Trump offers a problematic defense of his latest controversial pardon

[LetMyPeopleVote]

Why did the president pardon a campaign donor who'd been convicted of crimes related to defrauding investors? Trump struggled with the question.
https://bsky.app/profile/stevebenen.com/post/3llhhsgwcls2t

A few things to know about Trump's Trevor Milton pardon:
- he was convicted of crimes related to defrauding investors
- he was represented Pam Bondi's brother
- he started generously donating to Republicans late last year
- Trump seems to know very little about his case

Link to tweet

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/trump-offers-problematic-defense-latest-controversial-pardon-rcna198622

Earlier this month, he pardoned a Tennessee Republican who was just two weeks into a 21-month sentence for his role in a campaign finance fraud scheme. This week, as CNBC reported, the list grew a little longer.

President Donald Trump pardoned Nikola Corp. founder Trevor Milton for his October 2022 conviction of federal crimes related to defrauding investors with false claims about the success of the electric and hydrogen-powered truck maker. Milton, 42, was sentenced in December 2023 to four years in prison, but he has been free since then pending an appeal of the former CEO’s criminal conviction on securities and wire fraud charges in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

The report added that the pardon came just two weeks after federal prosecutors urged U.S. District Court Judge Edgardo Ramos to order Milton to pay restitution of $680 million to Nikola shareholders as well as $15.2 million to Peter Hicks, a victim of his wire fraud......

As for why Trump took this step, a reporter asked the president to explain his reasoning, and it didn’t go especially well.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:4llrhdclvdlmmynkwsmg5tdc/post/3llhdmux2eh2o

Link to tweet

......Of course, the larger story isn’t just about Milton. On the contrary, it has become apparent to others that the president has created an entirely new legal/political dynamic, without precedent in the American tradition, in which pardons are available to perceived political allies with whom Trump sympathizes.

Sam Bankman-Fried is reportedly angling for a pardon. So is former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy. The New York Times reported a few weeks ago that there’s a White House team in place focusing on “clemency grants that underscore the president’s own grievances,” and well-connected lawyers and lobbyists “have scrambled to take advantage.”

They have collected large fees from clemency seekers who would not be eligible for second chances under apolitical criteria that are intended to guide a Justice Department system for recommending mercy for those who have served their time or demonstrated remorse and a lower likelihood of recidivism. Instead, clemency petitioners are mostly circumventing that system, tailoring their pitches to the president by emphasizing their loyalty to him and echoing his claims of political persecution.

The Times’ report, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, added that among the many eager to take advantage of the new pardon landscape are “a rapper convicted in connection with a Malaysian embezzlement scheme, a reality-television-star couple found guilty of defrauding banks and evading taxes, and two Washington, D.C., police officers convicted after a chase that killed a young man.”

The Times quoted Rachel Barkow, a professor at the New York University School of Law who has studied the use of presidential clemency. She said that while Trump’s first-term pardons were all about “cronyism and partisanship,” the potential for corruption is higher now “because they’re starting early, they have figured out how they want to set it up so that people have a pipeline to get to them.”

[sinkingfeeling]

1. Can you spell "corruption"?

[sop]

2. Trump should start calling them "Indulgences."

[Norrrm]

3. "but they say it was very unfair,"

The mythical "they".

[Ms. Toad]

4. And they say he supported a gentleman name Donald Trump,

I didn't know him, but they say he was one of the first, and they went after him and his family, etc.

That's a slight paraphrase, but not much of one.

[Demovictory9]

5. Wow

[Vinca]

6. It's a shame Charlie Manson isn't alive. All he'd have to do is say he was persecuted because he loved Trump.

Poof! Out of solitary and into a Cabinet position.