It looks like he may even pardon himself.
http://www.nypostonline.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/19458.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20001222/aponline131900_000.htm
WILL BILL PARDON HIMSELF?
Friday,December 22,2000
THE grinch may be stealing Christmas, but Bill Clinton just might have a surprise in store for us all - pardons for his Whitewater cronies and possibly for himself!
Consider that presidents traditionally use the holiday season to exercise their power to pardon offenders and that Clinton loves to do unpopular things when nobody's watching and everybody's distracted eating holiday turkeys. Factor in that Bill's job approval is hovering in the high 60s - an all-time record for his eight years in office - and the chances of Whitewater pardons in the next few days are quite good.
In February 1997, Clinton and I spoke by phone, and he told me that if Harold Ickes and others on his staff were indicted that he would pardon them "along with all the others who have been caught up in this mess" (he used a stronger word). He asked me what I thought the public reaction would be, and I said that he'd drop in the polls but he'd live to tell about it.
Clinton might be in the mood to pardon Susan MacDougal and Web Hubbell, two stand-up allies who have gone to jail to protect him and refused to offer real cooperation in the Whitewater investigations. Might the president's pen slip and might he not grant himself a pardon at the same time?
Clinton faces a real risk of indictment. Special prosecutor Robert Ray has impaneled a grand jury in Virginia (read: largely white) to investigate him and has summoned information from Monica Lewinsky and Gennifer Flowers. He's not doing that for his health. While Ray has indicated that he will not move against Clinton while the president is in office, he has specifically reserved the right to proceed after the new president is inaugurated.
Will Bush pardon Clinton? Bush would be wise to delay any consideration of a pardon until after a possible indictment and after a trial. He should give Clinton a chance to vindicate himself and give Ray a chance to make his case. It would then be wise and appropriate to pardon the former president, if he is convicted, so that there is no chance of an ex-president languishing in jail. Only in a banana republic should chief executives go to prison except for horrendous crimes.
But were Bush to proceed before the process has run its course, his supporters would feel betrayed. The very argument used to keep Clinton in office - one that I made vigorously myself - was that it was fitting to hold him to the law after he left office but that it was wrong to remove him while he was serving in response to the voters' mandate. If a pardon by Bush spares Clinton of an indictment and a trial after he leaves office, he will have been shown to be above the law, a bad idea in any democracy.
The current speculation about a Bush pardon of Clinton begs the question of whether Clinton will pardon himself first. Clinton knows that Bush would be politically unwise to grant a pardon. He knows that if a pardon is to be issued to protect him from legal culpability, he will have to be the one to do it.
Will Clinton use our distraction over Christmas and his current high ratings to pardon himself? Its anybody's guess, but let us all be forewarned, so we are not taken by a surprise visit from Santa Claus to the pardon office
