Donald Trump was already under fire over a series of scandalous pardons. Then he helped those involved in his scheme to overturn the 2020 election.
When Donald Trump commuted the sentence for disgraced former Republican Rep. George Santos, the president no doubt realized the move would generate some controversy, but ultimately he didn’t care. Similarly, when he pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the founder of the crypto exchange Binance who helped finance the president’s stablecoin and put money in the Trump family’s pockets, Trump should’ve known it’d create a scandal (even though he’s denied knowing anything about it). He did it anyway.
In a normal political environment, this would ordinarily be about the time when a president, mindful of the circumstances, might steer clear of pardon abuses for a while.
We are not, however, in a normal political environment.
Last week, for example, Trump pardoned former Tennessee House Speaker Glen Casada and his former chief of staff, Cade Cothren, both of whom were convicted on corruption charges that involved wire fraud and attempted money laundering. It was the latest installment in an ugly series: If you’re a Republican official convicted of corruption, your odds of receiving clemency from the incumbent president are roughly 100%.
But just as the political world processed this abuse, Trump took another big step down the same outrageous path. NBC News reported:
President Donald Trump has pardoned Rudy Giuliani and scores of others accused of involvement in the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election, Trump’s pardon attorney said late Sunday. Ed Martin posted a proclamation on X, which says Giuliani and scores of others will be pardoned for alleged activities linked to the 2020 election. Martin was replying to his own X message from May in which he said ‘No MAGA left behind.’
It’s not altogether clear when the undated paperwork was signed, but this was disclosed to the public via social media over the weekend.
