Stuff You Should Know - How Presidential Pardons Work

Episode Date: July 29, 2010

A presidential pardon is a unique, unchallengable power granted to the president of the United States by the Constitution. In this episode, Josh and Chuck discuss the origins, history and controversial use of the presidential pardon. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There's nothing quite like the excitement of knowing a baby is on the way. After all, you have been dreaming of this moment your entire life. With Caden Lane, we have everything you need to keep your little love cuddly soft all year round. From personalized swaddlers and super soft blankets to newborn knotted gowns, and the best baby accessories, including bows, hats, and bib sets, style is important, but comfort is vital. Celebrate a joy like none other with special gifts from CadenLane.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant.

Before we get down, seriously, I just had a flashback. I used to do this show with Chris Palette and anybody who listens to tech stuff, if you don't, you should, will know that he is among the funniest people on the planet. Are you invoking Palette and my name in the same sentence? You shoot puns like that at me, you get the big guns. Before we get to this business, I just want to say big welcome to a certain individual. Little girl named Sophia Mulan Harris was born today, July 22, 628 a.m.

She's the daughter of my future brother and sister-in-law, Josh Harris and Mika Harris. People were probably like, Josh had a baby and didn't even tell us. The other Josh, Yumi and her sister are both with Josh's. I met both of them at your birthday party. Sure, yeah. The one I was on a horse on. That was awesome. Welcome to the world, Sophia Mulan, who is going to be called Mila from now on.

Thank you very much, Chuck, for indulging in that. Sure. Since you brought it up, I should point out that at Josh's birthday party, there were a pony, a horse, bunnies and goats. Yeah, it was like the farm was brought in for the party and there weren't enough kids there to justify it, so we all know what really was going on. Yeah, Yumi was like, you're so spoiled, I'm going to get you a pony when she got me a pony. Of course, Emily spent like half the party in the goat crate. Well, they were pretty cute goats. One looked like pure satanic evil, but the other one was just beyond adorable.

Little pygmy goat. Yeah, plus it was three months old, so it was really little and cute. That was awesome. Yes, so baby goats, human babies, so far, it's been like a minute and a half, and we're already like the cute factor is through the roof, man. Well, we can take care of that with one fell swoop. Yeah, let's talk about pretty much the exact opposite of that, shall we? Yes.

Okay, buddy, I was disheartened to hear that July 10th came and went, and not a lot of people marked it, but this day was the day that Barack Obama, Mr. Ho, Mr. Change, the president, went past John Adams presidency or administration neglect of clemency requests. He waited longer than the other president? Yes. Interesting. It is very interesting. John Adams went 536 days, and I should say July 10th is the day that Obama tied him.

You mean John Adams, the second, I'm sorry, the first vice president in the United States? Yes, that same John Adams. Okay. Yeah. So anyway, it's been several days since then, and there's been no action taken on any requests for pardons from Obama, and a lot of people are like, that's kind of weird. He's in third place right now to Clinton and George W. Bush. He's busy.

Yeah, but as you'll find out, he really doesn't have to do too terribly much. Right. The other thing is, what's odd is he's not doing anything. He's not saying they're just denying them, denying them, denying them, right? He's not doing anything. He inherited a couple of thousand requests for clemency, and I think he had a few thousand more come up, and he hasn't taken any action on any of them. It's really puzzling, and it's not very talked about news story, but I don't have a good answer why.

I haven't been able to find one. I've looked. I mean, I looked. Well, you usually don't hear about clemency much to the last part of a president's final term. Not necessarily true, and I should say... Well, I should say that's when you really hear about it, because that's when they come flying in. Yeah, and they come hard and fast, and the real dirty ones come up around them, you know? I should say that Obama has pardoned two individuals.

Okay. They're two turkeys. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that he pardoned last Thanksgiving, and seriously, those are the only pardons that he's given so far. Who started that? Do you have that info? We don't really know. No one knows.

Oh, really? They think it was... A lot of people say it was Lincoln, but people have turned up that it was actually Harry Truman, but Truman came up with the idea, possibly. I think Lincoln made a joke about it. Truman came up with the idea, and I think John F. Kennedy was the first to actually ever follow through with it. Interesting. That's what I've heard, and I think we talked about our Thanksgiving podcast, but I can't remember it.

