We had Anne of a thousand days, now we have Trump of 100 pardons. Donald Trump’s going away grift to America is to issue a slate of pardons, which you were waiting for, and apparently the number is to be one hundred and issued on his last day in office, so he can shock, amuse, delight, pull an entire panoply of emotional triggers on his way out the door in the grand finale and final screw you scene of his reality TV show.
Now the names of the recipients, whose lives will be forever altered by Trump is not yet known, but what is known is that these pardons don’t come cheap. No, Sir, obtaining a pardon in Trump world has become a lucrative cottage industry amongst Trump’s closest allies. The New York Times reported Sunday that an associate of Rudy Giuliani told a former CIA officer seeking a presidential pardon that Giuliani could help arrange one for $2 million.
John Kiriakou, the former CIA operative, was sentenced to 30 months in prison in 2012 for disclosing the identity of a fellow officer involved in waterboarding. Kiriakou told The Times that he had sought a pardon through other people with connections to the president — in order to carry a handgun and access his pension — but that the topic came up during an unrelated boozy meeting with Giuliani and his associates at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC.
Kiriakou told The Times that at one point, when Giuliani went to the restroom, one of the meeting attendees said that Giuliani could help but that “it’s going to cost $2 million — he’s going to want two million bucks.”
Kiriakou did not pursue the offer, according to The Times.
“I laughed. Two million bucks — are you out of your mind?” Kiriakou told the outlet. “Even if I had two million bucks, I wouldn’t spend it to recover a $700,000 pension.” […]
The Times reported that multiple people with connections to Trump, including his former lawyer John Dowd and his former campaign advisor Karen Giorno, had accepted tens of thousands of dollars in payments from people seeking pardons. It said there was no evidence Trump himself had been offered money.
Trump doesn’t have to be “offered” money per se, he could receive it via a contribution to his PAC or legal defense fund.
Be that as it may, Rudy Giuliani is working both sides of the street, apparently, because he may be on the business end of a pardon himself. It will be intriguing if Trump pardons Giuliani and Giuliani then goes on to represent Trump as his impeachment lawyer. That will be a sight to be seen. You thought the Four Seasons Landscaping and the hair dye were something, wait for Impeachment II.
There’s only one hang up in this pardon fest and that’s whether there’s any staff to process it. Does Ivanka type? CNN:
The pardons are one of several items Trump must complete before his presidency ends in days. White House officials also still have executive orders prepared, and the President is still hopeful to declassify information related to the Russia probe before he leaves office. But with a waning number of administration officials still in jobs, the likelihood that any of it gets done seemed to be shrinking.–The January 6 riots that led to Trump’s second impeachment have complicated his desire to pardon himself, his kids and personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. At this point, aides do not think he will do so, but caution only Trump knows what he will do with his last bit of presidential power before he is officially out of office at noon on January 20.–
After the riots, advisers encouraged Trump to forgo a self-pardon because it would appear like he was guilty of something, according to one person familiar with the conversations. Several of Trump’s closest advisers have also urged him not to grant clemency to anyone involved in the siege on the US Capitol, despite Trump’s initial stance that those involved had done nothing wrong.–“There are a lot of people urging the President to pardon the folks” involved in the insurrection, Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Graham said Sunday on Fox News. “To seek a pardon of these people would be wrong.”
God save us from what this man might do before Wednesday noon!
Corruption on steroids.
12th hour grifting with a nice bit of corruption. Typical Trump.
I wonder why he’s stopping at a hundred?
I hear Al Capone is on the list. John Dillinger,Gacy, Ted Bundy, melania…some people say.
The pardons will be awful – immoral and corrupt, and an affront to our nation. That said, Trump somehow manages to mess everything up, and every corrupt move he makes brings destruction down on his allies. So we’ll see. What inept move with the pardons will create even more problems for him?
He can issue them until he dies, on freakin’ napkins!
He can’t issue them after he leaves office. And he can’t pardon himself, or anyone else who was impeached.
Technically he can write pardons on napkins, I’m not even sure there needs to be a date on the damn thing, just his signature and “I hereby pardon (insert name)” so he would be able to pass those around until the day he croaks.
I’m sure he will, if not for money, then simply for the fun of it.
You’re saying he can grant pardons even when he’s out of office?
I wouldn’t put it past him to try. And if DOJ said nope, him then claiming he DID issue it before noon on the 20th and that it (or they if it’s a batch of pardons) mistakenly got shoved into a box of his personal effects from the Oval, the President’s study off of the Oval etc. by some aide in the last minute rush to get his stuff packed!
No, he can’t.
I saw an individual who was in the upper echelon of the DOJ office that handles pardons under both the Bush 43 and Obama administrations on Lawrence O’Donnell last week. He said a pardon can even be issued verbally. The (supposed) catch is that a verbal or “scrawled on a napkin” pardon with no date still requires proof it was granted and when. Basically he said there have to be witnesses to the pardon other than a President and the person(s) pardoned. Of course, this is Trump and his band of crooks we are talking about not to mention the kinds of despicable crooks he’d pardon on the way out the door. You know – LIARS. Trump I think needs to tell a lie at least once a minute or he’ll keel over and be dead before he hits the floor. I DO think reports he’s worried about his own legal exposure have substance to him and have said so. However I’ve also said in these last days as the enormity of the change in his life coming (now) less than 48 hours from now overwhelms him that all bets are off. Especially since he’s such a vindictive s.o.b. and is furious that the GOP didn’t figure out a way to keep in in Office. Trump is EXACTLY the type of person who, feeling screwed by the GOP (overall) would issue a batch of outrageous pardons just to provoke years of outrage against every GOP elected official who enabled him for the past four years. Basically, screw the whole GOP as badly as he can. It’s all too easy for me to imagine Trump doing such a thing. Hell, he probably laments the fact Charlie Manson is already dead, although now that I think of it it’s been established that pardons can be issued posthumously. He might not have twitter, FB or Parler but he still has his email list and can send out a blast, noting that Manson “was treated very unfairly”, and that “he had some good ideas.” That would be more than enough to make his white supremacy supporters fight even harder to create Manson’s “Helter Skelter.”
One of the legal pundits on MSNBC said that a Pres. has unlimited power with pardons, doesn’t require oversight by anyone and could write them on a napkin with crayon and they’d still be legal. This needs to be changed.
I ask myself, why would the rich & powerful want to change anything?
That’s unknown and untested and probably wouldn’t stand up but it’s a very very exciting theory for the media to promote to get everyone all riled up.
As I write this, in just under 48 hours, we will have a new president. One with honor and integrity, one who will be someone we can look up to rather than down on. I hope that I can watch.
Why impeaching was important in one sense. The impeachment of Trump and thus any acts (pardons too) from Trump promoting and resulting from a seditious act and insurrection might be reviewed by SCOTUS. Let them have some fun.
More fun when the truth drips out drip by drip.
Eventually every homo sapien on planet earth learns you can run but you cannot hide. Technology. Ouch.