Given that Donald Trump treats the office of the presidency like a personal branding tool, and deals with adversity like a two-bit mafioso, this moment was perhaps predictable: the president is reportedly considering pre-emptively pardoning three of his children, his son-in-law, and associates including Rudy Giuliani. He has already pardoned or commuted the sentences of several of his friends and associates, which should raise some eyebrows – why do so many people who surround this president wind up charged with a crime, in jail, or bracing themselves for criminal charges? And why is the supposedly law-and-order “pro-life” Republican party shrugging as this president excuses the criminality of his kin and his cronies while he refuses to intervene to save anyone from execution – and in fact, is using what little time he has left in office to reinstate barbaric practices like death by firing squad?
We all know Trump didn’t drain the swamp. But in his last two months in office, he is sending a clear message about who and what he and his party value. It’s not Christian mercy, or hard-nosed law and order, or even the sanctity of life. It’s power, dominance and a thick line between two Americas: one connected, white, power-hungry and lawless, and the other at its mercy.
As Trump’s term winds down, the White House is reportedly besieged with requests from lackeys and sycophants and hangers-on and D-list celebrities who all believe the president may grant them a get-out-of-jail-free card (or, in the case of his children and Giuliani, who have not been charged or convicted of any crimes, a get-out-of-ever-being-held-accountable card). Even the Tiger King has made his case to the president.
Many expect that the president will issue a flurry of pardons and commutations, and this largesse will be bestowed much like the measly 11 pardons and commutations he’s issued so far: on people who worked for him, people who supported him, people could incriminate him and people who personally impress him (sometimes via reality television stars, because we are living in the worst of times).
He’s granted clemency almost entirely to his friends, advisers, supporters and loyalists, with a few war criminals and conservative cultural icons thrown in for good measure. The only people he has used his pardon power to help who fall outside that characterization are either famous but long-dead historical figures and Alice Marie Johnson, who was serving a life sentence for a non-violent drug offense – and whose case he only learned about because reality television star Kim Kardashian West brought it to his desk.
What he largely hasn’t done is use the presidential clemency power for its highest purpose: to correct serious injustice and act with compassion.
Despite touting himself as a president who has done more for criminal justice reform than any other, the opposite is actually true: Trump has refused to use his powers for good, and has been appalling harsh on those who have been over-sentenced. Several people on federal death row have appealed to the president for clemency – not to go home, just to not be killed by the state. So far, Trump has ignored them. The list of those who are still alive includes Brandon Bernard, who was just 18 when he joined a group of friends for what he thought was going to be a carjacking and a robbery; one of his friends ended up murdering the couple the group robbed, in a brutal act Bernard had not foreseen and was horrified by. At trial, Bernard’s lawyer, who had never argued a federal death penalty case before, barely mounted a defense and failed to call important witnesses. Several members of the jury that convicted him now say that he should not be executed. And there’s Lisa Montgomery, the only woman on federal death row, who committed an awful crime – she murdered a pregnant woman and stole her baby – but also has a severe and debilitating mental illness, and, her lawyers say, was psychotic when she committed that heinous crime.
No one is asking the president to pardon Bernard or Montgomery. They are only asking that he commute their death sentences, relegating them instead to life in prison, which is hardly a free pass. While Trump considers pardoning his own children for whatever crimes he believes they have committed, he’s refusing to save the lives of Bernard and Montgomery – even though both of them are someone’s child, too.
And it’s even worse than that: this is only an issue because Trump’s attorney general, Bill Barr, chose to bring back the federal death penalty – he didn’t have to, and like several of his predecessors he could have chosen not to, but he made it a priority to use the power of his office to kill Americans. Before Trump took office, there hadn’t been a federal execution in nearly two decades. That changed under Barr – who claims, appallingly, to be “pro-life.” After more than a 30-year period with just a single federal execution (under George W Bush in 2003), in the little more than a year since July 2019, the federal government has executed eight people. They’re continuing executions even after Americans voted Trump out of office, something so highly unusual it hasn’t been done since 1889.
And now that their days in power are waning, the Barr justice department, apparently not content with executing Americans by lethal injection, is going an even more gruesome route: they are quickly pushing through new rules that would allow the federal government to kill prisoners via electrocution and firing squad.
There’s no “humane” way to execute a human being. But there are certainly symbolically vicious ways. And that is what this administration is embracing as it continues its execution spree.
Trump’s utter lack of mercy isn’t particularly surprising. But it is abhorrent and scandalous that he has ramped up his cruelty toward death row inmates while simultaneously abusing his power to protect his family members and the various criminal toadies in his orbit. And it is pathetic that Republicans have nothing to say about these excesses, while the “pro-life” groups that back the president have largely fallen silent. It seems all lives don’t matter after all.
This president’s use of his clemency power is not about justice or fairness or law or order; it’s about protecting criminals who work in his service, and it’s about as venal, depraved, and corrupt as it gets.
