{"id":392163,"date":"2025-11-20T12:05:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T12:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/392163\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T12:05:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T12:05:14","slug":"column-instead-of-addressing-injustice-pardons-now-pervert-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/392163\/","title":{"rendered":"Column: Instead of addressing injustice, pardons now pervert justice"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It\u2019s sheer coincidence that I\u2019m writing here on the same subject as my Los Angeles Times colleague Jonah Goldberg\u2019s most recent column<\/a>: The crying need to amend the Constitution to do something about the much-abused presidential pardon power, the only unchecked power that a president has.<\/p>\n

The fact that both Goldberg, a right-of-center commentator, and I, center-left, would near-simultaneously choose to vent on this topic \u2014 to call, in effect, for a national uprising against this presidential prerogative despite the evident difficulty of amending the Constitution<\/a> \u2014 is telling: It\u2019s a reflection of Americans\u2019 across-the-spectrum disgust with how modern presidents have perverted it for personal and political benefit, usually on their way out the door. (Goldberg makes the case to get rid of the pardon power altogether. I would give Congress a veto, so presidents still can right actual wrongs of the justice system, as the founders intended.)<\/p>\n

Yes, \u201cboth sides\u201d are culpable. And yet, Goldberg and I agree, one president has surpassed all others in the shamelessness of his pardons: Donald Trump. In just 10 months he\u2019s built a track record sorrier than that of his first term, which is saying something, and elevated clemency reform to an imperative. <\/p>\n

We can\u2019t stop Trump before he pardons again. Nor, probably, would an amendment campaign succeed before (if?) he leaves office in January 2029. But Americans of all political stripes can at least join in getting the process rolling, if only to protect against future presidents\u2019 abuses.<\/p>\n

From his first day in office, when Trump granted clemency to nearly 1,600 rioters<\/a> who beat cops and stormed the Capitol to overturn his 2020 defeat, already 20 times this year he\u2019s either pardoned or commuted the prison sentences of additional scores of undeserving hacks, fellow election deniers, war criminals, donors, investors in Trump businesses and career criminals who just happen to support him. (Recidivism<\/a> among Trump\u2019s beneficiaries is proving a problem; among the new charges: child sex abuse.)<\/p>\n

The clemency actions have come so fast and furious that they hardly register as the scandals that they are, especially as the news about them vies for attention with the many other outrages of Trump\u2019s presidency.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo MAGA left behind,\u201d Trump pardon attorney \u201cEagle Ed\u201d Martin brazenly posted<\/a> in May and again<\/a> this month in announcing preemptory pardons for former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and more than 75 other Republicans who were part of the fake-elector schemes to reverse Trump\u2019s 2020 losses in battleground states, as well as other efforts after the 2020 election to keep him in power.<\/p>\n

Those grants were followed<\/a> last weekend by mercy for two more MAGA militants: Suzanne Kaye<\/a>, a Florida woman sentenced<\/a> to prison for threatening in video posts to \u201cshoot their [expletive] a–\u201d if FBI agents tried to question her about her involvement in the Jan. 6 insurrection, and Daniel Edwin Wilson of Kentucky, who was among those pardoned for his crimes on Jan. 6 but later sentenced by a Trump-appointed district judge on gun charges related to an illegal cache of weaponry that agents found at his home.<\/p>\n

To Trump, absolving his supporters as victims of a supposedly weaponized justice system in effect absolves him as well, and furthers his false narrative \u2014 his big lie \u2014 that the 2020 election was stolen from him. As Martin, the White House pardon attorney, wrote<\/a> in this month\u2019s passel of pardons: \u201cThis proclamation ends a grave national injustice perpetrated upon the American people following the 2020 Presidential Election.\u201d The opposite is true.<\/p>\n

Lo, Trump\u2019s mercy knows no bounds \u2014 of propriety, that is. The president won\u2019t even rule out a pardon for convicted child-trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, longtime procurer for, and participant with, Jeffrey Epstein in the sexploitation of young girls.<\/p>\n

Even if Trump\u2019s abuse of the pardon power isn\u2019t unprecedented, its scale and shamelessness is. His Day One mass pardons for Jan. 6 participants set the tone. That action kept his 2024 campaign promise to \u201cfree the J-6 hostages,\u201d but it broke an earlier, videotaped vow <\/a>he\u2019d made on Jan. 7, 2021, when anger at the Capitol attack was near-universal: \u201cTo those who broke the law, you will pay.\u201d Hundreds did pay, convicted by juries and judges of both parties and sentenced to up to 22 years in prison. Until Trump got back in power.<\/p>\n

Need evidence of how Trump\u2019s pardons corrode the rule of law? Last December, weeks before he returned to the White House, yet another Jan. 6 participant, Philip Sean Grillo, was sentenced<\/a>. The Reagan-appointed federal judge in the case, Royce Lamberth, admonished: \u201cNobody is being held hostage. \u2026 Every rioter is in the situation he or she is in because he or she broke the law, and for no other reason.\u201d Grillo shouted back, as U.S. marshals led him off: \u201cTrump\u2019s gonna pardon me anyways.\u201d He was right, of course.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s this: In September, after a Republican former Tennessee House speaker and his aide were sentenced<\/a> in a fraud case, the government\u2019s announcement quoted a senior FBI agent in Nashville calling the punishment \u201ca wake-up call to other public officials who believe there are no consequences for betraying the public trust.\u201d On Nov. 7, Trump pardoned<\/a> both men.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s promiscuous use of his power has even spawned a niche business<\/a> of Trump-connected lawyers peddling their influence to pardon-seekers willing to shell out tens of thousands of dollars to get out of jail not-so-free.<\/p>\n

Consider the case of Changpeng Zhao<\/a>, billionaire founder of the crypto exchange Binance, who served time in 2023 for facilitating money laundering, including for terrorist groups. Zhao didn\u2019t just hire Trump-friendly lawyers. His company helped secure a $2-billion investment in the Trump family\u2019s crypto startup. Last month, Trump pardoned Zhao. \u201cI heard it was a Biden witch hunt,\u201d he nonchalantly told<\/a> CBS News\u2019 \u201c60 Minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zhao\u2019s success alone should be scandal enough to fuel a campaign to repeal or reform the pardon power. But there is so much more. And we surely haven\u2019t seen the last.<\/p>\n

Bluesky: @jackiecalmes<\/a>
Threads: @jkcalmes<\/a>
X: @jackiekcalmes<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s sheer coincidence that I\u2019m writing here on the same subject as my Los Angeles Times colleague Jonah…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":392164,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,6517,162978,69,8988,75533,195,34873,8142,2961,3228,224,5337,9105,186437,19955,45636,5207,110835],"class_list":["post-392163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-case","tag-changpeng-zhao","tag-donald-trump","tag-election","tag-first-day","tag-goldberg","tag-jan","tag-justice","tag-la","tag-law","tag-los-angeles","tag-losangeles","tag-month","tag-much-abused-presidential-pardon-power","tag-pardon","tag-participant","tag-president","tag-prison-sentence"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115581938876291304","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/392164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}