Introduction by Committee Chairman John Henry
Our battle cry is: America will never be great again until the Constitution is great again. And the Constitution will never be great again until Congress is great again.
Tonight we have
another salon on how we went from constitutional abundance to constitutional scarcity with the accumulating power of the office of President of the United States. Presidential wars top the list. In December, we reviewed more than 170 impeachable offenses that have gone unpunished for 180 years. In February, we reviewed an avalanche of executive orders. On April 10th we will examine the obligation the Constitution imposes on the president to the faithfully execute laws. Tonight we
are examining presidential abuses of the pardon power.
September 17, 1787 witnessed a miracle in Philadelphia: the birth of United States Constitution. For the first time in history, a federal government is constructed on the foundation of separation of powers. For the first time in history, the executive is denied the war power. A republic -- Franklin warned -- if we can keep
it.
Separation of powers is the bulwark of the Constitution. A Hemingway character in The Sun Also Rises was asked how he went bankrupt: “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly”. That description aptly fits America’s plunge into constitutional bankruptcy. The steady and now rapid erosion of separation of powers has turned our Constitution into a scrap of
paper.
Just how did we go from the rule of law to the law of the jungle? When it comes to the Constitution, our two major political parties have been summer soldiers and sunshine patriots. Democrats and Republicans have other priorities. When they occupy the White House and get the policies they like, they are Wilsonians and don’t worry about the Constitution. It is only when the
White House is lost that lip service is paid to the rule of law and they claim to be Madisonians.
I ask you this: when are we going to stop voting for Democrats and Republicans who put the policies of their party ahead of the Constitution? Can we stop selling our soul to feed our addiction for empire? The President’s pardon power has been turned on its head.
A paramount purpose was to offer insurrectionists pardons to quell a rebellion. Now it is used, among other things, to reward insurrectionists after their insurrection failed. It was expected that presidential pardons that sheltered family or political cronies would provoke impeachment by the House and conviction and removal by the Senate. Now -- in a page from Alice in Wonderland’s Mad Hatter’s Tea
Party -- a President pardons his son for crimes prosecuted by his own administration on the preposterous theory he treated his son unfairly.
Over the course of a lifetime of intense study and scholarship, Committee Vice Chairman Bruce Fein has sounded the alarm against jettisoning the miracle at Philadelphia in favor of the same old limitless executive power which
provoked the American Revolution.
Why did the framers assign this power to the President? Does it contradict the President’s constitutional obligation to take care that the laws be faithfully executed? Where are the recent abuses of the pardon power leading us? I know of no one more qualified to answer these questions than
Bruce.
Invitation
The Committee conducts salons on the multitude of ways in which we have lost constitutional balance and stability with the rise of an imperial presidency. Presidential wars top the list. In December,
we reviewed more than 170 impeachable offenses that have gone unpunished for 180 years. In February, we reviewed an avalanche of executive orders. Other candidates for future salons are the faithful execution of laws, executive agreements and signing statements. This salon will examine presidential abuses of Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 -- The Pardon Power – to shield personal and political friends.
In Federalist 74, Alexander Hamilton justified the pardon power as an emergency measure for ending an insurrection or rebellion. The Framers expected separation of powers would throttle the pardon power. At the Virginia ratification convention, James Madison answered that concern by referencing the impeachment power to oust from office any President who wielded the pardon power for sordid ulterior motives.
Our Committee Vice Chair -- the constitutional attorney, author and heir to the Madisonian tradition -- Bruce Fein has a strong track record of advocating sunshine as the best disinfectant. In 2008, Bruce proposed a statute that would compel the President to testify under oath before Congress to justify pardons for executive branch officials. Bruce will bring expertise and history to bear in examining President
Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon; President Reagan's pardon of Mark Felt and Edward Miller; President George HW Bush's pardon of Iran Contra figures such as Cap Weinberger and Elliott Abrams; President Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich and Roger Clinton; President Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter; and President Trump’s pardon or commutation of 1,600 January 6th offenders.
After the blanket immunity bestowed on the President in Trump v. United States, are there any limits any longer on presidential pardons? Would a President have constitutional immunity for promising to pardon anyone who assassinates his political opponents?