Since Trump’s first administration, stories have circulated that the president abused the presidential pardon power to sell pardons.
The House Judiciary Committee Democrats have put the stories together and gathered evidence that Donald Trump and his allies are selling pardons.
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What appears to have been a sideline industry of presidential abuse of power has expanded into what Democrats called a full-blown cottage industry in Trump’s second term.
The Democrats wrote in their report:
President Donald Trump and a coterie of MAGA insiders have built up in his second Administration a cottage industry of shady operatives, big campaign donors, and lawyer influence-brokers who lobby the White House and the Trump family to secure presidential pardons and commutations on behalf of unrepentant white-collar fraudsters and unbending con men, corrupt foreign government officials and kleptocrat presidents, and international narcotraffickers.
The new cash-for-clemency underworld operates outside the Department of Justice (DOJ) and its Office of the Pardon Attorney, which traditionally imposed specific proof requirements for recommending pardons: petitioner rehabilitation, remorse, redemption, and paid restitution, in addition to fairness, mercy, and overriding merit.
But the MAGA pardon underworld operates entirely on the supplicant’s willingness to pay for access to the President and his associates in his inner circle. This shocking new descent in presidential ethics and conduct undermines the federal justice system, robs victims of nearly $1.7 billion in restitution and fines, and effects a massive redistribution of wealth in favor of convicted criminals, MAGA insiders, and the President himself.
This is a massive scandal that would have already brought down any other administration, but it is the tip of the Trump second administration iceberg.