Donald Trump, Roger Stone, and the Difference Between Pardoning and Forgiving

Donald Trump, Roger Stone, and the Difference Between Pardoning and Forgiving July 16, 2020

With Donald Trump’s commutation of Roger Stone’s prison sentence last week, we are reminded once again that this President uses executive power differently than other Presidents have, differently than the framers of the Constitution arguably intended. In the Stone case, the President commuted the sentence of a man convicted and sentenced for lying under oath to protect the very President who commuted his sentence. The President’s clemency power is supposed to exist solely to protect the national interest. In The Federalist, Alexander Hamilton wrote that it is better to give this power to the President — “a single man of prudence and good sense” — than to a legislative body like Congress. I doubt that Hamilton imagined, even in his wildest dreams, that 240 years down the line a President as far removed from prudence and good sense as night is from day would be wielding this power exclusively to reward and protect his political cronies and friends.

The politics of Presidential pardons are complex and divisive, especially during the present administration. Donald Trump is certainly not the first President to abuse his pardoning power (see Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush, for instance), but Trump has raised this abuse to a new level. But what intrigues me is the nature of pardoning itself, as well as its relationship to power and forgiveness. A brief discussion of the relationship of pardoning and power occurs in one of the many memorable scenes from Stephen Spielberg’s 1993 masterpiece Schindler’s List.

Oskar Schindler, played by Liam Neeson, and Amon Goeth, the most prominent Nazi in the film, played by Ralph Fiennes, are chatting on the balcony of Goeth’s villa overlooking Plaszow, the work camp he administers with random viciousness; their conversation turns toward the nature of power. Goeth notes that the Jews in the camp fear him because he has absolute power of life and death over them, but Schindler suggests that real power is something different, telling Goeth the story of an Emperor who has the power to sentence a man to death, but chooses not to do so.

Power is when we have every justification to kill, and we don’t… That’s what the Emperor said. A man steals something, he’s brought in before the Emperor, he throws himself down on the ground. He begs for mercy, he knows he’s going to die. And the Emperor… pardons him. This worthless man, he lets him go… That’s power, Amon. That is power.”

Although Goeth’s immediate response to Schindler’s story is dismissive, and although they share a laugh over the idea of “Amon the Good” pardoning indiscriminately, Schindler has planted a seed–clearly hoping that by appealing to Goeth’s hubris, the lives of a few Jews might be spared in the coming days. And Schindler’s idea does indeed have a short-lived effect on Goeth. Over the next several scenes we find Goeth “pardoning” two or three Jews in the camp for “offenses” of the sort for which Goeth has murdered in cold blood earlier in the movie. In a particularly chilling scene, Goeth practices his gesture of pardon in the mirror as he says “I pardon you.” Soon, however, Goeth returns to his randomly vicious and murderous ways.

When Goeth practices his gesture of pardon in the mirror, is he actually seeking to pardon himself? In Goeth’s imagination (and, I would add, in Donald Trump’s), a pardon is not an expression of benevolence or mercy. It rather is an expression of power—“I am so powerful that I can even step outside the boundaries of justice, real or imagined.” Pardoning as an expression of power needs pay no attention to whether the person pardoned is guilty or innocent, although the norm in our American system is for there to be an application procedure and careful review before a pardon is granted. Donald Trump has ignored these procedures, largely because in his estimation the President’s power to pardon is unlimited and absolute. As with Goeth, for Trump the overall appeal of pardoning undoubtedly is the power it displays, not benevolence or mercy.

What often is missed in the swirl of discussions about pardons is what a pardon does not do. Pardoning does not imply that the person pardoned is innocent. It does not expunge the record. Pardoning saves the person pardoned from further penalties, but does not state that the person pardoned was wrongly accused or convicted. Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon, not because he believed Nixon was innocent of what he was accused of, but because Ford believed the country’s “long nightmare” could not end unless the Nixon situation, for all intents and purposes, was ended. Whether a President has the power to pardon him or herself is one issue—but even claiming that he has the absolute power to do so if he so chooses is the preemptive claim of a person who either knows he’s guilty of something or is at least afraid that he is.

An interesting story in The Book of Numbers from the Jewish scriptures provides a clear distinction between pardoning and a related activity that is often mistakenly conflated with pardoning: Forgiveness. After forty years of wandering in the wilderness after their liberation from Egyptian slavery, the Israelites finally find themselves just across the Jordan River from the land that God has promised them and their ancestors since Abraham. For the umpteenth time in the past forty years, God is angry at his “chosen people” for their latest transgressions and proposes to “strike them with a pestilence and disinherit them.”

Moses, as he often does, reminds God that a merciful and loving divine being would forgive the problematic nomads just one more time. Moses’ intervention on behalf of the Israelites is effective, but only to a point. God tells Moses that

I have pardoned, according to your word; but truly, as I live . . . because all these men . . . have put Me to the test now these ten times, and have not heeded my voice, they certainly shall not see the land of which I swore to their fathers, nor shall any of those who rejected Me see it . . . Say to them . . . The carcasses of you who have murmured against Me shall fall in this wilderness, all of you who were numbered, according to your entire number, from twenty years old and above. But your little ones I will bring in, and they shall know the land which you have despised.

The divine pardon spares the Israelites from pestilence, but they are not forgiven. God’s longstanding promise to the children of Israel remains intact, but no longer applies to the current disobedient generation. A pardon lifts the punishment that justice demands, but does not wipe the slate clean.

Forgiveness is a much more radical response to wrongdoing, real or imagined. God in the Jewish scriptures is presented as often willing to pardon, less frequently willing to forgive. The most remarkable feature of Christianity, for my money, is its focus on a God of forgiveness: “Their sins I will remember no more.” Theological distinctions aside, forgiveness involves not only pardon but restoration. It also involves forgetting—those who say “I’ll forgive, but I won’t forget” are talking about pardoning, not forgiveness.

To truly forgive is something that often seems beyond the scope of human capacity; I would go so far as to say that to pardon is human, but to forgive is divine. And most of us have experienced true forgiveness, often unexpected and always undeserved. I can think of no better evidence for the notion that human beings contain a spark of the divine than that.


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