At least three individuals pardoned by President Clinton during his last minutes in office have run into further trouble with the government.Color me shocked about additional legal troubles.
But despite the recent brouhaha over President Bush’s commutation of the prison sentence of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby and the controversy surrounding Clinton’s “midnight pardons,” Congress has shown little appetite for making substantial changes to the executive branch’s clemency power.
While some lawmakers over the last decade have called for changes to the pardon system, the few bills proposed have not come close to becoming law.
Financier Marc Rich, businessman Almon Glenn Braswell and Roger Clinton Jr., the president’s half-brother, were among the 140 individuals President Clinton pardoned during his last day in office. The GOP-led Congress investigated these pardons in 2001, probing the familial and financial connections between the White House and those pardoned.
The legal issues that the trio faced over the past six years range from drug charges to fraud to tax evasion.(emphasis added)
But the emphasized paragraph struck me. Congress has called for changes to the pardon system? How, by constitutional amenment? That is the only way to change the pardon system since the power to pardon or grant clemency rests solely with the President. Congress may not like some of the pardons and that is their right, but only the President can pardon and no other branch of government can do anything about it without a change in the Constitution.
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