Rick Green [00:00:07] Welcome to Intersection of Faith and Culture. It's The WallBuilders Show. We're taking on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. Rick Green here with David and Tim Barton. And so much to cover. What an amazing week just a few days ago, a massive change in our nation's history in the right direction, a massive restoration of so many things that we've all been fighting for for many years. And I just answered a prayer and we mentioned it on our program Tuesday about the inauguration. Great is his faithfulness, folks. We're so thankful and just have hearts of gratitude for where the nation is headed today. It's Foundations of Freedom Thursday, so it's a chance for us to hear from you. You can send in your questions to radio@WallBuilders.com That's radio@wallbuilders.com. We'll get to as many as we can today. Of course, amongst all of the good things that happened earlier this week and the massive shift in just the you can feel the whiteness in the air and the joy and the hope that we can, in fact, restore our nation. Lots of hard work ahead to do that. But amidst all the good stuff, man, in the final hours of the Biden administration, we found out just how low these people can go. I don't know that we've ever seen a president pardon members of their own family like this. Of course, the Hunter Biden one was weeks ago, but now his brother and all these other people at the last minute. And then, of course, the pardoning of what I think is one of the most evil men in America that did more damage to our country than anyone in history. Anthony Fauci. So all of these pardons, and that's just a handful of them. There were tons more. And that leads us, guys, to our first question, which I am curious about this as well. I'm looking forward to this conversation. This question comes from, I believe he says at Dansville. He said, What are the founders regulations on the presidential pardon power and how has or is that power being abused by modern presidents? Guys, this is a one that a lot of people are asking about. How far can these go? There were literally cop killers that were pardoned by Joe Biden. So it's amazing what's been done. David. Tim, what do you think? 

David Barton [00:02:02] Yeah, this is one that was really interesting to me because I've never spent that much time on the Constitution and this clause and it's Article two, which is, of course, the presidential sign. But Section two and clause one talks about what the president can do with pardons. And I had really never thought about it heavily. This is this administration has certainly brought that. And what what President Trump did after he was inaugurated and going back and issuing those 1500 pardons for the J6 folks. So as it turns out, there is a lot on this. Alexander Hamilton actually wrote about it in one of the Federalist Papers. And the whole concept really came from Alexander Hamilton, which I found interesting. And it goes back to something the British had been doing since the seventh century in their history. And Hamilton grew up in the British West Indies. So that makes a, you know, British guy. He's one of the seven signers of the Constitution who was not an American citizen. And so he brought in this concept and he was the one who introduced it. And he talked about it. It went back to a British practice called the Prerogative of Mercy, that you have justice, but you also have the prerogative of mercy. And that's significant because in James 2:17, the scripture says that mercy triumphs over judgment. So there's times when mercy is stronger than judgment and can have a better impact. So Hamilton, in talking about this, talked about you got to have justice, but you also need times of mercy. And he said the president is one that can extend that because and it was a really cool phrase he used. He said there are times when there is, quote, unfortunate guilt and unfortunate guilt. I understand what that means. You technically broke the law. You violated the law, but the intent wasn't there or or maybe it wasn't with deliberation. And so the president can look at times of unfortunate guilt and pardoned those. And he also talked about how that you can get groups of people together, like you have a mobs and you get a mob mentality. He says sometimes you get that on a jury where the jury gets all worked up about something and they're going to convict someone. And he said, there needs to be available the mercy of an individual over that of a body of men. And he called it the mercy of government over the body of men. Sometimes you get, you know, people whipped into a frenzy and they they want to throw the book at somebody when if you back off and take the emotions out of it, that's not really what was going on. So based on what Hamilton came up with, there was kind of three requirements that go with it. There has to be a genuine offense against the United States, and that's what it says. It's for pardons for offenses against United States, which if there's a preemptive pardon like like Biden has done, that's a real problem because you have to give a pardon for an offense against the United States. Now, does that mean that Biden knows there are offenses that are about to be given, or did he do a preemptive pardon thinking that that, well, you know, this is going to be retaliation, I'll weaponize government is going to be coming after my family. Or the third option is he could be thinking that, well, Trump is going to start some type of weaponization. But. And I don't think the third one is optional because I think he knows he weaponized the government. I think he expects retaliation because that's what he would do if he's in Trump's place. So you're now looking at a situation that we've never had before where you have preemptive pardons, you're pardoning all your family members, you're pardoning Fouci. He hadn't been convicted of anything. But for anything he might have done, you're pardoning millet not for anything he did before, what he might have done. 

