I’m no Clinton fan but the Constitution makes clear that the pardon power belongs to the President alone, in his sole and absolute discretion – he can pardon whoever he damn well pleases for whatever reason he cares to. The whole point of this is to create one last safety valve when justice has been miscarried. To give the same prosecutors who put you away a voice in your pardon or to require that you confess guilt and act remorseful first like a Chinese prisoner in a re-education camp is to totally miss the point. Congress can investigate all it wants and there’s not a bloody thing they can do about it short of amend the Constitution -this power belongs to the President personally and to him alone, not to the Justice Department, not to any board or commission. If anything, Presidents of both parties should be using this power more, not less – there are plenty of people who have been put away for too long by overzealous prosecutors and an inflexible sentencing system.
