Romney's Political Pandering Pardoning Policy
Mitt Romney's been all over Mike Huckabee's pardons this week, talking about how the Mittster never pardoned a single criminal in all his years as governor, because that's a spectacular fucking accomplishment. Bronze Star recipient Anthony Circosta would tend to disagree with the implications of Mitt's assessment of his pardoning record, though.
The Mittster basically wrote a set of very complex rules for people to get pardons to make sure that when he ran for President he wouldn't have ever issued one (and thus couldn't be Willie Horton'ed out of the race). Mitt's political ambitions kinda ran into a snag when it came to Anthony, though.
See, Anthony was a Bronze Star-receiving Iraq War veteran who had always wanted to be a police officer. Unfortunately, he was charged as a juvie when he was 13 for shooting his friend with a BB gun (the BB never broke the skin). But, since Romney said he "did not want to provide commutations to people who had had weapons violations that were going to be asking to use weapons in their new capacity," he refused to grant Anthony a pardon to allow him to serve as a police officer.
Romney now says that he would consider a pardon if "he found evidence that proved a wrongful conviction, prosecutorial misconduct or errors in the judicial process," which is why he's considering pardoning Scooter Libby .
Fact Check: Romney's pardoning practices [Yahoo News]