Former President Bill Clinton and business mogul Elon Musk are both trying to get people out of prison this week, which marks the most that celebrated people have done for prisoner release since Kim Kardashian met with Donald Trump in the Oval Office about broader clemency for the incarcerated.
Unlike Musk and Kardashian, Clinton once held the power to pardon people and commute sentences, but when trying to get a prisoner released in 2023, the former president retains only the power of his considerable global influence and his social media reach.
Even Clinton’s past pardon power, limited to those incarcerated in the US, wouldn’t be much help to him now, as it doesn’t apply to the prisoner Clinton wants freed today.
Clinton took to Twitter this week to protest the imprisonment of Nobel Peace laureate Ales Bialiatski, calling the Belarusian’s 10-year prison sentence “a transparent, politically motivated attempt to crack down on protests and suppress human rights and democracy.”
I condemn this shameful sentence against Nobel Peace laureate Ales Bialiatsk. It is a transparent, politically motivated attempt to crack down on protests and suppress human rights and democracy. https://t.co/x3t7iUHjlm
— Bill Clinton (@BillClinton) March 8, 2023
[Bialiatski won the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize for his work to “promote democracy and human rights in Belarus since the 1980s.”]
Elon Musk is, of course, another enormously powerful man whose tool of choice is social media when trying to get people freed from prison. Musk also called for the release of a prisoner this week — and he might even echo Clinton’s words in his plea — though the two liberators have, on the surface at least, chosen very different prisoners they wish to see granted clemency.
Free Jacob Chansley https://t.co/8BbeXF2Fye
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 10, 2023
Musk told his 131 million followers on Twitter to “Free Jacob Chansley” — the so-called QAnon Shaman. Chansley was sentenced to 41 months in prison for his role in the Jan 6 US Capitol riot.
[Note: Clinton pardoned or otherwise granted clemency to 459 people while he was president.]
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