Constitutionally, the President of the United States can pardon any citizen, at any time, of any federal crime real or imagined. This is a sweeping power, one of the most broad and unchecked given to that office by the people who wrote the United States constitution. For most of the last 247 years, the use of that power has only been at times controversial, and rarely problematic, mostly because Presidents were aware that while there might not be legal consequences for abusing the power, there certainly might be political consequences for their respective political parties.
To some extent, for all the complaining and outrage on the American right yesterday about Joe Biden’s parting decision to pre-emptively pardon a range of Trump and Biden-era officials for any crimes they may have committed, I would imagine one of the quietly happier people about the decision Biden made was the current President, Mr. Trump. He now has a ready-made answer to those in his base who would have him spend the next four years launching investigations and prosecutions into their enemies, rather than governing: Sorry, Biden pardoned them.
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