This new Daily Beast piece, headlined "Donald Trump May Circumvent the Usual Process to Pardon Sheriff Joe Arpaio," provides some notable quotes from notable federal clemency excerpts in reaction to Prez Trump's indication that he is considering a pardon for a high-profile law enforcement official. Here are excerpts:
President Donald Trump has learned about his power to issue pardons. And in the last week, White House aides have suggested that he use his first one on a controversial choice: Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the schismatic Arizona lawman convicted of contempt of court.
In recent days, speculation has mounted that Trump will follow through on this suggestion at a campaign rally in Phoenix on Tuesday. Should he do so, it will be a unique moment in modern presidential politics. Trump will have given the first pardon of his presidency to someone for what appears to be purely political reasons and he will have done so without going through the normal review process.
The possibility has left some clemency advocates feeling a little queasy. “There are literally hundreds of no-name people we’ve never heard of, who will never been in the newspaper, who are not cause célèbres, who have had applications waiting and waiting and waiting,” said P.S. Ruckman, political science professor at Northern Illinois University. “They’re sick to their stomach right now reading about Arpaio getting a potential pardon, that’s breaking their heart.”
Like George W. Bush and Barack Obama before him, Trump has proven stingy with the pardon power granted to the president. And that’s probably a generous way to put it. Two hundred days into his presidency, he has yet to pardon anyone. This isn’t unprecedented. It took Obama more than 600 days to issue a pardon. He nearly broke the record for fewest pardons, though he granted more clemencies than any other president by shortening the sentences of more than a thousand people....
Ruckman said that most American presidents started pardoning people in their first month in office, and kept pardoning at a regular clip through their administrations. The drop-off in pardons is a relatively new change. And while high-profile grants of clemency to political allies get the most press — think Bush’s commutation of Scooter Libby’s sentence or Bill Clinton’s pardon of Democratic mega-donor Marc Rich — the vast majority of people who get pardoned never become household names....
Were Trump to give his first pardon to Arpaio, who endorsed him during the Republican presidential primary, Ruckman argues that it would undercut the populist message from the campaign. “It would give people the sense that only famous people, cause célèbres, and connected people are going to get pardons from Trump,” Ruckman said.
Sam Morison, an attorney who worked in the Justice Department’s pardon office for more than a decade, predicted Trump will pardon Arpaio when he goes to Arizona, though he added that it would send a terrible message. “He hasn’t even been sentenced yet, he’s just been convicted,” Morison said. “And he’s not contrite, he doesn’t accept responsibility — quite the opposite. So in that sense, it’s very unusual. And the only reason he’s getting any traction at all is that he’s a well-known political figure. So it is special pleading of the worst kind.”
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