XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh   
   From: MeanDog25@Menace.Dash   
      
   Trump Is Trying to Legalize Corruption by Abusing His Pardon Power   
   The president has issued more than 2,000 pardons since taking office, many   
   to loyalists convicted of serious crimes   
   December 4, 2025   
      
   You've probably heard that cosplay Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been   
   blowing up alleged drug running boats from Venezuela in extra-judicial   
   killings that give new meaning to the phrase "war on drugs. "   
      
   But you might not have heard that his boss just pardoned the former   
   president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Herna´ndez, who was serving a 45-year   
   sentence in a U. S. prison for abusing his office by leading what   
   prosecutors called "one of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking   
   conspiracies in the world. "   
      
   If the cognitive dissonance gives you whiplash, that's because you're   
   paying attention.   
      
   For a guy who talks a lot about how much he hates drugs — and is now   
   floating it as a pretext for knocking off the odious Maduro regime — Trump   
   has developed a strange habit of giving pardons to drug dealers. A day   
   after his latest inauguration, Trump pardoned the founder of the Silk Road   
   website, which was notorious as a dark web drug den. This was followed by   
   the strange commutation for the founder of the Gangster Disciples in   
   Chicago, who flooded the Windy City with cocaine.   
      
   This weirdness is part of a wider pattern. Because Trump has issued more   
   than 2,000 pardons and commutations this year — 10 times the number he   
   pushed through in his entire first term.   
      
   The presidential pardon is written into the Constitution, but Trump is not   
   aiming for mercy or addressing objective injustices, as the founders   
   intended.   
      
   He is abusing the power to reward partisan political allies, enabling pay-   
   for-pardon schemes, and attempting to decriminalize corruption.   
      
   Right out of the gate, Trump offered pardons to all the Jan. 6 MAGA minions   
   who attacked the U. S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election.   
   This list included violent individuals who assaulted police officers and   
   those with criminal records. Last month, he added blanket pardons for the   
   white-collar instigators and fake electors who advanced those election lies   
   — including his lawyers Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, and Sidney Powell. The   
   rule of law doesn't apply to Trump loyalists.   
      
   A boatload of connected big businessmen have also been getting presidential   
   pardons. A former nursing home executive who was set to report to prison   
   for tax crimes found himself off the hook after his mother attended a $1   
   million fundraiser for Trump that promised face-to-face access with the   
   president. As The New York Times' Ken Vogel reported, the curiously timed   
   pardon spared Paul Walczak from "having to pay nearly $4.4 million in   
   restitution and from reporting to prison for an 18-month sentence that had   
   been handed down just 12 days earlier. A judge had justified the   
   incarceration by declaring that there 'is not a get-out-of-jail-free card"   
   for the rich. '"   
      
   The judge spoke too soon. There are get-out-of-jail-free cards available to   
   Trump supporters, for the right price.   
      
   The CEO of the failed EV Truck company Nikola, a Utah billionaire named   
   Trevor Milton, received a full pardon after being convicted for defrauding   
   investors. It was surely just a coincidence that Trevor Milton and his wife   
   gave almost a million dollars each to a Trump-backing super PAC less than a   
   month before the 2024 election. That's expensive but pardons are priceless.   
      
   More notorious is the case of billionaire Binance founder Changpeng Zhao,   
   dubbed "crypto's richest man, " who had previously pleaded guilty to money   
   laundering that U. S. prosecutors said benefitted Hamas terrorists and   
   Russian drug dealers. Zhao "rehabilitated" himself by helping to boost the   
   Trump family's crypto venture, which "raked in about $1.4 billion in   
   revenue over the past year ... far more than the president's real-estate   
   portfolio ever earned annually, " according to The Wall Street Journal.   
   When Trump was asked about this shady pardon on 60 Minutes, he said he   
   didn't know who Zhao was.   
      
   But perhaps the most consistent beneficiaries of Trump's pardons and   
   commutations have been corrupt politicians. This includes names associated   
   with buffoonish corruption and fraud like George Santos, Rod Blagojevich,   
   Michael Grimm, Duncan Hunter, and Duke Cunningham. It covers local elected   
   Trump loyalists like Tennessee Statehouse Speaker Glenn Casada, who was   
   convicted of fraud, and Las Vegas City Councilwoman Michele Fiore, who was   
   convicted of using money raised for a memorial to slain police officers on   
   personal expenses. As of this week you can add to this list 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.   
      
   This list is exhausting but nowhere near exhaustive. Trump's pardon-palooza   
   is not just fueled by his own bitterness at being America's first felon   
   president, but also a desire for obsequious signs of fealty from the people   
   he's let off the hook. Thanks to the Supreme Court's disastrous   
   presidential immunity decision, there remains the specter of more pardons   
   for anyone who puts loyalty to Trump ahead of loyalty to the Constitution.   
      
   There is a sickening rationalization creeping across our nation which says   
   that sucking up to Donald Trump is just the cost of doing business in   
   America at the moment. This decays the integrity of our democracy like   
   acid.   
      
   When this insane era is over, we will need reforms that rein in the power   
   of the executive because many of the unwritten guardrails were rooted in a   
   belief that virtue and character would be a self-corrective. The founders   
   apparently did not anticipate an era in which shamelessness was considered   
   a political superpower.   
      
   That's why we need to pursue reforms to stop the abuse of the pardon power.   
   A constitutional amendment is the biggest lift, though both parties have   
   howled at past pardons from opposition presidents. Representative Steve   
   Cohen has put forward an amendment that would "clarify and limit"   
   presidential pardons, prohibiting self-pardons and pardons for actions that   
   personally benefit the president or for crimes committed with a president.   
   Sounds common sense enough even though the two-thirds threshold seems   
   insurmountable in our stupid hyper-partisan era.   
      
   A more achievable approach could be pursued through Congress, where a bill   
   called the Abuse of Power Prevention Act would require that the Department   
   of Justice and the president turn over details about the crimes and explain   
   the pardon rationale to Congress, making it clear that the bribery statute   
   applies to presidential pardons while also barring self-pardons. The   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)