So Lincoln made a joke about it as he hatcheted it off the head of a turkey? Yeah, he said he was going to pardon Tad's turkey, because mom's so crazy these days, I'm going to got to do something for the kid. Right, interesting. So then he cut off the head and said, LOL, just kidding. Alright. Let's get down to this, shall we? Presidential pardons, and you wrote this, and this was an awesome article, dude.

Thank you. Very thorough. It was one of those interesting ones, like the topic's just interesting, you know? Because, I mean, you think about it, Chuck, we have a government that consists of checks and balances, right? Ideally, sure. So, I mean, well, the way it's set up, you know, the Senate has final approval on the people the president tries to appoint to the Supreme Court. That's a check. The Senate can come up with bills, laws, but the president has veto power over them.

And with the Supreme Court, you can impeach a Supreme Court justice. Did you know that? Yeah. I did not. Although it wasn't the article. So I guess I knew it at one point in time when I was reminded of it. So there's all these checks and balances, except the presidential pardon. It exists in this weird vacuum.

Unchecked. Outside of everything else, totally unchecked. You can't do anything about it. Yeah, and I like you pointed out in the article that Congress spends a lot of time when all the pardons come flying in hard and fast toward the end, just kind of like, oh, I can't do anything. Yeah. But I noted that the same congressman, they want that pardon too for when they're in trouble. Right, yeah.

There's a lot of disingenuous electioneering or politicizing, I guess, with pardoning. But originally, that's not what it was intentionally created for. It has become a political tool, right? And as a result, it's really kind of generated this ire in public perception. Pretty famously, Gerald Ford took a hit in the public sector, right? Yeah, he pardoned Nixon. Yeah. That was not a very popular move.

No. And that was kind of sweeping because he pardoned Nixon before any charges were ever formally filed. Which is a no-no, technically, with pardons. And weird and hinky. Yeah. And he kind of, you know, a lot of people thought Ford was a dummy president, not a smart guy, maybe football injury. Sure.

They said I'm dazed and confused. Right. But I remember when he died, learning that a lot of people considered him something of a hero because he fell on his sword. He gave up the presidency to heal the country and just get the Nixon era over with by pardoning the guy. Right. And just doing it himself, taking the full ire of the American public. Just said, forget it.

I'm out of here. Right. Another big one was Scooter Libby, right? Yeah. Every president has, you know, a slew of pardons and every president has some shady ones where they kind of get their buddies out of trouble because when big money's involved in politics, there's usually some malfeasance going on. Yeah. So Scooter Libby was pardoned by Bush.

Yeah. He was Bush Jr. Right. Right. He was a, well, he was convicted of obstructing justice, perjury, lying to federal investigators. Pretty garden variety stuff. The whole, yeah, exactly. Except he got really thrown under the bus.

But it was for the whole Valerie Plain thing. Yeah. The CIA outing. Right. Right. Supposedly allegedly in retaliation for Plain's husband coming up with analysis saying like, Iraq does not have weapons of mass destruction. Right.

Yeah. Good times. Yeah. Clinton was also under fire, of course, for Mark Rich. Yeah. Not Mark Richt. No. Not our awesome football coach here, Georgia.

You can't pin anything on Mark Richt. Dude, that guy's so squeaky clean. Yeah. Yeah, Mark Richt was the famous tax evader whose wife, ex-wife, left a large sum of money to the Clinton Library. Right. And so Bill said, pardon. I was hoping you were going to do that today. Yeah, today.

But one thing I thought was interesting was that it was a conditional pardon, which we'll talk about. You noticed that as well? Yeah, because he agreed basically. He went to Switzerland to, I guess, evade charges initially. Yeah, he fled the country. Yeah. Like Polanski style. Yeah.

And Clinton said, I'll pardon you if you agree not to defend yourself against the civil suits brought by the United States government. Right. And so he said, yeah, that's fine. Sure, I'll do that. But they were pretty substantial. It wasn't just tax evasion. I uncovered this when I was researching for this podcast. Yeah.

The guy was also indicted for selling or making oil deals with Iran during the Iran hostage crisis when there was a full-on embargo. Yeah. Yeah. That's like treason. Right. Well, that's the funny thing, though. Well, not funny, but he said, sure. Go ahead and pardon me, and I'll agree not to defend myself when I come back to the U.S. and get, you know, he never came back.

