President Donald Trump has shown little restraint using his pardon power. In his second term, he has issued over 1,500 pardons, many of them controversial. The most shocking have been his pardons of the Jan. 6 rioters, which included individuals convicted of violent attacks on law enforcement officers. He has also pardoned a large number of people involved in major white collar crimes. Some billionaires, including Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao, have had their record wiped clean.
Not only has the president issued an extraordinary number of pardons, but he has also frequently bypassed the normal procedures that previous presidents used to vet such decisions. Viewing himself as a victim of persecution of President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice, he has abandoned longstanding guardrails. In Trump’s hands, the constitutional power of pardon has become another tool to reward loyal supporters, leading some to argue that he has reinforced expectations of immunity among those willing to do anything for the president.
President Donald Trump has shown little restraint using his pardon power. In his second term, he has issued over 1,500 pardons, many of them controversial. The most shocking have been his pardons of the Jan. 6 rioters, which included individuals convicted of violent attacks on law enforcement officers. He has also pardoned a large number of people involved in major white collar crimes. Some billionaires, including Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao, have had their record wiped clean.
Not only has the president issued an extraordinary number of pardons, but he has also frequently bypassed the normal procedures that previous presidents used to vet such decisions. Viewing himself as a victim of persecution of President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice, he has abandoned longstanding guardrails. In Trump’s hands, the constitutional power of pardon has become another tool to reward loyal supporters, leading some to argue that he has reinforced expectations of immunity among those willing to do anything for the president.
The pardon power has long been one of the most dubious constitutional tools at the disposal of the White House. But if there was a single crucial turning point in its history, it came in September 1974, when President Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon for any crimes that Nixon might have committed. From that moment on, many Americans have viewed presidents announcing a new pardon with suspicion, fearing that a loyalist is being protected or rewarded.
The president’s pardon power is rooted in the Constitution. Under Article II, Section 2, the president is given the power to “grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” Drawing on English precedent, George Washington was the first to exercise this power in 1795 when he issued amnesty to some of those involved in the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania. Since then, presidents have used the authority for a wide range of purposes, from offering clemency to individuals who had served their time to attempting to avoid prolonging domestic conflicts to extending pardons to close allies and donors. Many pardons have occasioned fierce debate.
Ford assumed the presidency on Aug. 9, 1974, after Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace. As he stepped into the Oval Office, Ford confronted a nation in crisis, still reeling from the war in Vietnam and the fallout of the Watergate scandal. Matters were further complicated by the fact that Ford had never won a national election. A former House minority leader and a longtime congressman from Michigan, he had been nominated to be vice president in October 1973 after Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned amid investigations into bribery and extortion, ultimately pleading no contest to a tax evasion charge. Although most members of Congress regarded Ford, who had been a star football player at the University of Michigan, as a capable legislator and decent man, the public knew little about their new commander-in-chief at a critical moment in the nation’s history.
Upon taking over the presidency, Ford perceived his main mission as healing the nation. In his first national address, he assured the country that “our long national nightmare is over.” He urged Americans to move beyond the scandal to “restore the golden rule to our political process and let brotherly love purge our hearts of suspicion and hate.” Initially, the public responded favorably. His approval ratings soared to over 70 percent, and he received largely positive coverage in the press. Ford, it seemed, might be the perfect antidote to the toxic environment in which the nation found itself in.
In his first weeks in office, Ford grew frustrated that reporters focused almost exclusively on what would happen next with Nixon, rather than on his own domestic and foreign policy. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld recalled being told that the trial would be “a protracted, drama-filled affair in which there would be very few, if any, ‘winners.’” White House counsel Philip W. Buchen had been informed by special prosecutor Leon Jaworski that a trial would likely not begin for several months—and could last much longer. After reviewing the 1915 Supreme Court case Burdick v. United States, Ford concluded that Nixon accepting a pardon would be a confession of guilt. One of Ford’s lawyers, Benton Becker, had been given the responsibility of flying to California and negotiating with Nixon’s representatives and, finally, the former president himself, walking him through the implications of Burdick and the pardon. “[T]he former president spoke to me then in the most pathetic, sad frame of mind that I believe I have ever seen anyone in my life,” he recalled.
