President Trump said Friday he is reviewing a massive number of potential clemency recipients, and invited football players kneeling for the national anthem to add more to the list.
“We have 3,000 names. We’re looking at them,” Trump told reporters on the South Lawn of the White House. “Of the 3,000 names, many of those names really have been treated unfairly.”
Trump repeatedly stressed his desire to give clemency to ordinary people, rather than just famous applicants.
“I would get more thrill out of pardoning people nobody knows. Like Alice [Johnson] yesterday,” he said, referring to his decision to commute the grandmother’s life sentence for drug dealing. Johnson was Trump’s second commutation recipient.
“I thought Kim Kardashian [West] was great because she brought Alice to my attention. The way she left that jail and the tears and the love she has with her family, to me that was better than any celebrity that I could pardon,” he said. “We’re looking at literally thousands of names of people that have come to our attention that have been treated unfairly or where their sentence is far too long.”
Trump said he’s considering a pardon for Muhammad Ali, the boxer who died a beloved national figure in 2016 after a politically controversial early career. Ali was convicted in 1967 after refusing his draft order to join the military during the Vietnam War. It was unclear, however, what Ali would be pardoned for. The Supreme Court overturned his conviction in 1971 and President Jimmy Carter pardon all Americans who avoided the Vietnam draft in 1977.
“The power to pardon is a beautiful thing. You got to get it right. You’ve got to get the right people,” Trump said. “I am looking at Muhammad Ali. But those are the famous people. And in one way it’s easier and people find it fascinating. But I want to do people that are unfairly treated, like Alice where she comes out and it’s something beautiful.”
Unprompted, Trump said he was considering inviting athletes who won’t stand for the national anthem in protest of police-perpetrated injustice to submit examples of worthy clemency aspirants for his review.
“You have a lot of people in the NFL in particular, but in sports leagues, they’re not proud enough to stand for our national anthem. I don’t like that,” he said. “What I’m going to do is I’m going to say to them instead of talk, it’s all talk, talk, talk. We have a great country, you should stand for our national anthem. You shouldn’t go in a locker room when our national anthem is played. I am going to ask all of those people to recommend to me — because that’s what they’re protesting. People that they think were unfairly treated by the justice system. I understand that. I’m going to ask them to recommend to me people that were unfairly treated. Friends of theirs or people they know about and I’m going to take a look at those applications. If I find — if my committee finds they’re unfairly treated, we will pardon them or at least let them out.”
[Related: NFL owners vote to change national anthem rule, will allow teams to set own player policies]
Trump’s use of clemency powers already is unconventional, but the volume would be unprecedented in recent history. In eight years, former President Barack Obama issued just 212 pardons and 1,715 commutations. Obama’s number of commutations was more than his nine immediate predecessors combined.
It’s not clear how Trump assembled a list of 3,000 clemency aspirants. The White House was not immediately able to supply additional details.
So far, Trump has issued two prison commutations and five pardons. But excitement was already building among clemency activists and inmates after Trump met with Kardashian West last week to discuss Johnson’s case, following an unusual amount of early-term pardons.
Longtime Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, who pushed Trump to issue his first commutation before consulting on two pardons, told the Washington Examiner last week that “this president may want to go down in history as somebody who has given pardons in places where other presidents would not have done it.”
