A slew of pardons and sentence commutations by President Trump has journalists and media commentators scrambling to figure out their significance and explain what they might reveal about Trump’s mindset.
Trump on Wednesday commuted the life sentence of Alice Marie Johnson, who was convicted in the mid-1990s of several drug charges, a decision inspired by a visit to the White House from reality TV celebrity Kim Kardashian West. Last week, he fully pardoned controversial filmmaker and author Dinesh D’Souza who had pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance laws.
Trump has hinted that he may pardon celebrity homemaker Martha Stewart, who has already served her sentence, and former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who is currently serving a 14-year prison sentence after his conviction on corruption charges.
Legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin wrote in the New Yorker last week that the only clear motivation behind the pardons is Trump’s personal feelings in each case.
“The justifications for these actions range from valid … to cynical … but they serve mostly to illustrate the transactional nature of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” he wrote. “He has no ideology except self-interest. He doesn’t play politics; he plays the angles.”
Toobin said Trump “has no axe to grind’ with Stewart, but that he might pardon her to get back at her prosecutor, James Comey, the former FBI director who Trump fired last year and who is at the center of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
[Related: Trump says he has the ‘absolute right’ to pardon himself]
Atlantic magazine’s David Graham wrote last week that Trump’s pardons and commutations, of which there have only been six, are his way of using the power as “an everyday tool of culture war,” though Graham didn’t specify to what end it was being used to any effect.
A Washington Post story on Tuesday, citing unnamed “aides and advisers,” said Trump is “fixated” on his pardoning power, largely because it’s “one area where he has almost unchecked power.”
CNN’s political analyst Chris Cillizza said Wednesday the pardons appear to fall into categories of “perceived victims of an over-aggressive and/or corrupt ‘deep state,’” or and “pet causes of famous people.”
The White House has, however, publicly stated reasons behind Trump’s pardons and commutations.
“While this administration will always be very tough on crime, it believes that those who have paid their debt to society and worked hard to better themselves while in prison deserve a second chance,” the administration said in a statement on Wednesday regarding Trump’s pardon of Alice Marie Johnson.
In the case of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the former chief of staff to former vice president Dick Cheney and who Trump pardoned in April following his conviction in 2007, the president said Libby had been “treated unfairly” in his prosecution. The White House statement noted that, “In 2015, one of the key witnesses against Mr. Libby recanted her testimony…”
Trump issued his very first pardon in August 2017, using similar reasoning. The pardon went to former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was facing jail time after a conviction on criminal contempt charges.
Days before issuing the pardon, Trump told supporters at a campaign-style rally that he believes Arpaio was “convicted for doing his job.” He added, “I’ll make a prediction. I think he’s going to be just fine, OK.”
