283
A pardon for a price? How Donald Trump has reimagined presidential clemency
(www.aljazeera.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2026
283 points (99.6% liked)
News
35915 readers
3610 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious biased sources will be removed at the mods’ discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted separately but not to the post body. Sources may be checked for reliability using Wikipedia, MBFC, AdFontes, GroundNews, etc.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source. Clickbait titles may be removed.
Posts which titles don’t match the source may be removed. If the site changed their headline, we may ask you to update the post title. Clickbait titles use hyperbolic language and do not accurately describe the article content. When necessary, post titles may be edited, clearly marked with [brackets], but may never be used to editorialize or comment on the content.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials, videos, blogs, press releases, or celebrity gossip will be allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Mods may use discretion to pre-approve videos or press releases from highly credible sources that provide unique, newsworthy content not available or possible in another format.
7. No duplicate posts.
If an article has already been posted, it will be removed. Different articles reporting on the same subject are permitted. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners or news aggregators.
All posts must link to original article sources. You may include archival links in the post description. News aggregators such as Yahoo, Google, Hacker News, etc. should be avoided in favor of the original source link. Newswire services such as AP, Reuters, or AFP, are frequently republished and may be shared from other credible sources.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I looked it up and there was a good rationale based on fairness behind Biden's pardons. Most of Biden's pardons also weren't really pardons, but commutations of sentences: "Context: The thousands pardoned on Friday were "serving disproportionately long sentences compared to the sentences they would receive today," Biden's statement said." https://www.axios.com/2025/01/17/biden-presidential-pardons-clemency-record Which seems fair and also needed to me. Imagine having 10 years left to serve of your 20 years sentence, while new convicts only receive max 5 years for the same crime.
What Biden did with pardons was completely different from what Trump is doing with them.
Re commutations vs pardons, the same is true with Trump. Thousands more commutations than pardons.
Re "fairness", do you think this pardon was fair?
"the owner of a Detroit-area Medicare billing company who orchestrated a $26 million Medicare fraud."
"Cuyahoga County commissioner, served more than a decade in prison on corruption charges"
...and so on.
It's not "completely different", it's the same old shit, just like when Bush or Trump or Clinton did the exact same thing
But you WANT him to be different... so here we are, in your own fantasy land. So nice here. Oblivion. Peace
And Trump does the following: "President Donald Trump signed off on several eyebrow-raising pardons this week, including a man whose daughter donated millions to his PAC and a convicted fraudster he had already freed from prison for a different fraud scheme during his first term"
Trump hands out pardons after blatant corruption & at the start of people's sentences. Biden did not do that. That you want to portray Biden to be as bad as Trump, shows that apparently your fairness compass is very broken.
And that person who got pardoned after already serving 10 years of his prison sentence ... 10 years is already a freaking long time for non violent crime, which also didn't ruin anyone else's lives. Sentences have to follow a gradiant along the severity of the crime, if not you end up with a broken system (like the USA one). Prison should be temporary, a chance for correction and rehabilitation, where the person one day gets released with another chance at living a quiet honest life. That you want that man to die in prison ... Says a lot about you again.
Still the same, pardons and commutations for wealthy thieves abound with Presidents for decades.
That's what makes Trump's blatant corruption possible, you see. Years of blatant corruption leads to even more blatant corruption.
Ten years is not long enough for a corrupt politician stealing millions of dollars. You get more time from robbing a bank. What is worse? I believe stealing from your constituents is worse than stealing from a wealthy bank, don't you??
But you go ahead and stand up for a 50-year politician who has sent many more non-violent people to prison for much longer (see his stance on "Drug War" and much more over the decades).
That says even more about you, who will you defend next??? Gross.
People like you make people like Trump inevitable.
So your idea of justice is to heavily sentence people for actions that are not related to the crime that they are being sentenced for. That's not justice, that's called vengeance.
And yes, someone defrauding the government should be sentenced less severely than someone who does a violent robbery. Violent robberies can get people killed and even if noone dies or gets wounded, the victims will still be traumatized. None of that can happen with white collar crime against a big organisation. That this difference isn't obvious to you, should imo be a wake up call for yourself that you need to calm down and take some time to rethink some of the things that you belief.