While the real economy is suffering, Donald Trump and his entourage have created a new one. The federal pardon process is supposed to be rigorous. Requests are submitted to the U.S. Pardon Attorney, investigations are conducted, the information is presented to the President, who makes the final decision.
When Donald Trump returned to the White House for the second time, one of his first actions was to bypass that process and start issuing pardons himself.
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Trump’s behavior gave rise to what has become known as the pardon economy. For a certain price, people with access to Trump would obtain pardons from their clients.
The White House has become concerned about the economics of forgiveness and has tightened the pardon process. What the Trump White House did not say was that it was following the letter of the law and existing processes.
Trump politicized the pardon process by pardoning his allies and Republicans.
There also appears to be a significant element of quid pro quo in some of Trump’s pardons.
Questions were also raised about whether Trump had any idea who was pardoning.
The potentially rapidly declining president did himself no favors when asked if he could pardon Changpeng “CZ” Zhao.
On 60 Minutes, Norah O’Donnell asked Trump: “Help your family make millions of dollars. It’s in this context that I want to ask you about the richest man in crypto, a billionaire known as CZ. He pleaded guilty in 2023 to violating anti-money laundering laws. Looking at this, the government of the day said that CZ had caused “significant harm to American national security,” essentially by allowing terrorist groups like Hamas to move millions of dollars Why did you pardon him?
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