Bill Clinton Pardon Controversy - Pardons and Commutations Signed On President Clinton's Final Day in Office

Pardons and Commutations Signed On President Clinton's Final Day in Office

Republican President Richard Nixon holds the record by pardoning 204 in one day on December 12, 1972 shortly before his term ended. Clinton issued 140 pardons as well as several commutations on his last day of office, January 20, 2001. When a sentence is commuted, the conviction remains intact, however, the sentence can be altered in a number of ways.

• Peter MacDonald had been sentenced to 14 years at a Federal Prison in Texas for fraud, extortion, inciting riots, bribery, and corruption stemming from the Navajo purchase of the Big Boquillas Ranch in Northwestern Arizona. On the day before President Clinton left office, U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy lobbied the White House to commute the sentence of the former leader of the Navajo Nation. MacDonald's sentence was commuted after he served 10 years.
• Carlos A. Vignali had his sentence for cocaine trafficking commuted, after serving 6 of 15 years in federal prison.
• Almon Glenn Braswell was pardoned of his 1983 mail fraud and perjury convictions. In 1998 he was under federal investigation for money laundering and tax evasion charges. Braswell and Carlos Vignali each paid approximately $200,000 to Hillary Clinton's brother, Hugh Rodham, to represent their respective cases for clemency. Hugh Rodham returned the payments after they were disclosed to the public. Braswell would later invoke the Fifth Amendment at a Senate Committee hearing in 2001, when questioned about allegations of his having systematically defrauded senior citizens of millions of dollars.
• Linda Sue Evans and Susan Rosenberg, members of the radical Weather Underground organization, both had sentences for weapons and explosives charges commuted: Evans served 16 years of her 40-year sentence, and Rosenberg served 16 of her 58 years.
• Marc Rich, a fugitive who had fled the U.S. during his prosecution, was residing in Switzerland. Rich owed $48 million in taxes and was charged with 51 counts of tax fraud, was pardoned of tax evasion. He was required to pay a $100 million dollar fine and waive any use of the pardon as a defense against any future civil charges that were filed against him in the same case. Critics complained that Denise Rich, his former wife, had made substantial donations to both the Clinton library and to Mrs. Clinton's senate campaign. According to Paul Volcker's independent investigation of Iraqi Oil-for-Food kickback schemes, Marc Rich was a middleman for several suspect Iraqi oil deals involving over 4 million barrels (640,000 m3) of oil. Longtime Clinton supporters and Democratic leaders such as former President Jimmy Carter, James Carville and Terry McAuliffe, were all critical of the Clinton pardon. Carter said the pardons were "disgraceful."
• Susan McDougal, who had already completed her sentence, was pardoned for her role in the Whitewater scandal. McDougal had served the maximum possible 18 months, including eight in solitary confinement, on contempt charges for refusing to testify about Clinton's role.
• Dan Rostenkowski, a former Democratic Congressman from Illinois and Chairman of House Ways and Means Committee, was pardoned for his role in the Congressional Post Office scandal. Rostenkowski had served 13 months of a 17-month sentence before being released in 1997. After his release from prison, Clinton granted him a pardon in December of 2000.
• Melvin J. Reynolds, a Democratic Congressman from Illinois, was convicted of bank fraud, 12 counts of sexual assault, obstruction of justice, and solicitation of child pornography. His sentence was commuted on the bank fraud charge and he was allowed to serve the final months under the auspices of a halfway house. Reynolds had served his entire sentence on child sex abuse charges before the commutation of the later convictions.
• Roger Clinton, the president's half-brother was pardoned for drug charges after having served the entire sentence more than a decade earlier. Roger Clinton would be charged with drunk driving and disorderly conduct in an unrelated incident within a year of the pardon. He was also briefly alleged to have been utilized in lobbying for the Braswell pardon, among others. However, no wrongdoing was uncovered.
• Harvey Weinig, a former Manhattan lawyer who was sentenced in 1996 to 11 years in prison for facilitating an extortion-kidnapping scheme and helping launder at least $19 million for the Cali cocaine cartel.

On February 18, 2001, Bill Clinton wrote a New York Times column defending the 140 pardons.