Trump Can Pardon Whomever He Wants—Except This MAGA Cause Célèbre
One incarcerated Kraken foot soldier is beyond his power to free.
One MAGA Left Behind
Donald Trump is on a pardon spree.
From a labor union leader who failed to report hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts to eccentric reality star and bank fraudster Todd Chrisley, anyone affiliated with Trump who’s in federal legal jeopardy stands a good chance of getting legal reprieve these days.
On Wednesday, Trump even mulled pardoning the Michigan men who plotted to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Even as I’m writing this newsletter, it’s being reported that he’s pardoning a former congressman from New York who served seven months for tax crimes, and commuting the sentence of Larry Hoover, the Chicago gang leader and convicted murderer currently serving multiple life sentences at the supermax prison in Florence, Colorado. After my first draft was sent in, there were even more. And then again, some more came in as I was adjudicating edits.
Flush with the power of his office, Trump is handing out pardons as eagerly as ex-sheriff Scott Jenkins handed out bogus deputy badges in exchange for $75,000. And Jenkins got a pardon too!
“No MAGA left behind,” Ed Martin, the Justice Department’s pardon adviser, tweeted after Jenkins’s pardon.
Except, there is one MAGA being left behind. And it’s driving some folks in that movement nuts.