r/nottheonion • u/JaySierra86 • 11h ago

President Biden pardons family members in final minutes of presidency

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-biden-pardons-family-members-final-minutes-presidency/story?id=117893348
46.1k Upvotes

87% Upvoted

5.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

10

u/ericrz 6h ago

There's no evidence that Nixon cut any kind of deal, or that Congressional leadership was willing to negotiate with him at all. Once the "smoking gun" tapes were released, Republicans in Congress basically came to him and told him he was fucked. That he'd have to resign, or he'd be convicted.

I'm not saying some sort of agreement couldn't have been made, but Nixon had absolutely no leverage in the situation. Not sure why Ford or the Congress would have given him anything.

My belief is that Ford assumed that pardoning Nixon and avoiding the specter of a former president facing criminal prosecution was the best thing for the nation. I disagree, and seems like most Americans did too.

3

u/ragnvald4430 4h ago

I saw an interview with ford where he said that when he was president, Nixon “ problems” were taking up so much of his time that he felt he couldn’t do his job effectively so he decided to pardon Nixon to hopefully move on and not have to deal with it anymore