Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by pldr1234 1972 days ago
Just to note - they specifically added those other commutations to elicit your exact reaction:

"Some look shady, but it's mostly good".

2 comments

I think you're assuming they are more competent/smarter than they really are.
It does not take a lot of brains to say, "Every outgoing President does this, you should do the same."

And he didn't particularly abuse the power. The record for one day of pardons/commutations is 330, set by Barack Obama on his last day of office. I believe that the record before that was set by Bill Clinton.

I am aware of that. But I was expecting Trump to issue a blank commutation for all "patriots" involved in any way in the Capitol riot. With the purpose of making it harder for legal consequences of the indictment to reach him.

For a previous example, Bush Sr commuted the sentence of everyone involved in the Iran-Contra affair which prevented that investigation from potentially reaching him. (Given excerpts of his diary released after he was in office, it seems likely that the investigation would have been able to nail Bush in time.)