Time to stop granting presidents power to pardon offenders

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We have a system of checks and balances.

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The President can do this or that, but the courts and Congress can stop it (depending on the circumstances and the relevant rules). When the courts rule that the executive branch cannot do something, Congress can write a new law saying the president can do it.

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When Congress passes a law that the president doesn't like, the president can veto it. Congress, if it has enough votes, can override a veto. And so on. The whole idea is to deprive any branch of government or individual of too much concentration of power.

How the system should work

Sorry if I sound a little condescending, considering everyone had to learn this thing in grade school. But many people seem to have forgotten how our system is supposed to work, so I thought a quick overview might be helpful.

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In any case, even under our system, each branch has powers that are truly impossible to verify. Congress, for example, has the sole power to tax and spend taxpayers' money, declare war, etc. Once a court acquits an accused, he cannot be tried again for that crime.

The President also has some unique powers. Including the sole and final power of pardon, which cannot be reviewed or revoked by Congress or the courts.

It's time to change that, and the only way to do that is to amend the Constitution.

Get rid of the power to pardon

There are two reasons for depriving the president of the pardon power. First, there are the grotesque abuses of that power by Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden. In his first term, Trump issued a series of egregious pardons, including to lackeys, war criminals and political allies.

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Biden then handed out a blanket and preventive pardon for one's family and various political allies. Partisan advocates like to say it was necessary to protect the Bidens from persecution by the new Trump administration. This defense tends to ignore the Biden family's extremely shady business dealings. They are also ignoring the slew of other pardons and commutations that Biden allegedly just ordered from his campaign ideologues.

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Returning to power in 2025, Trump has outdone Biden (and himself). He began his second term by providing massive forgiveness to thugs who beat police with flagpoles and stormed the Capitol in his name on January 6, 2021. He has since pardoned a rogue's gallery of donors, party allies and people with business ties to him or his family, including a crypto billionaire. Changpeng Zhaoexecutive director of Binance, a trading platform that allowed terrorists and criminal organizations to finance their operations without being seen.

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Money laundering

Zhao pleaded guilty to money laundering, but he also worked hard to develop the Trump family's crypto business. Apparently, he received a pardon in exchange for services rendered.

The second reason for rejecting presidential pardon power relates to previous statements about checks and balances. The Founding Fathers believed that the only remedy for corrupt abuses or misuse of pardons was impeachment. James Madison, the main author of the Constitution, was clear on this point.

At the Virginia ratification convention, George Mason objected that the pardon power was too broad and that presidents could use pardons to buy criminal activity in their name. Madison responded that “if the President is in any suspicious manner connected with any (such) persons, and there is reason to believe that he will escape, the House of Representatives may impeach him.”

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The problem: Congress' impeachment power has proven to be a dead letter in the modern era of hyperpartisanship. Just as presidents cannot be trusted to use the pardon power responsibly, Congress cannot be trusted to hold presidents accountable. Without checks there is no balance.

There should still be a place for pardons and pardons in our system.

But the transfer of this right exclusively to the power of presidents has led to even greater abuse. Indeed, I think it is almost certain that Trump will use Biden's precedent to preemptively pardon most of his administration, his sons, and himself before he leaves office. Given the ongoing justice system weapons – and his abuse of it – he would be almost a fool not to do so.

The Constitution was written with men like George Washington in mind. When Washington decided to retire after two terms, he established a two-term tradition that continued until Franklin Roosevelt broke it. After that, we amended the Constitution to enshrine what had been a tradition.

For most of our history, presidents have taken the solemnity of pardons and the threat of impeachment seriously. They don't do it anymore. It is time to change the Constitution accordingly.

— Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.

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