Tim Barton [00:05:31] And hang on a second. I think, Millie, I mean, some of this, as you're mentioning, you know, some of this has to come to trial. And so there's question marks surrounding this, you know, Fauci's level of involvement, his knowledge. As for knowledge with some of that experimental, the funding, whatever else. But but, Millie, I mean, there are some questions about what he did under oath saying that he was going to call enemies and brief them before we move and whatever else. I mean, that he has not been challenged on this, but it's not preemptive that he did nothing wrong, but he's not been challenged for maybe what he did that was wrong. 

David Barton [00:06:06] Yeah, exactly. And it's the kind of thing where there's not there's not a proven offense yet. And so pardons are for offenses against the government, against the Constitution. And if you absolutely know that you're going to be charged and convicted, okay, maybe. But they're still preemptive. And and so this is this is really uncharted territory because it hasn't happened before. And, I mean, there's no way to go back now and reverse it. They're not going to come back in with an act and say that all those pardons have to be set aside because this is just untested ground. So as it turns out, within pardons, it turns out there's really four levels of pardons. And some of that happened today with Trump. But you can have a pardon, which that releases a person from punishment, restores all their civil liberties, so they're returned to a citizen status. Any conviction they've had that would have violated or remove certain civil rights, it all comes back. Amnesty is when you pardon an entire class of individuals. So you can give amnesty because that's that's part of that clause, too. You can do that. You can commute a sentence, which it just reduces that commute to time served, maybe get a 36 month sentence and you've been in eight months reduced that commuted at the time served. And the fourth is a reprieve. And a reprieve doesn't remove the sentence. It just delays the execution of that sentence. So those are the four powers that can be used within that framework. Now, here's where here's where we get into to all the things that Biden did. Can you do a self-pardon that's never been done before. Now he's he's done that for family members and others. So that's that's always been a question. If a president knows he's done something wrong, any pardon himself and it hadn't been done but but they think the scholars think that's unconstitutional. But we'll never know unless unless that happens. 

Tim Barton [00:08:01] But also, we've never had a situation where a president was necessarily targeted and where prosecution was brought against him, because, I mean, you could look at like a Richard Nixon. He resigned. Yeah, but but then there weren't additional charges that were brought against him. There wasn't the civil the criminal case brought against him. So it's something, too, that we've talked about before that that President Trump, he wants America to win. He wants to win. He wants to restore his name. But he said the best way that he's going to get revenge is for America to win. So he's what we have seen gives us no indication that there would be any kind of spitefulness or vengeful disdain. And so, again, I, I have a hard time imagining a scenario where a president would need to try to issue a pardon for himself because we don't have any kind of precedent of pursuing a president, especially after they leave office. 

David Barton [00:08:55] Yeah, that would have been a Nixon thing and Nixon would have had to do that for himself. But as it turned out, Gerald Ford did it after who came in after him and pardoned Nixon. So it would have had to be been Nixon that would have tested that. And who knows what happened? Because again, what your what your course of action, who do you go to to get to do that? The Supreme Court overturned the the self-pardon. I mean, this is one that that probably would stand. So going through all of that, when you come to where Biden is right now, when he left office at noon time, he had issued 8064. Pardons. Now, by the way, 6500 of those pardons were for one single offense or one category of offense. I didn't see this. The media. Any word you guess? 

Rick Green [00:09:40] Wow. No, I didn't. I had no idea it was that high. I thought he was around 1500 or 2000. No, no, you say for a single offense. So he picked out something like a drug offense and said, I'm going to release everybody that's been charged with this. 

David Barton [00:09:51] 6500 were released if they had possess marijuana, marijuana conviction, marijuana. So he he pardoned 8064. That's the highest record in American history, 6500. Those were marijuana possessions. 

Tim Barton [00:10:05] And even saying marijuana want to possessions. I have a lot of friends. We all do in law enforcement. And one of the things we've heard from many of them is that generally they're not arresting people for possession of marijuana, right. They're allowing them to plead down because in this plea bargain, hey, we're going to give you more information on who we were buying to buy be distributors. And we're selling this stuff. And so we're going to we're going to roll over on somebody else. And so it's a plea deal, a plead down to where it's marijuana. So even this idea where people say, well, they're being they're being in prison for marijuana and granted, we live in Texas and Texas can be very different than a lot of states. But I don't know any law enforcement officers that see somebody with marijuana. They're like, all right, we're arresting this dude. We're going out to the process, process all the paperwork because we saw this guy smoking a joint, that that is not something we have seen and certainly not what I hear from law enforcement. So the idea he's freeing people who are charged with marijuana, most likely, and this is not knowing their cases, they pled down to that, which means they probably were guilty of something far higher. But it has the appeal for some of the base. And he can say, hey, look, I am this really great, wonderful, understanding guy that I want to help protect people that were just charged with marijuana. Well, the charge might have been just marijuana, but that's probably not where it started. 

