Re “Trump commutes Stone’s sentence” (Page A1, July 11): The framers of the Constitution created a broad executive power to grant pardons and commutations. As men of unparalleled public honor and integrity, they could not have imagined a president so personally dishonorable and corrupt as to use that power as an expedient in furtherance of self-interested criminality.
The Trump administration has used that power to render beyond legal accountability such criminals as Joe Arpaio, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, and now Roger Stone. These and other actions of the Trump administration make plain that partisans and cronies exist above and outside of the law and will not be subject to penalties consequent to criminal misdeeds.
The discretion granted in the Constitution has proved to be overly broad, and there is a clear need to curtail its abuse. An amendment to the Constitution should be proposed and adopted that defines the power to grant pardons or commutations as extending only to people convicted of a crime prior to a president’s tenure in office, and in no case where personal or financial benefit accrues to the granting president or his interests.
Keith Backman, Bedford
Note from KBJ: Now do Clinton and Obama.
