Presidential clemency/pardons is a fascinating phenomenon. Trump has apparently granted clemency less than any president in modern history apparently. Obama granted the most.
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What makes Trump's approach stand out is not the quantity but the quality. Clinton was criticized for issuing a flurry of 170 pardons in his final days, but as NYT points out, the diff is that he still relied on the Justice Dept as primary filter. nytimes.com/2021/01/17/us/
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I'd like to see a comparison that has a breakdown of *types* of pardon:
1. Clemency appeals via due process with no grift
2. Grift market based on $ and lobbying by wealthy
3. POTUS-initiated pardons based on personal selfless interest
4. Strategic political favors
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I wouldn't actually expect Trump to top the charts on any of the 4 categories, but I'd expect 2 and 4 to dominate. He's too uninterested in others unless he is in the equation himself.
The NYT article is really bad. Like journalistic malpractice bad.
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It seemed to suggest that somehow Trump was the worst offender on this front, and besides the one qualified Clinton comparison, did not contextualize his clemency record against modern presidents. I googled and found the Pew article after smelling a fish reading the NYT one.
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Telling this story honestly but with nuance still would still tell a bad-enough portrait of Trump as a more self-dealing user of the clemency power than most. But they wrote it instead in a weirdly unnecessary dishonest way.
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