Trump Flaunts His Indifference to the Rule of Law - By Andrew Sullivan

[gratuitous]

1. Oh Andrew!

Sullivan's only example of the abuse of the pardon authority is Bill Clinton. Sadly, he doesn't specify what pardon; I'll guess Marc Rich, who still had to face prosecution in state courts when he returned from exile.

I wonder why Andrew doesn't remember a far more egregious abuse of the President's pardon authority - namely, lame duck George H.W. Bush issuing pardons in the dead of night on Christmas Eve for Caspar Weinberger, Elliott Abrams, Robert MacFarlane, Clair George, Duane Clarridge, and Alan Fiers. Coincidentally, Bush praised Weinberger as an American patriot, the exact rationale cited by Trump in pardoning Arpaio.

In the time since these men got their presidential pardons, has anyone else been victimized by Marc Rich? No. The same can't be said of (at least) Elliott Abrams, who continues to haunt the corridors of power in Washington. In addition, by decapitating the Iran/contra investigation on the eve of trial, Bush made sure that the evidence wouldn't come out in open court that he was not "out of the loop" as he claimed he had been.

But in Andrew's world, it was Clinton and Clinton alone who has abused the power of the pardon, because Andrew doesn't like to remember his career from those days of the early 1990s. Go back to Old Blighty, Andrew.