Ok, DU, I need help RE: Clinton pardons

[ProfessorPlum]

When Clinton made his last set of pardons on his last day in office in 2001, the GOP and subsequently all of their media followers, made a huge deal out of it. But like Whitewater, it seemed to be all storm and no substance. From my perspective, it didn't seem like they were doing anything differently than they ever did: allowing a GOP president to skate on everything, while holding a Democratic president to account even for normally accepted practices. Case in point: the Lincoln Bedroom. We all know what a "scandal" that was supposed to be for Clinton. Does anyone think that visits to the Lincoln Bedroom in the Bush Whitehouse are not being sold to high political rollers (or weren't in Bush I's Whitehouse? (answer: no). The difference is, the media doesn't care about Bush Lincoln bedroom visits because Drudge and the RNC aren't screaming about it.

So, Clinton's pardons. There were lots of write-ups about Marc Rich. Apparently, many high up in the GOP, such as Scooter Libby, thought he was innocent. From my perspective, it seemed like a case of the rich and powerful helping out another of their class. Not completely seemly, but I'm not sure why Clinton felt the need to do a favor for the moneyed class which was ready to stab him in the back at a moment's notice.

Susan McDougal. From all I've read about her case, she completely got the shaft and served time (a long time), even though she was innocent, because she wouldn't lie about Clinton. Was that a miscarriage of justice on Clinton's part?

His brother. This one seems a little self-serving, but understandable. If you were the president, and had the power to help out your ne'er-do-well brother (in a victim-less crime), wouldn't you do it?

Didn't Clinton also pardon one of Hillary's relatives, a Rodham? That one seemed a little less defensible to me.

So, if someone with more historical knowledge could help out here, were Clinton's pardons really that bad? In the context of, say, Bush I's pardons of the Iran Contra conspirators? Or Ford's pardon of Nixon? Or Jimmy Carter's pardons? Or was the GOP just making noise, as it usually did in those days?

Thanks in advance, I hope I can learn a bit.

Edit to get the date right

[Bethany Rockafella]

1. We heard a lot of bunk from the Republicans about the Rich pardon.

They kept saying his wife contributed to the Clintons and I believe there was an investigation but nothing ever came from it.

[ProfessorPlum]

3. Like every other accusation/investigation into Clinton

how ironic that his administration seems to be one of the cleanest, and all people can remember is the "scandals".

[Crazy Dave]

2. I can't speak for the history of pardons but....

...there should be some type of oversight or hearings to prevent abuse. No matter if it's a (D) or (R) handing them out. We have to follow the law and do the time, nobody should get off free because they have friends in high places.

[ProfessorPlum]

5. Absolutely - I would never advocate for a President to abuse

this power. Though it is given to them by the Constitution. My question really is, is there something to really criticize Clinton about here - or is it just GOP pearl-clutching? Because in the last week, everyone on TV, conservative or moderate, has pretty much "admitted" that Clinton's pardons were reprehensible, either by accusation or silence. Is that right?

[Crazy Dave]

9. I think it's primarily a generational thing as he was the previous....

...president before the current and the fact that most Americans have short term memory and since Hillary's keeping the Clinton name very public it's very convenient for them to say, "her husband did it" than to teach history to a current voter who was five years old during the Reagan, Carter, even Bush 41's terms.

[ProfessorPlum]

12. Agreed, it is an effective tactic, given the media's compliance

But is it fair, I wonder?

[Crazy Dave]

18. The word fair...

...doesn't even factor in my opinion of presidential pardons for people who have committed crimes and got off. All should be held accountable and ridiculed if they abuse their power.
Ask the millions of typically, poor minority males doing ten years or more for stealing a six pack of beer or a black teenager like Marcus Dixon who was sentenced to ten years as a teen because he had consensual sex with a white fifteen year old girl when he was seventeen. People like that never get pardoned by democrats or republicans.

[ProfessorPlum]

19. Most of Clinton's pardons were to people who had already

served their time, and were done to restore things like voting rights.

Agreed that that poor kid in that sex case really got screwed, though. I can't believe they still haven't gotten him out.

[Crazy Dave]

20. Y'know....

I was just thinking the same thing while eating my lunch. People who had already served the time vs, others that haven't. I haven't checked recently but I think Tom Delay is still under investigation and you can bet he'll never step foot in prison.

[Deep13]

4. Agree with S. McDougal, Rich was an abuse pf the pardon power.

McDougal was in jail for contempt because she would not be involved in a witchhunt against the Clintons. Neither Dumbass nor Reagan could have stood up to the kind of scrutiny Bill Clinton was under.

As far as I can see, Rich's pardon was as wrongful as Caspar Weinberger's. The fact that Clinton did it too is not defense against Dumbass doing it. What the Rs are conceding when they point to Clinton is that Clinton is wrong and so is Dumbass. Of course, I don't recall that Rich was involved in protecting someone who actively subverted national security.

[ProfessorPlum]

8. Back that up a little bit - Rich as bad as Weinberger

because if we lay them side by side we see:

Weinberger - not convicted, pardoned by Bush I to protect his own criminal involvement in an illegal conspiracy

Libby - convicted, pardoned by Bush II/Cheney to protect their own criminal involvement in an illegal conspiracy

Rich - convicted, pardoned by Clinton because Libby lobbied really hard and Mrs. Rich was a friend of friends

I'm not seeing the equivalency - but again, my knowledge of the facts may be a little weak.

