Joe Biden faces a momentous decision: should he pardon Donald Trump?
January 12, 2021 (Shutterstock)
Even before Joe Biden takes office, the debate has begun in America about whether or not he should pardon Donald Trump. As this column predicted many weeks ago, this will be the first major decision of the Biden presidency. By comparison, the $1.9 trillion pandemic stimulus package that the President-elect has already announced, large as it is, will be uncontroversial.
Biden must grasp the nettle of how to handle a former President who now faces an impeachment trial in the Senate. Trump’s refusal to concede the election has already resulted in an insurrection; he is now refusing to accept responsibility for his role in fomenting it. If, as seems likely, he is convicted of “high crimes and misdemeanours” by the Congress his followers attacked, the dispute has the potential to split the nation into two warring factions — perhaps for decades.
The legacy of Watergate still resonates in Washington. President Gerald Ford’s decision to pardon the disgraced Richard Nixon after the latter’s resignation was highly controversial at the time, but its wisdom is now taken for granted. Ford justified the pardon by pointing out that Nixon’s acceptance of it implied an admission of guilt, a legal doctrine established in the United States by a 1915 Supreme Court judgement. Nixon himself never publicly confessed his guilt, neither for the crime nor for the cover-up. However, after a period of retreat from public life, he played the role of elder statesman to perfection until his death in 1994.
The case of Donald Trump is very different. Whereas nobody was prepared to go to the barricades for Nixon, there appear to be thousands who would do so for Trump. The inauguration ceremony next week will be a sombre affair: the usual crowds would have been banned anyway to avoid transmitting coronavirus, but now tens of thousands of troops and police will be deployed to prevent any repetition of the events of January 6. Those who work for the Federal Government now live in fear of the followers of their outgoing head of state. And Biden himself cannot even make his final journey by train from Delaware to the White House for fear of assassination.
This atmosphere of intimidation is intolerable — and it will not be tolerated. Half of all Republicans apparently believe Trump’s big lie: that the election was stolen. If they are to be persuaded to admit their error, he must choose: will he say in public that he lost the election, that he was wrong to deny it and that he regrets his incitement of the mob? Or is he prepared to face justice, with all the possible consequences?
There is no third choice. The Nixon option is unlikely to be on offer, if only because the bond of trust that exists between President and Vice President is absent here. Joe Biden is too angry with his predecessor to pardon him without cast-iron assurances, at the very least, that he will cease and desist from his agitation against the legitimacy of the electoral process. Yet such assurances have not so far been forthcoming. It is true that the President has issued a video repudiating political violence, but he has not disowned those who have vowed to continue his campaign against what they see as an illegitimate regime. Nor has he admitted any culpability for his own actions before, during and after the siege of the Capitol. To date, he hasn’t even apologised to the victims of that violence. Donald Trump seems entirely unrepentant.
How, then, could his pardon help the healing process? There is a danger that Trump’s more fanatical acolytes might see an unconditional pardon as a sign of the administration’s weakness. Alberto Gonzales, a respected Republican lawyer who was Attorney-General under George W Bush, told CNN that, were he advising Biden as President, he could not recommend a pardon to help the country move forward “without that acknowledgment by Trump that he either lied or was mistaken [about the election].” The defence of democracy demands a process of accountability for those who undermine it. If a pardon is to serve its purpose of providing closure, it cannot short-circuit that process. It is a basic principle of Christianity — the faith which both Biden and Trump at least nominally profess — that the price of forgiveness is contrition. Morality and politics coincide in requiring Trump to decline the status of martyr to injustice in return for Biden tempering justice with mercy.
All these factors will have been weighing heavily on the incoming President. He could be forgiven for wishing to wash his hands of the whole sordid affair and let justice take its course. The danger in doing so is that the office of President would be damaged by the spectacle of a former incumbent behind bars. It is not too late for a compromise to be reached. Any comparison with Napoleon risks feeding Trump’s megalomania, but what might be called the St Helena option should seriously be considered. A closer comparison would be the solution found for the former Edward VIII, who after his abdication was persuaded to spend the rest of his life in France as Duke of Windsor (with a wartime interlude as Governor of the Bahamas), thereby shielding the British monarchy from further damage.
Exile would be less painful for all concerned, though it is difficult to imagine Trump going quietly. The Scottish First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has already made it clear that he would be unwelcome, should he ever contemplate retiring to his estate there. There are, however, other countries where he remains popular: Poland and Israel both spring to mind. Joe Biden would be wise to set vengeance, however righteous, aside and think imaginatively about the preservation of the Republic and the reconciliation of the nation.
A Message from TheArticle
We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle. We have an important contribution to make, one that’s needed now more than ever, and we need your help to continue publishing throughout the pandemic. So please, make a donation.
