You’ve probably heard that cosplay Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is blowing up suspected drug smuggling boats from Venezuela in extrajudicial killings that give new meaning to the term “war on drugs.”
The contradiction is the point
But you may not have heard that his boss has just pardoned the former President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who was serving a 45-year sentence in a US prison. Because he abused his office by leading “one of the largest and most violent drug trafficking conspiracies in the world,” according to prosecutors.
If this cognitive dissonance gives you whiplash, it’s because you’re paying attention. For someone who constantly talks about how much he hates drugs — and is now considering using it as an excuse to take out the hated Maduro regime — Trump has developed a strange habit of pardoning drug dealers.
A day after his recent inauguration, Trump pardoned the founder of the Silk Road website, which was notorious as a drug trafficking site on the dark web. This was followed by the strange reduction in sentence for the founder of the Gangster Disciples in Chicago. Who flooded the Windy City with cocaine.
Patterns of abuse of power
These oddities are part of a larger pattern. Trump has issued more than 2,000 pardons and reduced sentences this year alone. Ten times as many as in his entire first term. The presidential pardon is enshrined in the constitution. But Trump is not concerned with clemency or the righting of objective injustices, as the Founders intended.
He abuses the power to reward partisan allies. To enable pay-for-pardon systems. And to try to decriminalize corruption.
Favors for Loyalists
Right from the start, Trump offered pardons to all MAGA supporters who attacked the US Capitol on January 6th – those who tried to overturn the 2020 election. This list included violent individuals who attacked police officers and those with extensive criminal records.
Last month, he added blanket pardons for the white collars who organized the coup attempt – including his lawyers Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman and Sidney Powell. The rule of law does not apply to Trump loyalists.
Pardons for money
A number of well-connected business people also received presidential clemency. A former nursing home executive facing prison for tax violations was suddenly spared after his mother attended a $1 million Trump fundraising event that promised personal access to the president.
As Ken Vogel of the New York Times reported, the miraculously timely pardon spared Paul Walczak not only a nearly $4.4 million repayment, but also the 18-month prison sentence that had been handed down just twelve days earlier. A judge justified the detention by saying that there was “no get-out-of-jail card for rich people.”
It does exist: if you support Trump
The judge spoke too soon. There are get-out-of-arrest cards for Trump supporters – at the right price. The CEO of failed electric truck company Nikola, Utah billionaire Trevor Milton, received a full pardon after defrauding investors.
It was surely just a coincidence that Milton and his wife each transferred nearly $1 million to a Trump super PAC less than a month before the 2024 election. Expensive, but pardons are priceless.
The worst cases
Even more notorious is the case of Binance billionaire Changpeng Zhao, “crypto’s richest man,” who previously pleaded guilty to money laundering charges — money laundering that U.S. prosecutors say benefited Hamas terrorists and Russian drug traffickers.
Zhao “rehabilitated” himself by supporting the Trump family’s crypto business, which, according to the Wall Street Journal, “generated about $1.4 billion last year — far more than the president’s real estate portfolio ever generated annually.”
When asked about this dubious pardon on 60 Minutes, Trump said he didn’t know who Zhao was.
Corruption as a constant loop
But perhaps corrupt politicians benefit most reliably from Trump’s acts of clemency. These include names synonymous with bumbling corruption: George Santos, Rod Blagojevich, Michael Grimm, Duncan Hunter and Duke Cunningham.
Politicians are increasingly burdened
Local elected Trump loyalists are also included, such as Tennessee State Assembly Speaker Glenn Casada, who was convicted of fraud, and Las Vegas City Councilwoman Michele Fiore, who used donations for a memorial project for slain police officers for private expenses. Also on the list this week is conservative Texas Democrat Henry Cuellar, who was indicted by the Biden Justice Department for accepting nearly $600,000 in bribes from an Azerbaijani oil company and a Mexican bank.
An exhaustive but incomplete catalog
This list is exhaustive, but far from complete. Trump’s pardoning excess is driven not only by his bitterness as the first convicted president of the United States, but also by his desire for obsequious expressions of loyalty from those he spares.
Thanks to the Supreme Court’s disastrous decision on presidential immunity, a wave of new pardons continues to loom for those who put Trump above the Constitution.
The creeping normalization
A pathological rationalization is spreading across the country: that you have to court Trump if you want to do business. This attitude eats away at democratic integrity like acid. When this delusional era ends, we will need reforms that limit presidential power because many unwritten guardrails were based on the assumption that virtue and character would lead to self-correction.
The founders apparently did not expect a time when shamelessness would be considered a political superpower.
Limiting pardons
That’s why we need reforms to stop the abuse of the pardon power. Amending the Constitution is the most difficult path, although in the past both parties have been outraged by each other’s presidential pardons.
Rep. Steve Cohen has proposed an amendment that would “clarify and limit” presidential pardons – banning self-pardons and banning pardons that benefit the president personally or are issued for crimes committed in concert with him. Sounds like common sense, but the necessary two-thirds majority seems unattainable in our stupid, hyper-partisan times.
A more realistic law
One actionable approach could be taken in Congress: A bill called the Abuse of Power Prevention Act would require the Justice Department and the president to submit the details of the crimes and the rationale for pardons to Congress. He would clarify that the bribery law applies to presidential pardons and prohibit self-pardons. The Just Security website provides a good summary of these options.
Everyday scandal
Trump’s pardon orgy is a daily scandal that deforms the norms of American democracy. But popular anger over corruption has historically been a force that brings down would-be autocrats.
People understand that corruption is deeply unfair – as long as they understand how it affects their lives. As you read this list, remember: The rich, connected and powerful are getting get-out-of-jail-free cards under President Trump.