Kentucky’s Republican attorney general requested the FBI investigate former Gov. Matt Bevin’s controversial pardons.
Bevin, a Republican, pardoned more than 400 people after he lost reelection in November. Two of those pardons have especially attracted scrutiny, including Patrick Baker, who had served two years of a 19-year sentence for reckless homicide and robbery for killing a man in front of his family.
Baker’s brother hosted a campaign fundraiser for Bevin in 2018 that raised $21,500. A Republican megadonor also lobbied Bevin to pardon Baker.
The former governor also pardoned a man who murdered a mother of three and another man convicted of raping a 9-year-old girl.
“While Kentucky’s constitution gives the governor the power to pardon a person convicted of crimes, I believe the pardon power should be used sparingly and only after a great deliberation with due concern for public safety,” Attorney General Daniel Cameron wrote in a letter to state Rep. Chris Harris and Sen. Morgan McGarvey.
Harris and McGarvey, both Democrats, had asked the attorney general to launch a state investigation into the pardons.
“Kentuckians deserve to know if the pardon of Patrick Baker, whose family raised tens of thousands of dollars for Gov. Bevin in 2018, was granted improperly,” Harris and McGarvey said in a joint statement. “We believe strongly that this and potentially other pardons should be investigated impartially and are pleased that the attorney general agrees and has asked the FBI to make sure that happens.”
