There are a lot of things about Trump 2.0 that are very different from the first time around…but there are also other things that give me deja vu. One of those things is the possibility of Trump pardoning convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. We know that Trump is generally trigger happy when it comes to pardons. And although Trump hasn’t said he would pardon Maxwell, he hasn’t said he wouldn’t either, noting that “[he’s] allowed to give her a pardon.” Which means…he’s thinking about it. After all, Trump was initially noncommittal about pardoning Michael Flynn and Roger Stone, and then ultimately went on to pardon them, too. (To be fair, he was always very upfront that he would pardon everyone involved in January 6.) But the potential pardon for Maxwell is giving me flashbacks to someone very specific: Paul Manafort.

First, let me offer my quick behavioral profile regarding Trump and pardons. I know most people consider Trump “shameless” – and his behavior certainly seems that way – but I wonder if there is some deep, dark corner of his brain where he knows, even if he doesn’t feel it, that he is guilty of doing something wrong. The pardon power is a powerful psychological salve for Trump: Although he has not yet crossed the Rubicon of issuing himself a “self-pardon” (something he no longer needs to do for most things, after the Supreme Court’s immunity decision), the pardon power allows him to basically grant himself a “self pardon by proxy,” as I like to call it. As I have detailed in previous articles and in my Substack, in his first term, Trump typically pardoned people for crimes he was either accused of or actually committed himself: “process” crimes like obstruction of justice or false statements; financial crimes (like bank and tax fraud); and election related crimes, like illegal campaign contributions. Seriously, Google it.

Trump’s weird and changing excuses about the Epstein files suggests he has some worry, or even guilt (loosely speaking), about something related to Epstein’s activities – which means that pardoning Maxwell, and making her (and by extension, himself) into a “victim” would very much be in line with his typical modus operandi. And the way he has gone about teasing that possibility – from saying he’s “allowed” to do it to sending his former personal attorney/current Deputy Attorney General (not sure of the difference), Todd Blanche to interview Maxwell to expose the “real” culprits – is very familiar to a tactic from Trump 1.0, as well. Specifically, during the Mueller investigation, Trump was very fond of “dangling” pardons to people like Manafort, whom Mueller had already ensnared, to keep them from snitching. And it worked.

But the Paul Manafort example, in particular, has some other parallels that Trump may not have considered. If you need a recap, Manafort was charged and convicted in federal court in Virginia on two counts of bank fraud, five counts of tax fraud, and one count of failing to disclose an offshore bank account. Later, he pleaded guilty in D.C. to illegal lobbying and witness tampering, an agreement that included his willingness to cooperate with federal prosecutors. The prospect of Manafort cooperating appears to have triggered Trump, which led to the dangled pardons (acts later included among the ten counts of obstruction of justice that Mueller investigated against Trump himself).