor health (which he was, though he lived another 20 years). 

In similar fashion, President HW Bush pardoned many of those involved in the Iran-Contra affair during the Reagan administration (in which Bush served as vice president). Reagan gave pardons to a couple of those involved in Watergate, including the so-called “Deep Throat” – though most served their time in the usual way, and few were helped by Nixon or his successors. President Obama commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning, convicted in court martial of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks.  

There also seems to be quite a tradition of letting various mobsters, traitors, crooks and fraudsters off the hook. Bill Clinton’s reputation, in particular, was not enhanced by his pardon for his brother Roger, serving time for possession of cocaine. Tax dodger and major Democrat donor Marc Rich was another unpopular beneficiary of Clinton’s mercy.  

One of the most magnanimous of pardons must be that granted by Harry S Truman, who showed clemency to his would-be assassin, a Puerto Rican nationalist named Oscar Collazo. Collazo’s suicide mission to shoot Truman in 1950 resulted in his arrest and he was sentenced, as a sane man, to death. Truman swiftly commuted that to a life sentence, and Carter further extended it to his immediate release in 1979. Collazo died back in Puerto Rico in 1994.  

The first presidential pardon was granted by George Washington in 1795, and was a deeply political act. Two men, Philip Vigol and John Mitchell, were forgiven for organising a rebellion against a new tax on whisky production, and they escaped being hanged for treason.  The tax had been imposed by the new federal government, and was deeply resented for being regressive. It was an early example of the eternal tension in a system where sovereignty rests with “we the people” rather than their legitimate government. Washington reported his motives for clemency to Congress and the nation in his State of the Union address. It is as good an expression of the right way to use the power of pardon as any: “The misled have abandoned their errors. For though I shall always think it a sacred duty to exercise with firmness and energy the constitutional powers with which I am vested, yet it appears to me no less consistent with the public good than it is with my personal feelings to mingle in the operations of government every degree of moderation and tenderness which the operations of government every degree of moderation and tenderness which the national justice, dignity and safety may permit.”  

Hence Mike Flynn?