David Barton [00:11:25] Yeah, and that's that's for sure. It wouldn't have been simple marijuana possession, but that's what the White House is saying about it. And I'm sure that that's part of their PR So out of those that is done, there were several things that he kind of here's one that didn't come out. For example, Biden just pardoned a former Pennsylvania judge who was involved in the Kids for Cash scandal. You guys remember that? He was the judge was since a 17 years in prison for accepting 2.8 million in kickbacks in exchange for sending juveniles to not to for profit detention centers. So he sent over 2300 kids. Some is eight years old under these juvenile detention centers because they got paid for having these kids come in as defendants. And then he got money kickback from them. So a corrupt judge, 2.8 million he makes and Biden pardons him. But amazingly, he's since to 17 years. So there were a lot of controversial things that went with it. Now, put this in perspective again, Biden had 8064 pardons today. How many did George Washington have? Now, granted, look, he had he had five. 6 million were 330 million. All right. There's a big population difference. But look at what Washington did him for. How many Washington how many pardons did he have? 

Tim Barton [00:12:49] I'm guessing it would have been like in the teens or 20. 

Rick Green [00:12:51] Yeah, I was I was going to say a dozen. So we're on the same page? Yeah. Yeah, It wasn't a dozen. Yeah. 

David Barton [00:12:56] It was 16. And a whole bunch of them were for one instant. And by the way, the first. Wait, wait. 

Rick Green [00:13:01] Wait, wait, wait, wait. You can't gloss over that, David. That is the closest Tim and I have ever gotten to answering one of your questions. And we both got there. We were both right on the money. You have to say. Come on. Thumbs up, guys. 

David Barton [00:13:12] Okay. You did a great job of that. Absolutely. No, cause you got really close. And before we even go look, take a break, Rick, we'll come back and talk about the old school stuff and compare that to bad. 

Rick Green [00:13:25] That's a great time to go to break, folks. You got to stay with us through the break to find out who did George Washington pardon. Anyway, what was that all about? It's going to be very interesting. And it actually might even feel a little bit similar to some of the things today. Stay with us. Folks. You're listening to the WallBuilders 

Rick Green [00:14:45] Welcome back to the WallBuilders show. We're talking about pardons and it's Foundations of Freedom Thursday. So we're talking about the constitutionality of some of these more recent mass pardons. And, of course, we'll get to some of Trump's pardons as well. But, David, before we go to break, you talked about George Washington pardoning some folks. And I didn't realize it was actually 16. I was actually thinking it was only 2 or 3. But when you when you question it that way and Tim said, you know, teens, I thought, you know, it doesn't sounds good. So we were in the right range. But what was he pardoned for? 

David Barton [00:15:13] Well, it's interesting. If you look at the first four presidents sat Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison. And just put in perspective, Washington had 16 pardons that he granted. John Adams had 20. Jefferson issued 119 pardons. And then you have James Madison and Madison issued 196 pardons. So there's your first four. That's that 196. Madison is really there's a whole lot of modern presidents who have been close to that and other presidents as well. But going back, three of the presidents gave pardons for convictions and tax protests. And so the first tax protest, the Whiskey Rebellion. Washington had to put down the Whiskey Rebellion. He led the military against those guys. They were doing the violent protests against the whiskey tax. 

Tim Barton [00:16:03] And let me let me just stop you right there and say I'm a little disappointed you didn't ask because I was I was so ready to say it's going to be like Shays Rebellion, a whiskey rebellion. I was getting it was going to be one of those rebellions. And so I literally was thinking that direction. 

David Barton [00:16:18] Okay, well, you're on it. So that's the first one I gave you. The first one is. So the Whiskey Rebellion, what were what would be the other two rebellions that were tax protests? 

Rick Green [00:16:27] Well, wait. Before you move to those other presidents, can I just say what a missed opportunity for Joe Biden? He could have been like George Washington and brought so much peace to the country early in his presidency. Because think about it. If Washington actually wrote in and put down the Whiskey Rebellion and then turned around and pardoned some of those guys in order to calm the situation and bring peace to the country. Joe Biden missed the opportunity. He could have done that. Instead of demonizing his political opponents, he could have brought us together anyway. I'm sorry. That's what I was thinking. So so you're saying there were tax rebellions in the other presidencies as well, I'm guessing on Madison. 

