The president’s final pardons were yet another iteration of the two-tiered justice system that serves the wealthy and powerful.
The president’s final act was yet another iteration of the two-tiered justice system that serves the wealthy and powerful.
G ive President Trump this much: On the “Yuck! scale,” his eleventh-hour pardons do not approach the despicable depths of those issued by Bill Clinton 20 years ago today. But they do reify, as this White House–exit ritual customarily does, that the pardon power has devolved from an obsolescence to an embarrassment in our constitutional system.
To repeat what I contended in the current issue of National Review, the Constitution should be amended to repeal it.
Rumors ran rampant that Trump’s final pardon list would be historically seamy — possibly including himself and his close family members. The president’s advisers evidently managed to talk him out of it, most likely because granting pardons for those who have not been accused of any crimes would look like curious admissions of guilt. Consequently, the clemency list is as run-of-the-mill as these things go: the usual array of cronies, corrupt politicians and their shady financial backers, and panders (President Trump likes rappers!). What you won’t find are clemency grants that make you say, “Well, that certainly is in the national interest,” or even, “Now here’s a case where the justice system reached an unjust result — I’m glad the president had the power to correct it.”
The most notable grantee on the list is former Trump aide Steve Bannon. He was indicted in August on a fraud scheme, allegedly designed to separate from their money credulous Trump devotees who were willing to go into their own pockets to fund the border wall the president could not get Congress to underwrite. Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York — the Trump bête noire, where I used to work back when Clinton was springing terrorists and fraudsters — claim a goodly chunk of the donations ended up lining Bannon’s pockets.
I have no idea whether they did or they didn’t. Bannon is presumed innocent, has pled not guilty, and was never tried. What we can say for certain, though, is that Bannon was not indicted alone — he has three codefendants, none of whom received a pardon from the president.
The only salient difference between the three codefendants and Bannon is that Bannon is an insider: a Trump 2016 campaign official and former top White House adviser. Though he had the familiar recriminatory falling-out with the president, Bannon crept his way back into Trump’s good graces — no small feat considering his cooperation in Michael Wolff’s unflattering Trump book, Fire and Fury, for which he provided some catty remarks about Trump family members (normally, an unpardonable offense in Trump World, and one that earned Bannon the derisive nickname “Sloppy Steve” — or, as the president characteristically put it back in the day: “Sloppy Steve Bannon . . . cried when he got fired and begged for his job. Now Sloppy Steve has been dumped like a dog by almost everyone. Too bad!”).
The president is said to have wrung his hands for days over the pardon, with White House advisers pushing against it and Bannon fans (not least Bannon himself) lobbying in favor. Bannon was an aggressive proponent of Trump’s stolen-election narrative, including stumping for the January 6 rally that ended in the storming of the Capitol.
That may stick in the craw of senior Senate Republicans — particularly leader Mitch McConnell — who may soon be considering the president’s impeachment trial. They are said to have admonished the White House that clemency grants to rioters would not serve Trump well. White House counsel Pat Cipollone also reportedly advised the president against pardons for congressional Republicans who supported Trump’s effort to deny Joe Biden’s election victory — Democrats are trying to frame them as instigators of insurrection at the Capitol, and pardons would create the appearance of criminal guilt. There were no such pardons on Trump’s final list. (It should be noted that the rioting mob, while sizable, was a small portion of the throng who attended Trump’s inflammatory speech on the Ellipse, and there is no allegation that Bannon or congressional Republicans urged violence.)
Bannon’s ties to the president are the only discernible reason for the pardon. Trump’s son, Don Jr., helped raise money for the fund the indictment describes as central to the fraud scheme. But there is no claim that Don Jr. had any complicity in the fraud, and the president actually criticized private fundraising for the border wall at the time. If the president were trying to discredit the prosecution, logic would dictate clemency for all four defendants. Only Bannon, the political ally, received a pardon.
Trump also pardoned or commuted the sentences of politicians convicted in corruption schemes involving millions of dollars, including former GOP congressman Rick Renzi, Robert Hayes, and Duke Cunningham, as well as Detroit’s former Democratic mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick.
Also making the cut were Elliott Broidy, a major Trump fundraiser paid millions of dollars by foreign actors to lobby the Trump administration; Dr. Salomon Melgen, who bilked the government out of $42 million in Medicare payments, and who’d lavished gifts on Senator Bob Menendez (the New Jersey Democrat was acquitted in the case); and Ken Kurson, a convicted cyber-stalker who just happens to be a friend of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner. Just last month, Trump also pardoned Kushner’s father, Charles, from his convictions for tax fraud, illegal campaign contributions, and witness intimidation, specifically: hiring a prostitute to seduce the cooperating witness (the elder Kushner’s own brother-in-law) and having the tryst recorded, after which Charles so graciously played the recording for his sister (the witness’s wife) — prompting Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor and U.S. attorney whose office brought the case, to describe it as “one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes I prosecuted.”
You get the point.
Trump was also said to have been poised to grant clemency to Sheldon Silver, the former powerhouse New York State Assembly speaker convicted of corruption charges. The New York Times reports that the president was dissuaded when the paper reported a pardon was under consideration, a possibility that prompted howls from the New York Post and various Empire State pols. The president did, however, pardon Paul Erickson, a Republican activist and lobbyist (including for Mobutu Sese Seko, the former military dictator of Congo), who was serving a six-year sentence on multiple fraud and money-laundering convictions. Erickson was tangentially caught up in the Mueller investigation . . . and thus joins Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, and others whose clemency grants arise out of the Russian-collusion farce that wounded Trump’s presidency.
And yes, the president pardoned Lil Wayne and Kodak Black — the rappers whose real names, respectively, are Dwayne Carter and Bill Kapri — both of whom were convicted of felony gun crimes.
None of this is about correcting injustice. None of this is about what they did. It’s all a matter of the connected people they know . . . and what they’ve done for those people.
That pardon power is a source of scandal, not fairness. It is yet another iteration of the two-tiered justice system that serves the wealthy and powerful. It is unworthy of a republic dedicated to the proposition of equal justice under the law. It should be eliminated.