Yeah. He stayed in Switzerland. He's like, thanks for the pardon. Yeah. It's kind of nice here. So I think there's a couple of reasons. The Mark Rich case stands out. The Mark Rich pardon stands out so much as it seems so.

It's just the worst kind of politics when some kind of elitist politician pardons one of his or her own. Yeah. Well, so far one of his own. Right. And then also, there were questions about whether Mark Rich bought that pardon. Right. Whether that endowment to the Clinton Library was in exchange for a pardon, right? Bought a lot of books, I'm sure.

Yeah. You know the other interesting thing. You know who was lead counsel for Rich? William Kuntzler. For 15 years? Scooter Libby. Oh, wow. He was his lawyer, and he defended him and said, oh, he didn't evade any taxes.

And Clinton used Scooter Libby and said, we have a hardcore Republican lawyer that's defending this guy. Wow. Saying he didn't do it. So then it's just funny how he embedded all this. I think it's funny that people still differentiate between Democrats and Republicans. Yeah. That's a laugh. Yeah.

Also, lastly, this Mark Rich case read hot. It came back when Obama was trying to get Eric Holder appointed as his attorney general. Oh, really? Yeah. Trying to get him past the Senate. That was the big contentious issue. How did you sign off on the Mark Rich pardon? It was arguably the worst pardon ever in the history of presidents.

And he almost didn't get nominated. I remember they stretched it out for weeks. Crazy. Yeah. So anyway, let's talk about this, and then maybe we'll go back and talk about some more famous and not so famous but interesting pardons. That sounds good, Josh. Thanks, Chuckers.

Man, we are doing this on the fly with the record button on. What do we usually do? We usually go beep and then talk about it and then edit that part out. Right. So, Chuck, what does a pardon do? Why would Mark Rich even be interested in having a pardon like this? Why would somebody who's been convicted of a crime, sentenced to prison, served their time, and been out for several years be interested in getting a pardon?

What's the point? Well, first I would say, what are you kidding? We'll spell it out for you. A pardon, the main thing it does is it gets you out of prison, which is awesome. But the really awesome thing that it does beyond that is it restores your civil rights as a free, non-federally incarcerated individual. Or somebody who hasn't been convicted of a felony. As a felon, Chuck, you're not allowed to own a firearm.

Or vote. Right, which is why you couldn't vote on Tuesday. Or jury duty, which is kind of nice. Right, yeah. I don't know if that's a disability, but that's what they're called collectively when you lose those rights after being convicted of a felony. And that goes on your record. You lose these rights and it's called civil disability, right?

Yeah, and it restores every bit. It's almost like an annulment. It's as if nothing ever happened, save for the fact that it does stay on your record. Right. And the records remain. It took several hundred years for them to finally establish that there's a Supreme Court case, and I think the 90s, that said the records stay. But there's nice.

Right off the top of your head too. But there's no, they don't have any effect on you as a citizen any longer. But that's just with the federal government. And that's not even with all branches of the federal government. Basically, when the president issues a pardon, the president is daddy of the country right then and is saying on behalf of the rest of the American family, we're going to forgive you for this transgression. Right.

I'm your daddy. I'm everybody else's daddy. I'm going to make the decision and let's just move on past this. Right. Now, your brother, the IRS, your uncle, the IRS I should say, is probably still going to sue your ass off. Your drunk uncle. Right.

But you are, I can't do anything about that. But you broke the laws and we're going to forgive you for breaking the laws. Right. Should we talk about other forms of clemency just so everyone's squared away? Yeah, because of pardon, clemency is the umbrella term. Yeah. Pardon is one type of clemency. That's the best kind.

That's the best point. Yeah. That's what you're gunning for. Right. We can draw the distinction though, my friend, with pardons, commutes, remissions. And what's the last one? Respite. Respite.

Commutation, when you commute a sentence, that means you just make it shorter. Right. That's not used a whole lot. You can also commute a sentence before it even starts. Yeah, that's weird. That's what happened with Scooter or Libby. Yeah, sure. He got a commutation, but not a pardon.

So he's a blemished individual as a citizen, but he didn't have to go to prison. So you can't vote? No. Or serve on a jury. Or own a handgun. Or own a handgun. That's probably a good thing. We already talked about the full pardon, the granddaddy of them all.

