Sweeping pardons from Trump and Biden worry constitutional experts

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

70% : The extraordinary wave of pardons Monday -- from Joe Biden as he left the White House and from Donald Trump as soon as he returned to it -- demonstrate the potency of the Constitution's pardon power, but also expose its perils, constitutional scholars say.
54% : And Trump showed in his first term that he is willing to hand out pardons to protect his own allies (like Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn) and family members (like Charles Kushner).
49% : "Alexander Hamilton wrote that he envisioned the pardon power as a "benign prerogative" to be exercised with "scrupulousness and caution" by presidents who would fear public condemnation for misuse.
45% : Trump made similar pardons to nonviolent drug offenders and others in the final months of his first term as well.
36% : He commuted the sentences of 2,500 nonviolent offenders, and he granted clemency to 37 of the 40 people on federal death row, converting their death sentences to life in prison.
35% : Monday's pardons from both Biden and Trump "are evidence of the pressure that Trump is placing on the kind of rules of the road that made democratic institutions at the national level work," said Aziz Huq, a constitutional expert at the University of Chicago.
34% : "What's going on here is that Trump is exerting a gravitational force on his opponents and through his own behavior.
23% : Trump, on the other hand, delivered massive blanket clemency to virtually all of the roughly 1,600 people who have been prosecuted in connection with the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, including hundreds of people who assaulted police and a dozen convicted of a sedition plot.
14% : Some legal experts emphasized that the entire debate around pardon abuse is really about Trump, who has repeatedly promised retribution against his political adversaries -- notably including the Biden family.

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