[ProfessorPlum]

10. Wait a minute, just checked the Marc Rich wikipedia page

and he was never convicted, just indicted. He fled the country for 17 years.

[Deep13]

21. Not the individuals, the pardons.

Frankly, anytime there is a pardon before there is even a trial, it looks pretty fishy to me.

[onenote]

6. If you take the long view, Clinton's pardons weren't that unusual, but in more recent memory

they stood out a bit.
If you go back to Reagan, he granted around 400 pardons in eight years, while Clinton granted around 450 -- not a huge difference. But Reagan granted around 250 of those in his first term and only 150 or so in his second term. Clinton granted a very very small number in his first term and nearly 400 in his second term, most as he was exiting. So from an appearances standpoint, Clinton's pardons, because they weren't spread out and were issued as he was leaving, seemed to stand out more. Also, Bush I, in his only term, granted just 77 pardons, and Clinton had even fewer than that in his first term, so the "dump" of a large number of pardons by Clinton at the end of his second term stood out against that backdrop as well. Carter actually issued more pardons in one term than Clinton and Reagan did in two, and JFK issued more than Carter without serving an entire term.

It wasn't so much the numbers as the timing and, in some cases, the persons pardoned.
Here's a chart:

[ProfessorPlum]

13. Thank you for the chart, it's very interesting

I'd point out that Clinton issued 140 pardons on his last day, for the record.

I can't wait to hear the media silence and crickets when Chimpy pardons everyone plus the kitchen sink on his way out the door.

[BOSSHOG]

7. No contest

- susan mcdougal refused to lie and was punished by an overzealous christian conservative partisan prosecutor. She wasn't tried and found guilty of a crime that she spent 18 months in jail for. And yet the garbage in the white house says libby's sentence was severe?
- libby lied intentionally to cover up crimes of members of the bush administration and was rewarded by a drug addicted military deserter, a morally repugnant scum of a human being.
- marc rich was not part of the Clinton Administration and did not lie to cover up any wrongdoing (real or alleged) in the Clinton Administration.

[ProfessorPlum]

15. Thanks Bosshog, that's my read on them, too.

Yet, the "liberals" on TV seem to keep conceding that Clinton did it, too.

[BOSSHOG]

16. Well I must rise in outrageous objection

Clinton DID NOT DO THE SAME THING. He did not pardon a member of his administration who was convicted of lying to cover up underlying crimes committed by other members of his administration. Marc Rich did not pose a threat to national security and he had the full support of scooter for a pardon.

[Thothmes]

22. Clinton

What was ex-HUD Secretary Cisneros pardoned for. Believe that he resigned before being indicted for lying to the FBI

[elifino]

11. Clinton pardons link

http://www.usdoj.gov/pardon/clintonpardon_grants.htm

elifino

[ProfessorPlum]

14. Thank you

they look like a lot laid out all in a row like that. yet, reading further about some of them, many of the people he pardoned, like his brother and Dan Rostenkowski, had already served their full terms of punishment.

[ProfessorPlum]

17. Here are Clinton's reasons for the Marc Rich pardon, in his own words

Ordinarily, I would have denied pardons in this case simply because these men did not return to the United States to face the charges against them. However, I decided to grant the pardons in this unusual case for the following legal and foreign policy reasons: (1) I understood that the other oil companies that had structured transactions like those on which Mr. Rich and Mr. Green were indicted were instead sued civilly by the government; (2) I was informed that, in 1985, in a related case against a trading partner of Mr. Rich and Mr. Green, the Energy Department, which was responsible for enforcing the governing law, found that the manner in which the Rich/Green companies had accounted for these transactions was proper; (3) two highly regarded tax experts, Bernard Wolfman of Harvard Law School and Martin Ginsburg of Georgetown University Law Center, reviewed the transactions in question and concluded that the companies "were correct in their U.S. income tax treatment of all the items in question, and there was no unreported federal income or additional tax liability attributable to any of the transactions"; (4) in order to settle the government's case against them, the two men's companies had paid approximately $200 million in fines, penalties and taxes, most of which might not even have been warranted under the Wolfman/Ginsburg analysis that the companies had followed the law and correctly reported their income; (5) the Justice Department in 1989 rejected the use of racketeering statutes in tax cases like this one, a position that The Wall Street Journal editorial page, among others, agreed with at the time; (6) it was my understanding that Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder's position on the pardon application was "neutral, leaning for"; (7) the case for the pardons was reviewed and advocated not only by my former White House counsel Jack Quinn but also by three distinguished Republican attorneys: Leonard Garment, a former Nixon White House official; William Bradford Reynolds, a former high-ranking official in the Reagan Justice Department; and Lewis Libby, now Vice President Cheney's chief of staff; (8) finally, and importantly, many present and former high-ranking Israeli officials of both major political parties and leaders of Jewish communities in America and Europe urged the pardon of Mr. Rich because of his contributions and services to Israeli charitable causes, to the Mossad's efforts to rescue and evacuate Jews from hostile countries, and to the peace process through sponsorship of education and health programs in Gaza and the West Bank.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/18/opinion/18CLIN.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5070&en=ab0aa5c1bd3a045e&ex=1184212800

Note that he also made it a condition of the pardon that they abandon all protection from civil action against them.