The Role of the Pardon Attorney
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 5 January 2021
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jack Goldsmith sat down with Margaret Love, the United States Pardon Attorney in the Justice Department from 1990 to 1997. They discussed Donald Trump's very controversial pattern of pardons and commutations, Trump's circumvention of the traditional pardon attorney process and the historical operation of that process prior to Trump. They also discussed various potential reforms of the process for determining pardons and commutations.
Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair |
| 0:07.2 | podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:14.7 | That's patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:18.2 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair |
| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:33.9 | Interestingly enough, I think he's a throwback to the 17th century English kings. |
| 0:40.4 | He is unlike Bill Clinton. |
| 0:42.8 | He has had no respect for the ordinary pardon process. |
| 0:47.6 | He seems to regard pardoning as an intensely political and even a theatrical exercise. |
| 0:56.6 | Probably all of his grants have some precedent in history, even the ones that appear most |
| 1:03.8 | irregular, reaching into ongoing cases. |
| 1:07.0 | That kind of thing, cutting short prosecutions. |
| 1:09.6 | That's been done before. |
| 1:11.0 | What hasn't been done before is almost complete as you showed, pretty convincingly, in my |
| 1:18.6 | opinion, an almost complete bypassing of the kind of ordinary process that regular people |
| 1:26.8 | have access to. |
| 1:28.8 | That's what really sets Trump apart. |
| 1:31.0 | His pardon grants are really intensely personal and he doesn't want advice really about |
| 1:38.6 | them. |
| 1:39.6 | He's a theatrical kind of a pardoning that we have never seen before. |
| 1:47.0 | I'm Jack Goldsmith and this is the LawFair podcast, January 5th, 2021. |
| 1:53.5 | I sat down with Margaret Love, the United States pardon attorney in the Justice Department |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Lawfare Institute, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Lawfare Institute and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.