The President's Power to Pardon Friends and Allies Must End
The article argues that the broad presidential pardon power, as defined in Article II of the Constitution, has been frequently abused for political and personal gain. It suggests that a constitutional amendment is necessary to impose binding restrictions on clemency to prevent corruption and favoritism. The text highlights that while Congress can regulate administrative processes, only an amendment can limit the president's core constitutional authority.
- ▪Article II of the Constitution grants the president the power to grant reprieves and pardons for federal offenses, excluding cases of impeachment.
- ▪Courts have interpreted this authority broadly, allowing presidents to act without approval from Congress, courts, or the Department of Justice.
- ▪The article contends that the pardon power has historically been used for political and personal purposes rather than solely for mercy or correcting injustice.
- ▪A constitutional amendment is proposed as the only way to place binding restrictions on the president's clemency authority.
- ▪The power to pardon does not extend to state crimes and cannot prevent impeachment.
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Story provenance
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Record
| Original publisher | Medium |
| Canonical URL | https://medium.com/freedomofthought/the-presidents-power-to-pardon-friends-and-allies-must-end-b9574f9eedfb |
| Publication time | Thu, 17 Sep 2026 04:09:12 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-09-17T04:58:41.917Z |
| Last seen | 2026-09-17T04:58:41.917Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | xHbDbZ0NeBYM · 1 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Member-only storyPoliticsThe President’s Power to Pardon Friends and Allies Must EndA constitutional amendment could protect clemency from corruption, favoritism and political manipulationDavid Bernstein8 min read·9 hours ago--ListenSharePress enter or click to view image in full sizeArticle II of the Constitution gives the president the power to grant reprieves and pardons for federal offenses, except in cases of impeachment. Courts have interpreted that authority broadly. A president may issue a pardon before or after conviction, commute a sentence and act without the approval of Congress, a court or the Department of Justice.The power does not extend to state crimes, and a pardon cannot prevent impeachment. Beyond those limits, however, presidential discretion is nearly complete.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Medium.
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