{"id":7191,"date":"2006-04-20T11:11:36","date_gmt":"2006-04-20T15:11:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7191"},"modified":"2006-04-20T11:11:36","modified_gmt":"2006-04-20T15:11:36","slug":"republican-donor-gets-presidential-pardon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/republican-donor-gets-presidential-pardon\/","title":{"rendered":"Republican donor gets presidential pardon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anyone who gets a presidential [tag]pardon[\/tag] from [tag]Bush[\/tag] has to consider themselves awfully lucky. With only 80 pardons issued since 2001, Bush is on pace to be the stingiest<\/a> two-term president in American history when it comes to granting clemency. But in the case of [tag]Anthony Franchi[\/tag]<\/a>, it may have been more than luck.<\/p>\n

On the surface, Franchi’s story seems fairly routine. He was convicted in 1983 of [tag]tax evasion[\/tag], served two years’ probation and paid a $20,000 fine, before completing eight hours of community service. This week, [tag]Franchi[\/tag] was one of 11<\/a> people to receive a rare Bush pardon.<\/p>\n

As reader K.Z. noted, however, Franchi is also a generous Republican donor<\/a>. Since Bush took office, Franchi has donated nearly $4,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee.<\/p>\n

Now, it seems to me there was a little incident<\/a> in 2001 in which former President Clinton pardoned someone who was convicted of tax evasion, whose ex-wife was a Democratic donor. Republicans were “concerned” that the pardon was bought and paid for. Clinton, they said, traded clemency for campaign cash.<\/p>\n

Now we have another campaign donor convicted on tax evasion charges who has received a pardon. To be sure, there are differences between the two situations. On the one hand, Franchi’s Republican donations weren’t as extensive as Denise Rich’s Dem donations. On the other, Franchi’s contributions didn’t come from his ex-wife; he made the contributions himself, which obviously creates a direct link between him and the GOP.<\/p>\n

Given the way Republicans manufactured “pardongate,” coupled by how unusual a Bush pardon is, isn’t it worth exploring the question of impropriety here? The natural response would be that Franchi’s $4,200 in Republican contributions isn’t that much money by GOP standards, but isn’t it possible that pardons are cheaper under Bush?<\/p>\n

Put it this way: if it were Clinton, wouldn’t this be all over Fox News?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anyone who gets a presidential [tag]pardon[\/tag] from [tag]Bush[\/tag] has to consider themselves awfully lucky. With only 80 pardons issued since 2001, Bush is on pace to be the stingiest two-term president in American history when it comes to granting clemency. But in the case of [tag]Anthony Franchi[\/tag], it may have been more than luck. On […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7191\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}