A snippy article in The New York Times this past weekend — sorry, an unusually snippy article in The New York Times this past weekend — suggested that Trump is using his pardon power to reward those loyal to him and undo what he sees as politically motivated prosecutions. If true, this would make Trump only the 47th president to use his authority this way.

The media’s interest in presidential pardons seems sudden.

Just a few months ago, President Biden granted a blanket clemency to 1,500 criminals in a single day; overruled federal law on capital punishment by rescinding it for 37 of the 40 federal death row prisoners; and nullified federal drug laws by commuting the sentences of 2,500 alleged “nonviolent drug offenders,” in what his White House boasted was “the largest single-day grant of clemency in modern history.”

The Times is worried about Trump abusing the presidential pardon? If Trump were selling pardons at a card table at Mar-a-Lago like merch at comic con, it could not compare to the lawlessness of Biden using the pardon power to repeal federal law. With the stroke of a pen, the dementia patient — or whomever was functioning as president — thumbed his nose at the legislative and judicial branches, the U.S. Code, his own law enforcement officers, the federal judiciary, and, most of all, citizens voting in a democracy (that thing that dies in darkness).

For decades, the progressive wish list has had at the top of the lineup: 1) decriminalizing drugs, 2) decriminalizing illegal immigration, 3) decriminalizing crime and 4) abolishing the death penalty. They push their pro-criminal agenda with Alice in Wonderland locutions, like “mass incarceration,” “the school-to-prison pipeline,” “failed drug war,” “black bodies,” “alternatives to incarceration,” “the new Jim Crow,” “nonviolent drug offenses” and “the defendant was just signed by the Los Angeles Lakers.”

But no matter how they try to camouflage it, these are such obviously crackpot ideas, they’ve been adopted only in a few open-air drug markets, like the entire states of California, Oregon and Washington. Unable to convince a majority of Americans not currently wearing ankle monitors that murderers, rapists and other psychopaths should roam free among us, liberals simply defy the law with moratoriums, executive orders, court rulings and, in Biden’s case, across-the-board mass clemencies.

For example, in contempt of California voters’ clear endorsement of the death penalty in 2016, just three years later, Gov. Gavin Newsom imposed a moratorium on capital punishment. His solidly Democratic constituents have adamantly refused to halt the death penalty in statewide initiatives at least four times. What else can they do? Give everybody on death row the COVID jab?

Forget Biden’s issuing preemptive pardons to Anthony Fauci, members of the Jan. 6 committee, the special prosecutors who hounded Trump, his own multiple-convict son, Hunter, and to be safe, “anyone with the last name Biden.” He used the presidential pardon to overturn federal criminal law, just as he used Alejandro Mayorkas to overturn immigration law.

The 4,000 criminals granted clemency by Biden were in prison only after undergoing a lengthy, meticulous, painstakingly fair process in the most advanced criminal justice system in the world. So many obstacles are thrown in the way of prosecutors (exclusionary rule, Miranda, double jeopardy, jury nullification, fruit of the poisoned tree, etc.) that it’s a miracle they get any convictions even of obviously guilty people — as long as the defendant’s name isn’t “Trump” and the trial isn’t in New York or D.C.

But after all that, Biden tossed out the hard work of Congress, federal law enforcement and the judiciary, and imposed his own law: The death penalty is abolished, drugs are legal and crime will not be punished.

Out of pure spite against those of us who, oddly enough, would prefer to keep serial killers, rapists, arsonists and drug kingpins in prison, the media enragingly claim that the thousands of criminals Biden sprung were merely guilty of “nonviolent drug offenses.”

They are referring to the crime of record, which is never what the guy actually did, a fact well known to anyone familiar with the law, police procedural shows on TV or the expression “plea bargaining.”

As the Times itself has reported, 97% of federal prosecutions end with a plea bargain. You don’t plea to the worst thing you did. You plea to the bare minimum to spare the state a trial. “Possession” of guns or drugs shows up in a lot of plea deals because 1) almost all criminals have guns or drugs on them; 2) guns and drugs can’t be intimidated out of testifying; and 3) Hunter Biden.

The truth is something like this:

Actual crime: Homicide

Plea bargain: Manufacturing of narcotics

Actual crime: Assault with a deadly weapon

Plea bargain: Distribution of narcotics

Actual crime: Rape

Plea bargain: Possession of narcotics

Even so, only about 0.7% of drug offenders in federal prison have “possession” as the crime of record.

But now, thanks to Biden’s unprecedented abuse of the pardon power, they’re all walking free, able to vote and buy guns. Solely because of these clemencies, thousands of Americans, happily going about their lives today, will, within the next few years, be murdered, raped, assaulted, brain-damaged, robbed, stolen from, set on fire, etc., etc., unexpectedly beating Biden to the grave.

What do you call a leader who does not feel bound by the law, but makes his own law by diktat? Autocr-something? It reminds me of a time, long ago, when a leader came to power in Germany …

But, sure, New York Times, try to make a big issue of Trump contemplating a pardon for reality TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley.

COPYRIGHT 2025 ANN COULTER