It is exhausting trying to keep up with all the Trump threats to the rule of law. The administration employs a deliberate strategy of trying to break as many norms as possible because they know the media and the public cannot keep up with all of them. It’s Steve Bannon’s flood-the-zone tactic, and a perfect illustration of how it works is Trump’s recent slate of clemency grants.
In a normal administration, any number of the clemency grants given last week would have sparked a huge outcry. Trump pardoned a reality-TV show couple, Todd and Julie Chrisley, who had been convicted of tax fraud and defrauding banks into giving them more than $36 million in loans. Chrisley’s daughter spoke at the Republican National Convention in July, and she successfully convinced Trump that her parents were victims of a weaponized DOJ just like Trump – even though the Chrisleys were indicted in 2019 when Trump was president and Bill Barr was the Attorney General.
Trump also pardoned Paul Walczak after Walczak’s mother, Elizabeth Fago, paid one million dollars to attend a fundraising dinner for Trump’s super PAC. It was a good investment for Fago, because the pardon relieved her son, a former nursing home executive, of having to pay $4 million in restitution for failing to pay taxes. It also spared him the 18-month prison sentence he was about to serve, one that the judge deliberately imposed to send a message that the wealthy cannot buy their way out of the consequences of their illegal actions. Trump’s pardon sends the opposite message, of course, which is that this is a pay-to-play administration in which a hefty political donation can get you a pardon.
When Bill Clinton pardoned Marc Rich, who fled the country after being charged with tax evasion and fraud, after Rich’s ex-wife Denise donated more than a million dollars to the Democratic Party and the Clinton Presidential Library, it sparked months of hearings and outcry. Indeed, some credited the controversy as “chang[ing] the political landscape, making presidents much more cautious about using a Constitutional power that is without limit.”
As with so many things, Trump finds himself in a different category than everyone else. He gave pardons to big money donors and supporters in his first administration, and it did not deter voters from electing him in 2024. Trump could thus confidently predict that a pardon for the Chrisleys and Walczak would be met with a shrug and seen as business as usual for him.
Or take the case of Virginia Sheriff Scott Jenkins. Jenkins took more than $75,000 in bribes in exchange for giving out deputy sheriff badges. Did Jenkins earn his pardon with great remorse or acts of redemption? Of course not. Instead, Jenkins was rewarded for being a fan of Donald Trump and parroting the administration’s hardline views on immigration.
After Trump granted the pardon to Jenkins, Ed Martin, who was recently installed as the new Pardon Attorney, praised the pardon on social media. He wrote simply, “No MAGA left behind.” Martin, you may recall, became the Pardon Attorney after it became clear he would not be confirmed as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia because he was seen as too partisan by the same Republicans who approved Pete Hegseth. Martin failed to disclose more than 150 appearances on Russian state TV and, while serving as Interim United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, dismissed cases against people who rioted on January 6 and who Martin had represented while in private practice, a textbook ethical violation that merited a disciplinary referral before the DC bar. The Pardon Attorney position does not require confirmation, so these glaring red flags did not stop his appointment. On the contrary, his partisanship appears to be a feature, not a bug, in his selection.
Pardons are now part of a concerted partisan effort to reward loyalists while punishing critics and detractors. They are the carrots in the carrot and stick approach. As former Pardon Attorney Liz Oyer noted in the wake of last week’s pardons, “The pardon power is now being totally and thoroughly politicized,” and the message is that “it will be used as a benefit to those who are supporters of the president and not for those who do not express political loyalty.”
This is the flipside of the threats made to those who challenge or criticize the Trump administration. Thus, Trump gave relief to a big donor’s son and Republican convention speaker’s parents and other fraudsters, while calling for a “major investigation” into Bruce Springsteen because Springsteen criticized Trump at a concert.
Trump established this tone on day one of his second term when he pardoned the participants in the January 6 insurrection. The pardon power is being leveraged to send a message that MAGA loyalty will be rewarded— “No MAGA left behind” indeed. Can you imagine the outcry if the Pardon Attorney under Joe Biden said the office policy was “No Biden supporter left behind”?
Trump operates in a different political world because the Republican party is too scared to criticize anything he does. Democrats called out Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich, but Republicans have stayed silent about Trump’s pardons because they believe they have to toe the party line or risk Trump targeting them. Trump thus perpetuates the narrative that he and his supporters are victims of weaponization and the deep state, and his critics are corrupt and unpatriotic criminals.
This is how authoritarian governments develop and continue. In a thriving democracy, the pardon power is a valuable tool for correcting injustices, rewarding rehabilitation, and recognizing redemption. But in an authoritarian regime, it can be used to license and incentivize illegality by loyalists. The Framers crafted a tool for a president, not a tyrant. But if democracy fails to check the abuse of the pardon power, there is no limit to how it can be misused – something we are all witnessing in real time, assuming we are not distracted by all the other abuses competing for our attention.
Stay Informed,
Rachel
