Ben Wallace-Wells

But he got he got applications and he, you know, he granted some of them and he was very cautious about it.

He did a lot of research.

He would talk to the judge.

He would talk to the prosecutor.

He would read the petition filed by the prisoner and he would talk to other judges and he talked to people in his cabinet.

Then he would reach a decision.

that reflected all that deliberation and caution.

And his pardons actually mentioned the reasons why people were being pardoned, because he wanted people to know that he had reasons.

It wasn't just, I like this person, or I had a good meal yesterday and I feel happy.

He wanted to make it clear that he had public policy reasons for what he was doing.

Some of the more, maybe more famous episodes was Andrew Johnson pardoning Confederates, including Jefferson Davis.

This is immensely controversial because they had fought a bloody war against the United States, and so some wanted them to be punished, right, with the death penalty or worse.

Johnson pardons them, and he's told, if you pardon these people, there's a greater chance that you will get the Democratic nomination for president.

Now, he doesn't get the nomination, but it seems clear that he's using the pardon pen to help secure the nomination.

You know, there's, of course, Gerald Ford's pardon of Nixon.

You know, Jimmy Carter pardoned all the draft dodgers, and that was controversial because it was done, you know, very soon after the Vietnam War.

And then, you know, that continues on into the last couple of administrations, and we can talk about that if you want to.

So with respect to President Clinton, he pardoned Mark Rich, who had contributed to his library, or more precisely, his ex-wife had contributed to his library.

And there was a claim that, you know, that Clinton thought about the donation in the context of whether to pardon Mark Rich.

There were pardons of FALN terrorists.