There is the conditional pardon, which we mentioned, which means I will do this for you if, and the Clinton example was one, another good one you listed was... Jimmy Hoffa. Jimmy Hoffa. Nixon pardoned Hoffa and said, I'll pardon you as long as you don't take part in any more labor organization. Right. And he was like...

And go sleep with the fishes. But that's all I do. Right. And he had to go full on with the mob after that. Exactly. His inevitable course was set with that agreement. Remission, we mentioned, that is like when you say you don't have to pay a fine. It releases you from a legal obligation.

Again, but that's just with the federal government. Right. And it's not necessarily with the IRS. The IRS sends you in civil court. Yeah. It can't... A civil obligation you owe to a family for restitution, they can't remiss that. Is that right?

Remiss. Remit. But you would be remissed. You would be remissed. Right. Jerry's laughing in there. I heard. Respite is basically a temporary thing where the president's like, you know what, let me

hold this off for a month or two while we look at it. Right. Like an execution? Well, isn't that a stay? Or is it the same thing? I don't know. I don't know if a stay of execution is just issued by the governor. Right.

Or if a stay of execution is a type of respite. Maybe because this is only federal cases because the president can't touch state or local cases. Isn't that right? That's true too. Yeah. So maybe that's the diff. Yeah, the feds execute people. The president could keep somebody who was sentenced to death through a court martial.

They could give them respite. It's kind of like, hey, here's a nice hot towel, go sit in the corner while we figure out whether we're going to kill you or not. And you can pile those on top of each other if you need more time. You can issue them in succession and it doesn't interfere with the trial or anything like that. Right. So like a lot of these kind of work in conjunction, like the bouya combo that you want is the

commutation of sentence before it even starts, followed by or in conjunction with the full pardon. Or a respite maybe than the full pardon. Right. But I mean, if you love a sense of drama, you can take the respite on to the beginning. I just want to keep my butt out of jail. I don't care if it's dramatic or not. Right.

Just give me whatever puts me back on the sidelines. Or back in the game. Sorry. Back. Mixing sports metaphors. Yeah. That reminds me of a dream, Chuck, that I had. Okay.

I dreamt that I was at a breakdancing championship, which I've actually been to before. But I was sitting there watching all these people breakdance. And it was awesome. Watching it. No. What I figured out was I dreamt that I was watching other people breakdance. I don't even have enough of an opinion of myself to dream that I myself as an awesome breakdancer.

Because that's what I was about to say, dude. I would be the master champion breakdancer in my dream. Right. But you just said that you want to be out of jail so you can get back to the sidelines. That's what triggered that. Maybe we'll edit that out in post time. No. So Chuck, what doesn't a pardon do?

It sounds like it's basically the hand of God coming down, touching you on the head and saying, go buy a gun because you can. One thing it does not do and you cannot touch and they were pretty smart back when they wrote the Constitution, they made sure that A, you can impeach a president and B, that you cannot pardon an impeachment. Right. They actually didn't include presidential pardons in a couple of the plans for the Constitution. The New Jersey plan and the Virginia plan.

Yeah. The presidential pardons and Alexander Hamilton was like, I think federal's paper number 74. Yes. Yeah. He argued that there are times when this could really come in handy, guys. So let's put it in, but let's make sure it doesn't apply to impeachment. Right. Because if the president can be impeached and if he can't pardon himself while he's

being impeached, then he won't become this absolute authoritarian. He can't possibly, right? Sure. So that was how it ended up in there, but actually that went further back and we'll talk about that in a minute, but they almost left the whole thing out and then they said, no, we'll just follow custom. Well, are you going to say it came over from England? Yeah.

Say it, man. Well, it's actually the whole idea is rooted in the prerogative of the English king. Yeah. We got a lot of our early ideas clearly since we had just come from England. We're based on good old England. Right. English common law. Yeah.

Or royal law, I guess, is what this would be. And I think that's probably why presidential pardons weren't included in a couple of the really popular plans for the Constitution. Sure. It was because it kind of smacked of royal tyranny, right? Yeah, but Charles II, I think, is the one who originally thought of the impeachment idea, right? He thought of it and was a fan or he was one of the weaker kings or one of the more benevolent

kings because a parliament that was in session while he was reigning managed to slip that onto the custom of the prerogative of the English king. Right. You can overturn any court case except cases of impeachment, right? Yes. Okay. There are some other ways that the courts over the years have sort of shaped, I guess you could say, limited or defined how you can pardon and how you can't.

