Constitutional Conversations

• Citation: Vol. 48 No. 1 Pg. 50
• Year: 2025
• Pages: 50

Constitutional Conversations No. Vol. 48 No. 1 Pg. 50 Wyoming Bar Journal February, 2025

David Gray Adler

Move Over, "Wicked:" Biden and Trump Have Brought the Presidential Pardon Power Center Stage

With relatively few exceptions, the exercise of the presidential pardon power has been an off-Broadway production, but the dawn of 2025 bears witness to a flurry of activity, conversation and controversy that has brought it to Broadway, and center stage, no less. Move over, "Wicked." President Joe Bidens controversial exercise of the pardon power in the final days of his presidency, coupled with President-elect Donald Trump's declaration that he would "most likely" pardon the rioters who participated in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, perhaps in "the first hour" of the day he is sworn into office, and his statement that members of the January 6 Committee "should go to jail," have spiked Americans' curiosity about the origins and scope of the most delicate and discretionary of the president's powers, to a degree not seen since President Gerald Ford granted Richard Nixon an unconditional, pre-conviction pardon on September 8, 1974. President Biden's decision to issue a pardon to his son, Hunter, a record number of acts of clemency and commutations in a single day, and the possibility that he might grant a pre-conviction, or preemptive, pardon to those on Trump's purported enemies list, to spare them from baseless investigation, prosecution and financial ruin, as well as the specter of President Trump, a convicted felon, dispensing pardons...