Donald Trump and Joe Biden only needed a few spring strings to continue a long, strange American tradition.
The president's pardon goes back to George Washington more than two centuries ago. Since then she has been awarded thousands and thousands of Americans and is still a unique and highly subjective power.
Richard Nixon says goodbye to his employees in front of the White House with a victorious greeting when he climbs a helicopter on August 9, 1974 after his resignation. A month later, President Gerald Ford Nixon pardoned completely.
(Bob Daugherty / Associated Press)
“In general, presidents can pardon any federal crime,” says Jeffrey Crouch, assistant professor of law at the American University in Washington, DC “In addition, they can be mercy as they want.”
This authority has led to controversial decisions, including pardon for personalities such as President Richard Nixon, civil servants involved in the Iran-Contra affair and the raw material dealer Marc Rich, who died out of favor. The list has become a little longer in the past few weeks when Trump pardoned around 1,500 rioters on January 6 and bids the same for some of his closest family members.
The history of the executive gesture is also shaped by examples that have been eliminated, even though they were also controversial or bizarre in some cases.
Here is a selection:
1795: The whiskey rebellion
In the early 1790s, farmers in Pennsylvania stated several government officials and provided feathers to collect a new tax on whiskey production. When violence spread, Washington-during his second term as president-led a militia personally to put down the so-called Whiskey rebellion.
In 1795, Washington decided to issue the first grace request of the executive and to relieve “all persons who were guilty of saying”. Although he insisted on the rule of law, he spoke of the need to “interfere with government transactions to interfere with any measure of moderation and tenderness”.
1815: The pirate Jean Lafitte
During the war of 1812, British armed forces turned to the notorious smuggler from the Gulf of Mexico and asked him for help with attack on the US coast. Lafitte not only warned the American authorities; He and his team proved to be crucial in defending New Orleans.
President James Madison pardoned as a reward for everyone for “secret and lawless” deeds that they may have had before.
1830: George Wilson
This case showed that not all of the pardons are the same.
President Andrew Jackson issued a grace permit that Wilson saved from being hung because of post theft, but did not rule out a longer prison sentence. Wilson refused.
The frightened authorities turned to the Supreme Court, who decided that Wilson had the right to reject this. Historical reports about what happened next are unclear – some say he was hung; Others think that he had accepted a later pardon by President Martin van Buren.
1858: Brigham Young
The Utah War of 1857–58 began as soldiers from the US Army to west to use a new governor for the area occupied by the saints of the past few days and their leader Young. Although the years of patient situation went uneventful, the tensions caused Mormons to attack more than 100 innocent people in a wagon pull to California.
The war finally ended when President James Buchanan-who was criticized for the so-called “Buchanan error”-pardoned Young and his followers for their resistance to the government. In return, they submitted to the rule of the United States.
1868: The Confederated Army
President Andrew Johnson waited up to three years after the civil war with the imposition of an amnesty on Independence Day for everyone who met what he called “the rebellion”. Johnson justified the action as a means of “promoting and bringing up a complete fraternal reconciliation among the whole people”.
A photo published in 1925 shows veterans of the Confederate and others at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in the revelation of a monument for fallen soldiers of the Confederation.
(Archive of Los Angeles Times / Ucla Library)
1971: Jimmy Hoffa
The notorious union leader came to the federal prison in 1967 because of manipulation of the jury, fraud and conspiracy. Nixon alleviated the conversion of his punishment by asking him to forego trade union activities. However, it shows that the president's advisors tried to use Hoffa to win work support for Nixon's re -election campaign in 1972.
A few years later, Hoffa disappeared under mysterious circumstances and was never seen again.
The President of the Teamsters Union, Jimmy Hoffa, was shown in Washington in 1959.
(Associated Press)
1977: Contributator for military service in Vietnam
On his first full day in office, President Jimmy Carter, who had been withdrawn from the convening, pardoned a flat rate and thus enabled thousands of young men to return from Canada and other countries. It was part of his election promise to tackle the unfinished tasks of the Vietnam War.
1977: “Tokyo Rose”
It was in 1941 when Iva Ikuko Toguri – born in Los Angeles, trained on the UCLA – moved to Japan. After the end of the Second World War, the so-called “Tokyo Rose”-a radio name that she never used-accused of being one of several women who sent English-language radio programs to demoralize American troops. She was convicted of treason and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Almost three decades later, after two witnesses told the indictment that they had been forced to say, President Gerald Ford granted her unconditional pardon.
Iva Ikuko Toguri was shown on January 28, 1956 after her release from the Federal Women's Reformatory in Alderson, West Virginia.
(Associated Press)
1989: George Steinbrenner
The bombastic owner of the New York Yankees was convicted of illegal donations for Nixon's election campaign in 1972 and was fined, but not imprisoned. Years later, President Ronald Reagan granted a pardon that Steinbrenner's file did not adjust but restored his full citizenship rights.
2001: Patty Hearst
The newspaper server, which was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army and later joined them as a “Tania”, received two presidential candidates. Carter converted her prison sentence in 1979 due to bank robbery, then President Bill Clinton expressed complete pardon on his last day in office.
Patty Hearst in handcuffs, accompanied by two women, at the prisoner entrance of the criminal court building in Los Angeles in 1976.
(John Malmin/Los Angeles Times)