On Aug. 28, Ford sent mixed signals when he told reporters that he was open to a pardon on the grounds that Nixon had suffered enough but also understood that special prosecutor Jaworski had an “obligation to take whatever action he sees fit in conformity with his oath of office, and that should include any and all individuals.”
After waking up on Sept. 8, 1974, Ford went to St. John’s Episcopal Church across from the White House, where he took Holy Communion and prayed, understanding the enormity of what he was about to do. Ford had only discussed pardon with Buchen, Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, Robert T. Hartmann, and John O. Marsh Jr. Later that day, Ford appeared on television to announce that he was issuing a blanket pardon for any crimes to Nixon might have committed.
Confronted with the choice between accountability and healing, Ford chose healing. Or so he believed. The president warned: “During this long period of delay and potential litigation, ugly passions would again be aroused. And our people would again be polarized in their opinions. And the credibility of our free institutions of government would again be challenged at home and abroad.” Watching from the White House briefing room, Newsweek reporter Tom DeFrank later recalled, “No one could believe it.”
The decision did not bring calm. Ford’s press secretary, Jerald terHorst, stepped down in protest. “If someone disagrees, I guess it is a good thing to get out,” Buchen told the press. According to Gallup, a majority of Americans disapproved of the decision. Some believed the pardon had been part of a corrupt bargain with the former president and his supporters. Stories began to circulate that Nixon’s former chief of staff—Haig—had approached Ford when he was vice president, promising that Nixon would step down so long as Ford agreed to grant a pardon. Protesters focused their fire on the president. “Equal justice for all? Who’s all?” and “Justice died 9/8/74” read two of the placards held up by a group of booing protesters at one of his appearances in Pittsburgh.
“He said he was ‘healing the country,’” one columnist wrote in the Washington Post. “What he was doing was a favor to an old friend while simultaneously trying to sink a nasty situation well before his own re-election campaign.” By the end of 1974, Ford’s approval ratings had fallen to 42 percent.
Ford, who later admitted that he miscalculated the public response, never backed down from his decision. When he testified before a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee the October 1974, Ford told the legislators that he was “absolutely convinced, then as I am now, that if we had [an] indictment, a trial, a conviction, and anything else that transpired after this that the attention of the president, the Congress, and the American people would have been diverted from the problems that we have to solve. And that was the principle reason for my granting of the pardon.” He reiterated that there had been “no deal, period.”
Americans were not persuaded. Gallup polls showed the country remained divided over the pardon as late as 1982. Although most historians have not found evidence of any deal, concluding that Ford’s stated intentions were what guided him in the decision, many felt that Ford made a choice that eroded the ability or willingness of the government to hold presidents accountable and that he was mistaken about the political impact his pardon would have. The nation became more, not less, divided.
The pardon stirred multiple controversies about Ford, about Nixon, and about accountability in U.S. politics. But it also exposed the blunt political power of the pardon when wielded by a president—a power that neither the courts nor Congress can effectively check. In decade of growing distrust about government and elected officials, the pardon itself became more suspect than ever after Ford’s historic decision.
As with so many other forms of executive power, Trump has pushed a controversial element of presidential authority from 10 to 11. He demonstrates with striking clarity how dangerous it can be for the nation to concentrate so much political power in a single individual, especially when most voters must rely on that person to act with restraint and with the health of the nation foremost on his mind. “When it comes to pardons, presidents are kings,” concluded Jeffrey Toobin in his book on the pardon power.
When that doesn’t happen, the president’s ability to deploy his institutional tools for economic gain, political self-interest, and even retribution becomes effectively limitless. If the other branches of the federal government fail to carry out their role in maintaining checks and balances, the founders’ worst fears can quickly be realized. The promise of the Declaration of Independence itself can begin to fade.
The question is what comes next. When the dust settles from this presidency, as it did after Nixon, there must be a national conversation about institutional reform. If changes are not made through the amendment or legislative process, the nation will continue to live with kings.
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