David Barton [00:17:01] And by the way, just to pile on your comment, Rick, one of the things I think would have been really good, you know, when when Trump went to the White House and met with Biden, it was very cordial and very pleasant on the surface. It would have been so good if Biden would have said, you know, you're going to do 500 executive orders when you get in. Tell me some of the ones I might be able to do for you, for you before you get there, because there are certain things we do agree on, and I'll be happy to issue those. And I think that would be such a good thing for an outgoing president to say, hey, you don't have to issue all those. I agree with you on these on these 150. Let me do those for you. That's such a good way to keep the nation from being polarized. And Rick, what you just suggestion. Same thing. Biden. Biden could have done the same thing. And they could have been. 

Rick Green [00:17:47]  Okay. I do want to make a guess. I'm guessing on Jefferson, I was thinking it was like alien and sedition. 

David Barton [00:17:53] Don't. Don't go there. Go. Go to the go to the three tax ones. First aliens that did the tax cuts first. What are the tax ones? 

Rick Green [00:18:00] And I'm guessing Adams is next. So was that some of his you said his was only a couple of dozen. Right. What do you. 

Tim Barton [00:18:06] Say? Yeah. 

David Barton [00:18:06] And and Adam said 20. But what are the three? What are the three tax protests that ended up with the victim? 

Tim Barton [00:18:14] I have no idea. It's under multiple different presidents or just under Washington. 

David Barton [00:18:18] They were under multiple presidents. 

Rick Green [00:18:20] Yes. The Whiskey Rebellion is only one I could I would have even guessed 

David Barton [00:18:23] Tim mentioned one earlier. Shays Rebellion is rebellion and the other one is Fries Rebellion. 

Rick Green [00:18:30]  I don't know. Fry. I've shopped there before. I've gotten some electronics there. 

Tim Barton [00:18:34] But you've upsize those on your to go meal. But yes. 

Rick Green [00:18:39] Sir, that's the other fries. I know but. 

David Barton [00:18:41] And by the way, Washington lead the troops out against these guys and then pardoned them when they were convicted. They were convicted of the insurrection against the United States, which also qualified as treason. So and so those were not those are death penalty kind of crimes back then. And so Washington granted, he granted pardons to the Whiskey Rebellion, folks. John Adams did it to those that were in the fries Rebellion. Another one. And also you had another one. The Shays Rebellion grabbed this. Do you know who was involved in the Shay's rebellion? 

Tim Barton [00:19:13] Shea Yeah. 

David Barton [00:19:15] Yeah, that's Daniel Shea. And who were the who were the followers? 

Rick Green [00:19:20] Shea's guys. 

Tim Barton [00:19:21] Yeah. Yeah. 

Rick Green [00:19:23] It was a short race. 

David Barton [00:19:24] Okay. 

Tim Barton [00:19:25] And then there were people against them. 

David Barton [00:19:26] Let. Let me set it up. The followers were the Pennsylvania Dutch. Do you know who the Pennsylvania Dutch are? They would be called the Amish today. So you don't think of those guys as being involved in a in a rebellion of sorts. But that was those were the three. So John Adams. Pardon. Pardon the folks there. And they were. What happened with the Shays rebellion was we had been in the quasi war with France. And so to pay for that, they imposed a tax and it was called the window tax. And so based on how many windows you have in your house, that's how much money you have to pay. And the Pennsylvania Dutch said, we're doing that, that we're we're postwar anyway. We don't want war. We don't support war. And so they protested and got arrested and convicted. And so that that was one more that Adams did that when you moved to Jefferson, Rick, you had the the Alien Sedition Acts, which which Adams passed that said, basically, if you're a media person and you criticize my administration, you're going to jail. And so Adams did that and several were convicted James and there's Robert Brown, and they were all pardoned under Jefferson. So that's kind of, you know, kind of where the first three guys are. When you get to Madison, it's interesting. He pardoned a bunch of Quakers in Baltimore, you know, who Quakers are, pacifists. And they were convicted for refusing to serve in the military or to pay the military exemption tax so that they want nothing to do with the sport in the military and they're convicted. Yeah. 

