FSFP Board Chair and Senior Legal Advisor Ben Clements recently appeared on The BradCast to discuss Trump’s unconstitutional commutation of Roger Stone’s prison sentence and the implications of this latest abuse of the presidential pardon power.

“The notion that the presidential pardon power or any other presidential power is absolute is just flat out wrong and foreign, really, to the Constitution and to our whole system. We don’t live in an absolute monarchy – at least we’re not supposed to. We’re supposed to be living in a constitutional democracy,” said Clements.

Free Speech For People recently filed a motion before the federal district court in U.S. v. Stone seeking permission to submit an amicus brief arguing that the court should not automatically accept the executive grant of clemency but rather should consider whether it may be unconstitutional. FSFP argues that Trump’s commutation is  inconsistent with the Constitution’s “faithful execution” clause and exceeds the pardon power.

“In the very clause establishing the presidency itself, Article 2 of the Constitution, the Framers included language making clear that the presidency is in effect a public trust…Now granting a pardon or a commutation for a completely unlawful and illicit purpose is antithetical to this obligation to ensure that the laws are faithfully executed,” said Clements.

Listen to the entire discussion here.