The presidential pardon power increasingly looks to be an instrument for Donald Trump to wield on behalf of his wealthy donors, and MAGAworld can do little to explain it.
He moved explicitly into the realm of rewarding his supporters with political favors this past week and began issuing a slew of pardons benefiting loyalists who’d supported his campaigns for president. Among the recipients: A sheriff convicted of taking bribes in exchange for passing out “auxiliary” sheriff badges to local businessmen; the son of a wealthy donor who was instrumental in the effort to pass Hunter Biden’s laptop to the Trump campaign; a reality TV show couple and rapper, NBA Youngboy.
The latest came Wednesday afternoon, as the White House announced the pardon of Michael Grim, a former GOP congressman convicted of tax fraud. Ed Martin, Trump’s failed nominee for US attorney in the District of Columbia, announced a “Pardon Day” ceremony Wednesday at the White House. And at a White House event, the president publicly opined on the possibility of pardoning several men convicted of plotting to assault and kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, the Democratic Trump-opponent governor of Michigan.
“I will take a look at it. It’s been brought to my attention,” said the president. “I did watch the trial. It looked to me like somewhat of a railroad job, I’ll be honest with you.”
Many in Washington, especially including the Democrats who publicly warned that former President Joe Biden’s use of the pardon to protect his drug-abuser son, Hunter Biden, from the consequences of his actions, are now left accepting the reality: whatever luster or gravity the presidential clemency system once held is now gone. It’s probably not coming back.
The president’s latest round of pardons messily retracted from the narrative he has often pointed to in his past utilizations of pardon power — namely, a desire to end the “weaponization” of government supposedly begun by his own political enemies, the Democrats. Trump has long blamed them for this, dating back to the 2016 election when he spun a federal investigation into his campaign’s alleged ties to Russian intelligence into an effort by the Obama administration to “spy” on him.
His accusations multiplied after losing the 2020 election, when investigations launched by the Justice Department and two state jurisdictions led to a years-long legal fight and even an FBI raid of his estate at Mar-a-Lago, where he was accused of illegally harboring classified materials taken from the White House improperly when he left. All the while, Trump would insist to supporters in private and public that he’d rightfully won the election, even going as far as to tell some that he’d be reinstated as president.
Past targets for pardons and clemency have all used this rationale of fighting the Deep State and politicized “lawfare”, including his pardons of convicted January 6 rioters earlier this year as well as the 2020 pardons of Paul Manafort, Charles Kushner and Roger Stone.
But that’s all gone now. A White House spokesperson could only offer excuses for the pardon of Paul Walczak, whose mother raised millions for Trump’s presidential campaign efforts, as well as the conservative reality TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley — who were convicted for pulling off bank fraud worth tens of millions of dollars. Harrison Fields, a Trump administration spokesperson, said that the Chrisleys were “well-deserving Americans” who earned “a second chance” in his defense of the moves.
While the song and dance continued from the White House spin room, even Republicans are unlikely to see this as anything more than favor-trading.
“I think it’s been pretty gross,” conservative commentator Marc Short, who was chief of staff to ex-Vice President Mike Pence, told CNN: “[I]t’s almost like he saw what Biden [did] and said, ‘Hold my beer, I’m going to show you’.”
GOP lawmakers have thus far avoided comment. House members are due to return to Washington on Thursday and the Senate is out until June, granting a few days’ reprieve to those less enthusiastic about defending the president’s rewarding of patrons. But those who do rush to his defense will take the same strategy Trump himself has taken: deflection. While Trump has repeated accusations of political targeting in posts defending some of his individual pardon grants, his greater focus has remained on ginning up controversy around the “autopen” reportedly used by former President Joe Biden at times to sign documents.
There’s nothing — nothing at all — that the 47th president can do to undo or otherwise reverse the pardons granted by his predecessor to members of the January 6 committee and his own family. But that hasn’t stopped Trump and his top pardon lackey, Martin, from trying to undermine the legitimacy of those actions in the press and claim the existence of some kind of shadow president in the Biden White House. His legion of supporters on social media has eagerly followed suit.
The president ventured this theory again on Tuesday evening as news coverage of his latest pen-stroke prison break turned decisively sour.
“Other than the Rigged Presidential Election of 2020, the Biggest Scandal in American History is the ‘AUTOPEN!’” the president blustered in a Truth Social post. “Whoever used it was usurping the power of the Presidency, and it should be very easy to find out who that person (or persons) is.”
