by WorldTribune Staff, November 10, 2016
Would President Barack Obama grant an unconditional pardon for Hillary Clinton, as President Gerald Ford did for Richard Nixon, before he leaves office on Jan. 20?
Clinton has yet to be charged with a crime, but when President Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon in 1974 one month after Nixon resigned the presidency, it was for any crimes Nixon might have committed while he was president.
During the campaign, President-elect Donald Trump said he’d appoint a “special prosecutor” to handle the Clinton investigations — and campaign manager Kellyanne Conway suggested on Nov. 9 that the matter was still on the table.
When asked on Nov. 9 if Obama had considered a pardon for his former secretary of state, White House spokesman Josh Earnest gave a cryptic answer, but did not flatly rule it out.
“The president has offered clemency to a substantial number of Americans who were previously serving time in federal prisons,” Earnest said.
“And we didn’t talk in advance about the president’s plans to offer clemency to any of those individuals and that’s because we don’t talk about the president’s thinking, particularly with respect to any specific cases that may apply to pardons or commutations,” he added.