Lisa Montgomery is set to become the first woman put to death by the US federal government in 67 years. On Tuesday senators including Cory Booker, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren wrote to the justice department demanding an investigation into an “unprecedented spree” of federal executions on Donald Trump’s watch.
A few hours later the president announced a slew of 15 pardons. Strikingly they included four military contractors imprisoned for the killing of unarmed men, women and children in Iraq. In short, war criminals.
Trump’s motivation had less to do with the quality of mercy than a boundless quantity of shamelessness. In his binary worldview people on death row must face implacable justice but those who pass his loyalty test have a ticket to freedom.
Nicholas Slatten, Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heards worked as security guards for Blackwater, owned by Erik Prince, a prominent supporter of Trump and brother of his education secretary, Betsy DeVos. All were serving long prison terms for a 2007 massacre of 14 unarmed civilians in Baghdad.
After their trial in 2014, Ronald Machen Jr, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, said: “These Blackwater contractors unleashed powerful sniper fire, machine guns, and grenade launchers on innocent men, women, and children. Today they were held accountable for that outrageous attack and its devastating consequences for so many Iraqi families.”
The pardoning of the four led political opponents and legal commentators, even those who thought they had grown immune to Trump outrage, to reach for words like “disgusting” and “grotesque”. With just 29 days left in office his burn-it-all-down brazenness knows no bounds.
He also pardoned Chris Collins, imprisoned for making false statements to the FBI and conspiracy to commit securities fraud, and Duncan Hunter, who admitted misusing campaign finance funds. Collins and Hunter were the first two congressmen to endorse Trump in the 2016 presidential election.
Pardons for George Papadopoulos and Alex van der Zwaan, both convicted as a result of the special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, were equally unsurprising. Trump continues to rage against the investigation as a deep state hoax even though it detailed dozens of contacts between his campaign and Moscow.
Adam Schiff, the chair of the House intelligence committee, tweeted on Tuesday night: “Lie to cover up for the president? You get a pardon. Corrupt politician who endorsed Trump? You get a pardon. Murder innocent civilians? You get a pardon. Elect a corrupt man as president? You get a corrupt result.”
So much for “drain the swamp” and “law and order”. Research by Jack Goldsmith, a law professor at Harvard University, found that 88% of the 45 pardons or commutations that Trump had granted before Tuesday helped someone personally associated with him or benefited him politically.
Allan Lichtman, a history professor at American University in Washington, said earlier this month: “Nothing about Trump’s actions surprise me. He has no concern for the law, for humanity, for decency or for tradition.
“If he thinks it’s to his advantage financially, politically, in terms of his family, he will issue whatever pardons he wants to, including perhaps for himself and likely for family members and other cronies.”
Indeed, Trump recently declared that he has “an absolute right” to pardon himself. Plenty of historians and constitutional experts disagree. It remains to be seen if Joe Biden will do it in a spirit of national healing, just as Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon – an unpopular move that helped cost Ford re-election.
In the meantime Tuesday night’s blitz came with the president increasingly desperate and dependent on loyal Republicans to back his futile bid to overturn the election result. He has lost the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell; he may even be losing the vice-president, Mike Pence.
But his message to the last band of diehards and zealots: those who pledge fealty will be rewarded. If you lie and cheat for me, I’ve got your back.
The pardon power is something of a quirk, more redolent of a medieval monarchy than a constitutional republic. Perhaps that is why Trump finds it so attractive as he enters full King George III meltdown with America slipping from his grasp.