Tim Barton [00:20:56] So let me see if I can summarize, because I know there's a lot we have to go and we have a little bit from the program. Right. So in the first one, obviously, the majority of people that were engaged in these, they're not anti-American government, they're not insurrectionists. They're not even violent offenders. Right. Neccisarily Right. Right. They're just saying, hey, what's happening right now isn't right. But they're nonviolent offenders. But but those are early founding fathers. What's interesting about Joe Biden, because we we've all been looking at some of these numbers, is the sheer volume of how many he did. When you look at the founding fathers, it wasn't that many. But then when you start getting some of the higher numbers, the higher numbers usually are coming at the end of a war, especially civil war, when you have presidents that are partnering, people that maybe have been imprisoned, arrested, whatever else, especially in the Civil War from the Confederate side, or there could be multiple different thoughts and kind of categories with this. But the majority of pardons from presidents in American history have been surrounding war up until really you get to President Obama. He had several thousand and it wasn't surrounding war related things. And then you get to President Biden, who just blows the the roof off the house with the sheer volume of the number of people that he pardoned. 

David Barton [00:22:18] Yeah. What you get is you go to people like Woodrow Wilson and Woodrow Wilson had 2480 pardons. If you get to FDR, he had 3687 pardons. Harry Truman had 2044 pardons. If you take the Civil War, Andrew Johnson had 7600 pardons. But then you go to Obama, you go to Biden, which, you know, no wars involved, as you point out, 8064 pardons and all these other guys, you deal with World War One, you deal with World War Two. You're you're pardoning people who may have been objectors and got arrested, whatever it is. But then you get to Biden and his family and his friends and it's marijuana possessors and it's judges that have been convicted. It just it's such a different category of people that is there with with the Biden the Biden pardons. It's just it's amazing. 

Rick Green [00:23:17] You know, there's so much about this to so much deeper. We can go with this, you know. And I wonder, do you think a lot of this is going to end up getting litigated based on your research and what you found about the history? Will some of that come out as some of these get challenged? Do you think the way challenges these men? 

David Barton [00:23:32] There is just no precedent for challenging pardons. It's just not there. But then nobody's ever done what he's done here. But if they did and if I was sitting on the bench, I would be really hesitant to intervene. And you see Alexander Hamilton explain that this is the most unencumbered presidential power. This one involves none of the other branches. This is one that belongs strictly to the executive. This is one only he can do. And the way Hamilton explained it as being an unencumbered presidential power, I just don't see how you can get into it or get judges into it or how they would want to get into it, at least if they read the Federalist Papers. 

Tim Barton [00:24:11] Well, it's interesting, too, that as you're as we're analyzing this in Florida, Governor, two scientists said they're exploring from a state perspective if they have legal grounds to go after Fauci, because obviously it's a federal pardon. But it does bring up kind of this interesting thought between a a federalism states rights kind of position of what rights do states really have even when it comes to a legal perspective, if somebody did excessive harm in their state and then they get a federal pardon, does that exempt the state from having any similar authority? 

David Barton [00:24:46] The Constitution is really clear and the federalist really clear that this is only for federal offenses. If it's a state or local offense, go after it. That's constitutionally fine. But you cannot if it's a federal offense. 

Tim Barton [00:24:59] Well, so what's going. This is going to be interesting. That guy is watching some of this Fauci stuff because it's very possible that if Florida does pursue this, there might be some other states that pile on. And this might be where you can get some of that class action lawsuit kind of stuff going on, especially at that point. Once Fauci will no longer have the protection of the federal government to the same extent. Now he's been paid well enough because what we know from the federal government highest paid federal employee before he left his position. But also we know he was getting kickbacks from some of these other big pharma industry vaccine kind of people. We don't even know what amounts. He's got plenty of money to hire really good attorneys. It will be interesting to see if justice might prevail in some of these situations in spite of these presidential pardons. 

Rick Green [00:25:47] Yeah, And they will, of course, be defenses. They'll claim defenses for immunity as a government actor. Right. As a as an employee of the government when he did these actions. But, boy, it'd be fun and important, I think. Not just fun, important for these states to at least go after him, not to just lay down and let this thing go and see what happens. Man there. So that's part of the justice thing, you know. And of course, David, you were talking about the the verse when we started with this in the New Testament. There's also Micah 6:8, you know, to to do act justly and love mercy and to walk humbly before the Lord. So we do need to have that balance of justice and mercy and so that we're not against presidential pardons. We think this is an important tool in our republic. We just don't want to see it abused. So great conversation. We'll pick this one up again and talk more about it, maybe even get some guests on in the coming weeks to talk about it. Definitely. Don't miss tomorrow, man. Good news. Friday this week is going to be packed full. I think even David and Tim Barton are going to ratchet up their speed, if that's possible, in order to get all the good news in tomorrow. Thanks so much for listening to The WallBuilders Show.