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Two presidents compete over the worst abuse of the pardon power

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American presidents are often disappointed to discover limits to their authority, but the country’s founders intended the nearly absolute pardon power to be an exception. Alexander Hamilton, for example, believed that legislators should not be involved in the pardons process because “one man appears to be a more eligible dispenser of the mercy of government, than a body of men.” Americans might now question the wisdom of bestowing such responsibility on men like Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

Throughout American history, the use of clemency has ranged from magnanimous to contemptible. George Washington pardoned men involved in a violent insurrection against his government over a whiskey tax. Andrew Johnson granted reprieves to Confederate civil-war veterans. Draft-dodgers were let off the hook by Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, who also pardoned his predecessor, Richard Nixon. Recent declarations have been less high-minded. Bill Clinton pardoned a Democratic donor’s former spouse and, during his first term, Mr Trump did the same for his son-in-law’s father.

Mr Trump’s indiscriminate pardons of those involved in the January 6th attack on the Capitol understandably dominated headlines. But Mr Biden kept busy before he left. On January 20th he issued pre-emptive pardons for polarising figures like Mark Milley, the retired top general; Anthony Fauci, a public-health official; and members of the House’s January 6th committee. Mr Biden said that the pardons were not an admission of guilt so much as protection from “revenge” by the new Trump administration.

Although Mr Biden’s Department of Justice (DoJ) previously argued that immunity for presidents wasn’t needed because grand juries are “prohibited from engaging in arbitrary fishing expeditions”, and the justice system broadly is “subject to public scrutiny and rigorous protections for a defendant’s rights”, the outgoing president grew more sceptical of safeguards in the system, even with his own party in control of the DoJ. That was the case in December, when Mr Biden cast doubt on the fairness of the justice system he oversaw to justify breaking his pledge not to pardon his son.

Mr Biden’s siblings and their spouses also received pre-emptive pardons in the final minutes of the administration. Mr Trump had considered a similar move after the 2020 election but decided against it after facing bipartisan criticism. Mr Biden had no such qualms, framing the last-minute pardons as protecting the innocent from unfair prosecution. Never mind that Mr Biden’s own DoJ had investigated his brother, or that Republicans allege he had lied to Congress in testimony.

John Yoo, a legal scholar with an expansive view of presidential power, suggested that such unprecedented pardons could create new vulnerabilities for those who accept them. No longer subject to federal prosecution, recipients such as Mr Fauci can’t cite a right to avoid self-incrimination when refusing congressional testimony. “If we really want to know what happened with covid and lab leaks and federal funding…well, now Congress can find out,” reckons Mr Yoo. He also noted that prosecutors at state level, who pursued cases against Mr Trump parallel to federal ones, remain free to investigate and indict those with federal pardons.

Another little-noticed act of clemency came for Leonard Peltier, a Native American activist convicted of murdering two federal agents. For decades the case was a cause célèbre on the left. Meanwhile, the director of the FBI expressed “vehement” opposition to the release of a “remorseless killer”.  But Mr Biden commuted Mr Peltier’s sentence, citing health concerns. No doubt many of Mr Trump’s supporters will point to this decision when defending his indefensible January 6th pardons.

Those supporters also may cite Hamilton’s admonition that “there are often critical moments, when a well timed offer of pardon to the insurgents or rebels may restore the tranquillity of the commonwealth”. The difference is that such pardons were meant for a president trying to quell unrest—not to protect participants in unrest that he had condoned. Others seem to be learning depressing lessons from this: Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, who faces corruption charges, has started courting Mr Trump in recent months.

Even when Mr Trump made a defensible choice on clemency, he went about it in an unseemly way. On January 21st he pardoned Ross Ulbricht, who had been sentenced to life in prison after creating an online marketplace for drug-dealers and other criminals. Mr Trump, who had previously called for the death sentence for drug-dealers, alluded to a campaign promise to libertarians and said that “the scum” who convicted Mr Ulbricht had pursued him too.

Presidential pardon power took a reputational hit this week, deservedly. To change it requires a politically impossible constitutional amendment. Presidents could wield it more responsibly, though. To persuade them to do so would require public pressure and awareness of what a better system might look like.

While high-profile cases get the most attention, thousands of anonymous Americans remain mired in a backlog of clemency reviews at the DoJ. Mr Biden previously granted clemency to most of the federal prisoners on death row and thousands of non-violent offenders. Yet the most recent data show he leaves office with nearly 10,000 petitions closed without presidential action, up from just over 8,000 under Mr Trump four years ago. The number stood at around 500 when George H.W. Bush left office in 1993. Margaret Love, who was the DoJ’s pardon attorney in the 1990s, says it is common to see someone convicted of a minor drug offence as a teenager seeking a pardon so they can become a lawyer as an adult.

During Mr Trump’s first term, only about 11% of the 238 clemency grants were recommendations from the Department of Justice’s pardon attorney. The president typically preferred flashier cases. “I hope Trump will take a careful look at how we’re using the power,” says Ms Love. “Let’s do some stuff for little people.”

