President Trump’s recent pardon of former press baron-turned-actual baron Conrad Black caused a minor media kerfuffle. Less remarked upon was Trump’s other pardon issued the same day to former California state legislator Pat Nolan. Once considered a potential candidate for statewide office, Nolan was ensnared in a late 1980s FBI campaign finance investigation.
In 1994, Nolan pleaded guilty to one racketeering count, a decision he always maintained reflected his desire to spare his family a lengthy separation rather than an acknowledgment of wrongdoing. After his stint behind bars, Nolan has spent most of the past quarter century as an advocate for criminal justice reform. That included advising presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner on the First Step Act, the bipartisan criminal justice reform legislation signed into law by Trump last year. Nolan’s career trajectory calls to mind another prominent politico-turned-felon-turned-reformer deserving of a pardon — the late Chuck Colson.
Colson was a former aide to President Richard Nixon, whose skillful outreach to traditional Democratic constituencies such as organized labor helped earn his boss an overwhelming 49-state reelection sweep — something that seems unthinkable today. Operating with an exaggerated reputation for political ruthlessness (which he encouraged), Colson reached the apogee of American political power. The Watergate scandal undid everything that he had worked so hard to achieve, but not before the writings of C.S. Lewis led him to enter the service of a new “Master” greater than any White House occupant.
Often identified as among the first Nixon Administration officials to plead guilty to Watergate-related offenses, Colson never believed that he was guilty of the crime that he was indicted for (obstruction of justice relating to Watergate). Instead, his newfound Christian faith compelled to him to work out an arrangement with federal prosecutors whereby he would plead guilty to a different offense for which he did consider himself to be criminally liable. He had obstructed justice by leaking classified information to the press in an attempt to bias the jury in the run up to the criminal trial of Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg.
Released from prison after seven months, Colson put his considerable talents to work silencing critics who insisted that his conversion to evangelical Christianity was a cynical ploy to evade punishment for his alleged crimes. Colson quickly wrote a bestselling autobiography, Born Again (1976), that became a touchstone for evangelical Christians across the globe, and founded Prison Fellowship, a worldwide organization that ministers to the incarcerated, the formerly incarcerated, and their families.
Colson spent the duration of his life dedicated to prison reform, criminal justice reform, and Christian evangelization. He died in 2012 at age 80, but not before enlisting Nolan, whom describes Colson as “an older brother,” and others to continue the work he started. Colson knew that criminal justice reform would never be accepted unless it came “Nixon to China-style” from tough-on-crime, law and order conservatives. Perhaps that was something that Colson learned from observing Nixon himself, who was adept at orchestrating political realignments.
Colson never requested a pardon for himself. That does not mean he doesn’t deserve one. Nor should his death prevent Trump from issuing him one, like the president did for the late boxing legend Jack Johnson, who was the victim of a racially-motivated prosecution over a century ago. The criminal justice reform movement owes a debt of gratitude to Colson for serving as a John the Baptist to advocates like Nolan. Trump, Kushner, and others are indebted to Colson for laying the intellectual and political groundwork for perhaps the Trump administration’s most impressive bipartisan accomplishment. Tens of millions of convicts, ex-convicts, their families, and taxpayers in America and abroad have benefited and will benefit from his work. Chuck Colson paid his debt to society. Will society pay its debt to Chuck Colson?
Paul F. Petrick is an attorney in Willoughby, Ohio.
