This is Hear Me Out. I'm Celeste Hedley. We all know the president can issue pardons, but do you know what the pardon is supposed to be for?

It's kind of a trick question because it depends on who you ask.

Most legal scholars agree that pardons should be used to remedy injustices

and honor people who've shown their intent to change for the better.

But presidents on both sides of the aisle have also used

pardons to do what really looks like favors for people close to them and there is

nothing really to stop them from doing that. So do we need the presidential pardon or do we

need to abolish it and either way where do we start? We're very rare to have at

the federal level this monarch-like power that actually is more expansive than even

King George the third had at the time of the Revolutionary War so it just doesn't

make sense to me Celeste for all those reasons.

Kim Whaley joins Hear Me Out once again in just a moment.

Stay with us.

Welcome back to Hear Me Out, I'm Celeste Hedley. In January of 2001, just before he left office,

President Bill Clinton pardoned his half-brother, Roger.

Roger Clinton had been convicted of cocaine possession and drug trafficking

and served more than a year in prison.

After receiving a pardon from his older half-brother, his criminal record was wiped clean, but he was arrested again

about a month later for a DUI. This was just one of 140 pardons and 36 commutations that Clinton issued on his last day as president.

Many of them were controversial because they involved very rich people and people with

connections to the Democratic Party. It was revealed later that some of them had actually bribed

Hillary Clinton's brother. Anyway, all of this is just to say that the modern presidency

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