Nice. Like we said, it's only federal cases. You can't affect civil cases at all. And like we also mentioned, restitution to a family. So let's say if O.J. Simpson in a weird alternate world were convicted of cutting his wife's head off. If he had done that. If he had really done that, he could not have been, he could have been pardoned for that,

but let's say if the president was a big fan of the Jews, but he could not have been relieved of paying a Goldman all that money that he lost. Right. Which is weird because he was found guilty or not guilty, but what do you call this? Liable. It's liable for her death and his son's death. In a civil suit. Guilty in a court of law criminally.

Yeah, weird. It's so strange how that can happen in this country. Yeah, that was a really weird moment in this country's history, huh? Yeah. Chuck, there's some other ways that the presidential pardon has been shaped. You can't force the, well, you, the idea used to be was that you can't force a person to take a pardon. That's my favorite little nugget in this whole article.

Right. So you would think like, yeah, here's your pardon, especially if it's like a commutation of sentence and you get out of jail early. Not everybody's done with that. Some people are what we call institutionalized. Yeah. They don't get out of the outside any longer. Like Brooks and Shawshank.

Yes. He was institutionalized. He couldn't make it. And he hung himself in the little halfway house sort of that they set him up with. Right. It was one of the sadder moments of the Shawshank Redemption. Yeah. There was another guy who that may or may not happen, have happened to.

His story kind of ends slightly before that as far as we can tell. Yeah. As far as we know, Calvin Coolidge, the cool. The coolster. He gave a pardon to a guy who was in jail and the guy didn't want to leave. So he directly ordered the warden to get the guy out of prison and shut the cell behind him. Yeah. Well, the one caveat you did mention was you can refuse a pardon, but not when it applies

to cases of life or death. So if you're on death row, you don't get a choice if you're pardoned. Isn't that how it works? Yeah. Yeah. The Supreme Court worked that out as well. They're saying, like, no, if you want to die, we're not going to kill you just because you want to die if we've decided that you shouldn't die.

Right. And what's the deal with contempt of court? I didn't quite get that. Okay. So Chuck, this is a very, very important part because this is the one. I agree. I went back and read it. Yeah.

And I think it was one of those things where I was just so hot and bothered about it like, oh, yeah, here's the crux of my whole article. Yeah. Right? I just kind of ran past actually explaining it well. Oh. So let me try to do it a little better here. Okay.

Okay. You were saying that if the president, if for some reason O.J. Simpson had been convicted of his alleged murder of Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman, right? Yes. And the president had pardoned him. That pardon wouldn't have had any effect on the civil case against him by the Goldman family, right, the Brown family.

None. Right? Because murder is legally an affront to the United States. It's an affront to the laws of the United States. Yes. And by the way, also, this would only, only if he had been convicted in federal court, could the president pardon have helped him, right? Yeah, remember that.

Because the murder also has an effect on this family. Uh-huh. We have civil courts. Right. There's civil law and criminal law. Yeah. The president can forgive criminal law, can't do anything for civil law. Right.

Because pardons only cover an affront to the United States. So at one point in time, a guy named William Howard Tath, who is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. He's after his presidency. It was after. Yeah. He was president. After he left the White House, he always said like he felt like he fulfilled his destiny

as Supreme Court Justice. He didn't like being president. Interesting. Yeah. But as Supreme Court Justice, he helped give a tool to Congress by saying that the presidential pardon is only to cover affronts to the United States. It doesn't cover affronts to a court, right? A contempt of court charge.

Sounds like a loophole. That is a loophole. Yeah. Congress has exploited it because Congress actually has the ability to hold people in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify. So remember that whole impeachment clause. Yeah. Right.

Where it literally says in the Constitution, you can, the president has the power to pardon people except in cases of impeachment, right? Without that court, a contempt of court loophole, you'd have another loophole where the president could be like, I'm going to do anything I want and Congress can investigate me all it wants, but none of my people are talking because they can be arrested and charged and sentenced and pardoned and keep their mouth shut the whole time and know there's a pardon coming. That doesn't work for contempt of court cases because contempt of court or contempt of Congress is not technically an affront to the laws of the United States.

