Klobuchar on presidential pardons: 'This whole process cries out for reform'

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said Sunday the presidential pardon process “cries out for reform” and proposed a board to standardize the process and make recommendations to the president.

In an interview on CBS News’s “Face the Nation,” Klobuchar said she was not comfortable with some of the people that President Biden included in his 1,500 commutations in one day — a record number for any president.

“No,” Klobuchar told moderator Margaret Brennan when asked whether she was comfortable with several examples of the convicted criminals on the list whose sentences were commuted.

“I also didn’t agree with the pardon of the president’s son,” Klobuchar added. “I also have not agreed with a number of pardons that President Trump gave.”

Klobuchar acknowledged that the presidential pardon power is in the Constitution and clarified that she was not advocating to change that.

“But we should have some kind of an outside board that governors have,” she said. “Governors have the ability to give mercy to people after years have gone by. But a lot of them have boards that make recommendations and other things, instead of people just doing it in the middle of the night and people in the White House.”

Klobuchar agreed with Brennan that it was surprising that the White House commuted sentences not by specific cases, but based on a broad group.

“I have no doubt there were some righteous pardons in this group,” Klobuchar said when asked whether it was a prudent decision by the White House. “I believe that there were.”

“But there were a number that I think make no sense at all,” she continued. “So, instead of doing a whole category, why don’t, in a coming year before the end of a president’s term — if that’s when they’re mostly going to do these — that a board looks at these and looks at them individually, when people petition for them, based on the facts, instead of just in a large group?” Klobuchar said.

“Large groups have been done before, I believe, but I just I think that this whole process cries out for reform,” she said, “because, otherwise, you undermine the justice system.”

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