President Donald Trump issued another batch of pardons on Thursday, granting clemency to five former NFL players — the latest in what the Cato Institute has labeled a “blizzard” of pardons.
Trump’s pardon czar Alice Marie Johnson praised the move, which covers cases including those involving drug-related offenses and perjury convictions, according to The Guardian,
“Today, the President granted pardons to five former NFL players—Joe Klecko, Nate Newton, Jamal Lewis, Travis Henry, and the late great Dr. Billy Cannon,” wrote Johnson. “As football reminds us, excellence is built on grit, grace, and the courage to rise again. So is our nation.”
Johnson went on to applaud the president “for his continued commitment to second chances.”
“Mercy changes lives,” she added.
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The Cato Institute on Wednesday had said the scope and magnitude of Trump’s “blizzard” of pardons are “unprecedented.”
Before this latest round of pardons, Trump had issued 166 pardons — plus the mass pardons of about 1,500 people convicted on charges in connection with January 6 — since taking office just over one year ago. By comparison, President Joe Biden in four years issued 80 pardons.
“In other words,” Cato’s Dan Greenberg wrote, “even putting aside the rioters’ collective pardon, Trump is now issuing pardons at eight times the rate Biden did.”
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Greenberg put Trump’s pardons into several categories.
He noted that Biden’s pardons eliminated about $680,000 in penalties owed to victims or the federal government, whereas Trump’s pardons have wiped away about $1.5 billion.
Greenberg also said that “Trump has normalized the pardoning of disgraced politicians, such as former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez (who orchestrated a spree of state-sponsored drug trafficking leading to a 45-year prison term),” and others, such as Nevada legislator Michele Fiore, Virginia sheriff Scott Jenkins, Tennessee House Speaker Glen Casada, and Arkansas legislator Jeremy Hutchinson.
Other concerns Greenberg noted are that aspects of some of Trump’s pardons “set off alarm bells for self-corruption—either of the president or of his associates.”
Finally, “Trump has increasingly focused on providing pardons to his campaign supporters who stretched or broke the law, such as John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani, and Jenna Ellis.”
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