It's an affront to Congress, an affront to the court. So the presidential pardon can't do anything about it. So there's the one tool Congress has as far as battling the presidential pardon. They can compel witnesses to testify and if they don't, they have actually a little jail in the Senate and I think House chambers where they keep the person in contempt. That's a nice jail. Was that any better? Yeah.

I got it. However, if a president does, if it's legitimate and if it's legal and if he does it right, or she, if we have a woman president one day, it is completely irrefutable. If they do it right and it's on the level, well, we say on the level. Some of those last ones aren't really on the level, ethically speaking, but they're legal. But you can't challenge whether they're on the level or not. Right. You just can grouse about them.

Congress has tried to put a stop to this over the years here and there. They've introduced bills to limit pardon power, but they've all failed because of a couple of reasons because it's in the Constitution very clearly, article two, section two. And Supreme Court likes to uphold the Constitution when they can, likes to stand behind it when they can. And the other reason is it's kind of a longstanding power and they're not really used to, they're not hip to getting rid of these things that have been around for a couple of hundred years. Right.

And for everybody who's just opened their email client to send us all these examples of the Supreme Court not standing behind the Constitution when they can, Chuck meant specifically standing behind the pardon power article. Sure. That's what you meant, right? That's what we're talking about. Okay. Yeah.

Sorry. Thanks for pointing that out and stopping the flood of emails. And not only that, Chuck, they actually in 1974, the Supreme Court decreed, this is a, it is spelled out in the Constitution, the President's power to pardon, and if you're going to find any flaws in it, you're going to have to go to that like one, two sentence section and find your flaws there because it's in the Constitution and you really can't touch it outside of the Constitution. Right.

Right. Yes. The origins of this, you know, that it was found in the prerogative of the English Kings and then, you know, they talked about it and finally the founders put it in the Constitution. Right. And originally it was to give the President the ability to say quell rebellion, insurrection. Yeah. And just basically make a deal with people who were rising up against the government

and saying, look, if you guys go back home, we're going to forget all this that happened. You know, I'll issue a blanket pardon, a.k.a. amnesty. Very shortly after the Constitution was written, and then I think 1791, 1794, 1794. George Washington said, this is awesome. There's a whiskey rebellion going on. The farmers are uprising because they don't like being taxed. Right. I'm going to just forgive all you guys if you pipe down because you've been arrested.

And they said, eh, okay. All right, we'll go back home. And that was like right after the Constitution. But we're taking our whiskey with us. And Jimmy Carter, like you said, to Heel National Moons, Ford kind of pardoned Nixon just to wrap that up. Carter did a similar thing to sort of put an end to the Vietnam era by pardoning all the draft dodgers, which a lot of people probably didn't like that move very much.

Yeah. A lot of people didn't like the Vietnam War very much either. Good point. Yeah. This, Josh, is when you point out that pardons a lot of times can sort of undermine laws. And that was the case with Kennedy in 1956, the National Narcotics Act was basically a big hard, one of the first big hard drug laws where they had mandatory minimums for kind of small-time offenders.

So Kennedy said, you know, that's really not fair that the small-time offenders are, first-time offenders are in prison for like five or more years. And it's no good. I'm going to issue a blanket pardon for all these guys and gals, and it kind of overturned the law in essence. Yeah. And he's not the only person to do that. There's calls right now for Obama to issue blanket pardons to people who are convicted

under mandatory crack minimums, because there's such a disparity between mandatory minimums for cocaine, which is predominantly or considered a white drug, and crack, which is considered a black drug. So if you get caught with the same amount of crack and coke, same value, you go to jail five times longer for crack under these mandatory minimums. He hasn't so far, but there's a call for that same use of the presidential pardon to use it as a tool. Sure.

Warren Harding basically overturned the Espionage Act, right? Yeah. That was, was that the Tokyo Rose? No. No, Espionage Act was World War I. Basically, if you were talking out against the World War I, war in general, or were a conscientious objector, the federal government threw you in prison for up to 10 years, right? Yes.

