Why Trump might want to pardon Kwame Kilpatrick

Brian Dickerson | Detroit Free Press

Show Caption Hide Caption Trump says he has done nothing wrong, but has power to pardon himself Trump says he could pardon himself, but doesn't need to.

Donald Trump has discovered his presidential pardon power, and like a toddler experimenting with a new toy, he can't stop thinking of new things to do with it.

Trump's 44 predecessors issued pardons sparingly — sometimes for lofty purposes, sometimes for selfish ones, but almost always after careful consultation with lawyers and political strategists alert to dangerous precedents.

None dispensed absolution with the incumbent president's promiscuous impulsivity, though, making it difficult to predict who might be next in line for his unpredictable largesse.

But ex-Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick must surely be making his way to the front of the line.

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At first blush, Kilpatrick may not be an obvious candidate for a presidential pardon, even in Trump's alternative-fact universe.

Detroit's former mayor has never appeared on "Celebrity Apprentice." He is not a friend of noted penal reform expert Kim Kardashian West, whose sponsorship was critical in securing a commutation for the latest beneficiary of Trump's executive indulgences. Nor is Kilpatrick in a position to obstruct special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into allegations that Trump's presidential campaign was a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Russian mob.

The upside of clemency

But even if one concedes that Kilpatrick meets none of these threshold tests, his case for clemency remains a strong one, if for no other reason than pardoning him would prompt the heads of the people Trump despises most to combust (or perhaps even explode) spontaneously.

Consider:

• Even at the zenith of his political power, Kilpatrick was a polarizing figure; his conviction and imprisonment have multiplied conventional racial and geographic fault lines by splintering Detroiters, African-Americans and Democratic voters, all of whom loathe the president. A presidential pardon would multiply that chaos 100-fold.

• A pardon would lend legitimacy to Kilpatrick's largely unsupported claims that FBI investigators and federal prosecutors conspired unjustly to secure his conviction, amplifying the president's evidence-free assertions that the Department of Justice is the corrupt tool of his political enemies.

• Extending clemency to Kilpatrick would be a slap in the face to former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade, who oversaw Kilpatrick's prosecution, and U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds, who sentenced him to 28 years in prison. McQuade, a cable news show regular, has emerged as one of the most credible critics of the White House legal team's daily prevarication campaign. Edmunds is a George H.W. Bush-appointed straight-shooter who once barred the federal government from conducting deportation hearings in secrecy.

• Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama, dropped Kilpatrick like a hot potato after the DOJ brought criminal charges against him, and he appears never to have considered intervening to mitigate the ex-mayor's sentence. Pardoning him would be a small but electrifying step in Trump's campaign to eradicate his predecessor's legacy.

• Freeing Kilpatrick would set an African-American Democrat widely associated with public corruption loose on cable and social media in the middle of a critical election cycle, spawning chaos and confusion in the enemy camp.

• Finally, reuniting Kilpatrick with his spouse and children would allow a president suspected of callous indifference to minority families to claim that he is a man of compassion, moved by a broken family's plight to ignore the political hazards of a controversial pardon.

Confusing the enemy

And what, exactly, is the downside of a Kilpatrick pardon?

That the majority of Detroiters who oppose Trump reflexively will sniff out his cynical motives? That white suburban Kwame-haters will cast their votes retroactively for Hillary Clinton? That press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders will have to dig even deeper into her bottomless bag of preposterous explanations?

The Trump White House has been ignoring, circumventing or obliterating trifling worrries like these since Inauguration Day. What's one more round of media indignation if it distracts the public, and Trump himself, from the most existential threat to his presidency?

So pack your bags, Prisoner No. 44678-039. Jurors may insist that "pay-to-play" is a federal crime, but now the president who made it an art form may set you up for that comeback you've always dreamed about.

Contact Brian Dickerson: bdickerson@freepress.com