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Economics

Germany’s economy chief Reiche sets out roadmap to end turmoil

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09 May 2025, Bavaria, Gmund Am Tegernsee: Katherina Reiche (CDU), Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, takes part in the Ludwig Erhard Summit. Representatives from business, politics, science and the media are taking part in the three-day summit. Photo: Sven Hoppe/dpa (Photo by Sven Hoppe/picture alliance via Getty Images)

Picture Alliance | Picture Alliance | Getty Images

Germany needs to take more risks and boost its stagnant economy with a decade of investment in infrastructure, German Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy Katherina Reiche said Friday.

“The next decade will be the decade of infrastructure investments in bridges, in energy infrastructure, in storage, in maritime infrastructure… telecommunication. And for this, we need speed. We need speed and investments, and we need private capital,” Reiche told CNBC’s Annette Weisbach on the sidelines of the Tegernsee summit.

While 10% of investments could be taken care of with public money, the remaining 90% relied on the private sector, she said.

The newly minted economy minister also addressed regulation coming from Brussels, warning that it could hinder companies from investments and start-ups from growing if it is too restrictive. Germany has had to learn that investments comes with risks “and we have to kind of be open for taking more risks,” she said.

Watch CNBC's full interview with German Economy Minister Katherina Reiche

“This country needs an economic turnaround. After two years of recessions the previous government had to announce again [a] zero growth year for 2025 and we really have to work on this. So on the top of the agenda is an investor booster,” the minister added.

Lowering energy prices, stabilizing the security of energy supply and reducing bureaucracy were among the key points on the agenda, Reiche said.

Germany’s economy contracted slightly on an annual basis in both 2023 and 2024 and the quarterly gross domestic product has been flipping between growth and contraction for over two years now, just about managing to avoid a technical recession. Preliminary data for the first quarter of 2025 showed a 0.2% expansion.

Forecasts do not suggest much of a reprieve from the sluggishness, with the now former German government last month saying it still expects the economy to stagnate this year.

This is despite a major fiscal U-turn announced earlier this year, which included changes to the country’s long-standing debt rules to allow for additional defense spending and a 500-billion-euro ($562.4 billion) infrastructure package.

Several of Germany’s key industries are under pressure. The auto industry for example is dealing with stark competition from China and now faces tariffs, while issues in housebuilding and infrastructure have been linked to higher costs and bureaucratic hurdles.

Trade is also a key pillar for the German economy and therefore uncertainty from U.S. President Donald Trump’s changing tariff policies are weighing heavily on the outlook.

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Economics

Andrew Bailey on why UK-U.S. trade deal won’t end uncertainty

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Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey attends the central bank’s Monetary Policy Report press conference at the Bank of England, in the City of London, on May 8, 2025.

Carlos Jasso | Afp | Getty Images

Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey told CNBC on Thursday that the U.K. was heading for more economic uncertainty, despite the country being the first to strike a trade agreement with the U.S. under President Donald Trump’s controversial tariff regime.

“The tariff and trade situation has injected more uncertainty into the situation… There’s more uncertainty now than there was in the past,” Bailey told CNBC in an interview.

“A U.K.-U.S. trade agreement is very welcome in that sense, very welcome. But the U.K. is a very open economy,” he continued.

That means that the impact from tariffs on the U.K. economy comes not just from its own trade relationship with Washington, but also from those of the U.S. and the rest of the world, he said.

“I hope that what we’re seeing on the U.K.-U.S. trade side will be the first of many, and it will be repeated by a whole series of trade agreements, but we have to see that happen of course, and where it actually ends up.”

“Because, of course, we are looking at tariff levels that are probably higher than they were beforehand.”

Trump unveils United Kingdom trade deal, first since ‘reciprocal’ tariff pause

In Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Report released Thursday, the word “uncertainty” was used 41 times across its 97 pages, up from 36 times in February, according to a CNBC tally.

The U.K. central bank cut interest rates by a quarter percentage point on Thursday, taking its key rate to 4.25%. The decision was highly divided among the seven members of its Monetary Policy Committee, with five voting for the 25 basis point cut, two voting to hold rates and two voting to reduce by a larger 50 basis points.

Bailey said that while some analysts had perceived the rate decision as more hawkish than expected — in other words, leaning toward holding rates elevated than slashing them rapidly — he was not surprised by the close vote.

“What it reflects is that there are two sides, there are risks on both sides here,” he told CNBC.

“We could get a much more severe weakness of demand than we were expecting, that could then pass through to a weaker outlook for inflation than we were expecting.”

“There’s a risk on the other side that we could get some combination of more persistence in the inflation effects that are gradually working their way through the system,” such as in wages and energy, while “supply capacity in the economy is weaker,” he said.

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Economics

Trump knocks down a controversial pillar of civil-rights law

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IN THE DELUGE of 145 executive orders issued by President Donald Trump (on subjects as disparate as “Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness” and “Maintaining Acceptable Water Pressure in Showerheads”) it can be difficult to discern which are truly consequential. But one of them, signed on April 23rd under the bland headline “Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy”, aims to remake civil-rights law. Those primed to distrust Mr Trump on such matters may be surprised to learn that the president’s target is not just important but also well-chosen.

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