And so you're talking about Eugene Debs. This guy's kind of a hero of mine. He was a Socialist Party candidate. Yeah. What I thought was funny, he was a candidate five times in 1900, 04, 08, 12, and 20. Mm-hmm. So he took off 1916, I guess, to regroup. I wondered if there were like two, if there was a candidate or two in there that he was

like, that guy's better than me. Maybe. I'm gonna let him run, or if he's just like, I'm tired of this whole thing. Yeah, I would have thought after he lost four times, he's like, I can't do this again. Well, I think he's kind of like the Ralph Nader of the turn of the 20th century. Yeah. The turn of the 19th century. Well, he spoke out, like you said, against our involvement in World War I, and he was

convicted for treasonous speech under the Espionage Act, and then sentenced to 10 years in Harding, said. Here in Atlanta. Yeah. In the federal poke. He got a million votes from prison. Yeah, and for his 1920 campaign, a million votes, 1920. That's a lot of votes.

It was a lot of votes, and he was enough of a contender that when Mr. President Warren G. Harding issued a blanket pardon for people under the Espionage Act, he invited Eugene Debs to drop by the White House to hang out after he got out of the pen. Yeah. And what did Debs say? No way. No, he went. He had a visit.

I'm just kidding. Ford, that mentioned Tokyo Rose. He pardoned the only American woman that was part of the propaganda reading of Japanese propaganda reading on Radio Tokyo's Zero Hour, and she was convicted of, was it treason again? Yeah. And years later, years later, reporters dug up some info that was kind of like, this is a trumped up charge, and this isn't really right.

So Ford said, pardoned. Yeah, her story's pretty interesting in and of itself. Oh, yeah. The whole Tokyo Rose thing is, I think. Yeah. Patty Hearst. She got a pardon. I love Patty Hearst.

She got, well, we talked about her, I think, in the brainwashing podcast. Oh, yeah. Remember when I turned you into a preppy? Yeah. Yeah. She was kidnapped and allegedly forced to commit bank robberies with the Symbianese Liberation Army, who also made an appearance, by the way, for you, stuff you should know fact finders in the SWAT podcast.

What the SLA did? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Remember, they got in the shootout with the first SWAT team, where they were one of the reasons the SWAT team came up. Yeah. Anyway. Well, we should point out who she was, just for those of you who don't know.

She was the granddaughter of a newspaper magnet, William Randolph Hearst, which is what Citizen Kane was. He was based on him. Right. So Patty Hearst. Citizen Kane and Elvin and the Chipmunks of Squeakwell. Oh, that was based on Hearst, too? It was basically a remake of Citizen Kane.

I had no idea. So yeah, Hearst was, she was like, oh, they brainwashed me and made me, they kidnapped me and brainwashed me and made me rob banks. And shoot at pigs. And so they said, no, I don't think so. You're convicted in prison for seven years, and Jimmy Carter stepped in and commuted it. And then later on, he asked Billy Boy to give her the full pardon, which he did. And then she was in every John Waters movie ever made, I think, since then.

I've not seen a one. I think she was in Crybaby to begin with, and she's been in every one since then, including his upcoming film. What is it? Fruitcake is his next one. He has the best mind. He said it's a Christmas movie called Fruitcake. I like that guy.

Having never seen a movie, I like John Waters. He's cool. You know what you should see? I guess if you have never seen one, I wouldn't start you off with the early, like really nasty ones. Why? It hurts a little. It's perfect for you.

Pink flamingos, I would think, right? Yes. Get Pink Flamingos and watch Divine Eat Poop for the love of God. I would say Serial Mom, another one with Kathleen Turner before she was a man. I thought that was probably during the man transition. The manzition? Yeah. Perhaps.

Josh, I want to talk about Arthur O'Brien just for a sec. He's my favorite one because President Abraham Lincoln pardoned him from a charge of bestiality, attempted bestiality. Do you know what he was actually trying to do with what animal? I think I did when I wrote this, but I don't anymore. Not important. Let's just call it bestiality. But Lincoln said, you know what?

He's a really good guy otherwise, and he's led a really good life, and he was really hammered when it happened. So I'm just going to go ahead and pardon that. And he did. Yeah. Arthur O'Brien is now an unbesmerged bestialist, Zouphillist. Zouphillist. Zouphillist.

Zouphillist. I think so. Chuck, actually, that Arthur O'Brien case is a really exemplary of the kind of thinking that goes into a presidential partner is supposed to, right? Lincoln said, hey, the guy was drunk. He's led an exemplary life. And he made a mistake when he was doing that with that animal, right? And he knows it.

Clearly. He hasn't tried to get with an animal since, so I'm going to pardon him. In 1893, the DOJ said, you know what? The president needs help with this kind of stuff, so we're going to take on this power, or Congress said DOJ, take on this power. In 1981, the office of the pardon attorney was created. Yeah. And he's basically, I keep saying he, I feel like I should say she, because I don't know

if we've had a female pardon attorney, but they are generally, they're completely in charge of handling the thousands of requests that office is. So what they do is they do the same thing as they did way back with Lincoln. They dig around the case. They find out the circumstances of the case, whether or not they've made restitution and led a really good life, and maybe they've left prison, or maybe they work with kids and have done really great things. And then they are the ones who make the recommendation to the president, but the president, I mean,

if they're smart, they'll listen to what they say, because they've done all the legwork, but the president doesn't have to follow the advice. And actually, apparently the DOJ, or the pardon attorney's office said, you probably shouldn't pardon Mark Rich. He doesn't really fit the criteria and went, that's going around. Yeah. Right. Should we close with some stats?

Yeah, let's do it. We can't talk about pardons without just throwing out who has done what. So we're going to go ahead and say that the all-time granddaddy of pardons was Roosevelt. Not Teddy. Numerically. Well, numerically. Franklin Roosevelt. But he had three terms.

Yeah, but there were like over 3,000 pardons. There were, and it's a lot of pardons, but that's, I think, 28% of the pardons that come across this desk he signed off on. Truman led the way with percentage-wise, right? Right. 40-something. 42%. 42.

And James Garfield and William Henry Harrison, of course, had no pardons because they weren't in office very long. No. WHH died of pneumonia after a month. I'm William, wait, here's William Henry Harrison. I died in 30 days. Yeah. Jimmie, recently, let's just go over the recent ones, Carter issued 566, Reagan issued 406,

Billy Clinton did 456, and then the Bush boys came along and Bush senior, Herbert Walker, only 77, and George W., I'm sorry, pardoned 113. Right. And Herbert Walker, pardoned 77, you said? Total, yeah. One of them was Casper Weinberger, who is the defense secretary during the Iran Contra affair. That was his big controversial one.

Everyone has at least one. Sure. Why not? He's out anyway. He's wacky. Commanders and chiefs. You're going to work for Goldman Sachs after word anyway, you might as well just do cares. So I guess that's it, right?

Yeah, done. If you want to see some funny pictures of old-timey presidents or George W. Bush pardoning a turkey, you should probably look up presidential pardons in the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com. All right, so Chuck then, what are we going to do then right now? A couple of little orders of business, a little pitch and a thank you. So we need a new sound. It's time for pitch. All right, I have no idea what that sound was.

Josh, we are recreating our awesome All-Star Trivia night that we did in New York, right here in our hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. And we have not got a location yet, and we are not positive on a date, but it's looking like it might be the first weekend in September, the weekend of Dragon Con. Which is Labor Day. Labor Day weekend, we're looking at that Friday, September 3rd. Don't hold us to that, but we are having an All-Star Trivia in Atlanta. It will probably be the weekend of Dragon Con.

So we're going to say most likely. I don't know about the Friday or whatever, I think it's probably going to be that weekend. I don't see why we wouldn't. Why wouldn't we? Exactly. Let's do it. So once again, we're putting a call out to people that have venues that might be interested in hosting.

Suggestions, trivia guys. Sure. Yeah, whatever you got. And we also want to say thank you quickly to Mark Rhodes. Mark Rhodes is a big fan, and he's been helping us troubleshoot this OS4 iPhone update issue that we've been having where people cannot download directly to their phone. And Mark's been a big help. So thank you, Mark, for that.

And I want to say thank you to Tom Rhodes, the standup comedian who was huge in the 90s, whose act I caught at the Gotham Night Club, the Gotham Comedy Club is what it was. He was hilarious. So thank you to Mark Rhodes and Tom Rhodes. And thanks to Dusty Rhodes for being such a great wrestler. Exactly. We have another Rhodes, Chuck, Lieutenant Rhodes, who's in a rock right now. Yeah, sure.

Yeah, we haven't heard from him in a while. So hey, send in an email, will you, Lieutenant Rhodes, to let us know you're doing all right. If you know a Rhodes that we should be thanking, let us know. Maybe we'll thank them. There's Rhodes all over the place, apparently. You can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, and send it to StuffPodcast at HowStuffWorks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Want more HowStuffWorks?

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