{"id":154735,"date":"2020-03-02T12:00:27","date_gmt":"2020-03-02T12:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=154735"},"modified":"2020-02-21T08:59:21","modified_gmt":"2020-02-21T08:59:21","slug":"the-trouble-with-donald-trumps-clemencies-and-pardons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/03\/the-trouble-with-donald-trumps-clemencies-and-pardons\/","title":{"rendered":"The Trouble with Donald Trump\u2019s Clemencies and Pardons"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

The former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, whose fourteen-year prison sentence the President commuted on Tuesday [18 Feb 2020], was a contestant on \u201cCelebrity Apprentice.\u201d
Photograph by Jeff Haynes \/ Reuters<\/p><\/div>\n

19 Feb 2020 – <\/em>Authoritarianism is usually associated with a punitive spirit\u2014a leader who prosecutes and incarcerates his enemies. But there is another side to this leadership style. Authoritarians also dispense largesse, but they do it by their own whims, rather than pursuant to any system or legal rule. The point of authoritarianism is to concentrate power in the ruler, so the world knows that all actions, good and bad, harsh and generous, come from a single source. That\u2019s the real lesson\u2014a story of creeping authoritarianism\u2014of today\u2019s commutations and pardons by President Trump<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Trump commuted the sentence<\/a> of Rod Blagojevich<\/a>, the former governor of Illinois, who was eight years into a sentence of fourteen years, for various forms of corruption in office. The President pardoned several other white-collar criminals: Michael Milken, the junk-bond king, who pleaded guilty, in 1990, to securities violations; Bernard Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner, who, in 2009, pleaded guilty to charges of tax fraud and lying to the government; and Edward J. DeBartolo, Jr., a former owner of the San Francisco 49ers, who, in 1998,\u00a0pleaded guilty to concealing an extortion attempt.(Milken and Kerik served time in prison; DeBartolo was fined a million dollars and suspended for a year by the N.F.L.)<\/p>\n

Video from <\/em><\/strong>The New Yorker: President Trump Is Impeached<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>The common link among this group is that all have some personal connection to the President. Blagojevich was a contestant on \u201cCelebrity Apprentice,\u201d and he was prosecuted by Patrick Fitzgerald, a close friend of and lawyer for James Comey<\/a>, the former F.B.I. director who is a Trump enemy. Explaining his action today, Trump said of the case against Blagojevich, \u201cIt was a prosecution by the same people\u2014Comey, Fitzpatrick\u2014the same group.\u201d Milken\u2019s annual financial conferences are a favorite meeting place for, among others, Trump\u2019s moneyed friends. (Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner<\/a> spoke at last year\u2019s gathering.) Milken is also an active philanthropist, as Trump observed: \u201cWe have Mike Milken, who\u2019s gone around and done an incredible job for the world, with all of his research on cancer, and he\u2019s done this and he suffered greatly.\u00a0He paid a big price, paid a very tough price.\u201d Trump\u2019s explanation for the Kerik pardon is probably the most revealing. The President said that Kerik is \u201ca man who had many recommendations from a lot of good people. You know, oftentimes\u2014pretty much all the time\u2014I really rely on the recommendations of people that know them.\u201d Kerik was appointed police commissioner by Rudolph Giuliani<\/a>, who was then the mayor of New York and is now Trump\u2019s personal lawyer. It\u2019s safe to assume that Giuliani played a role in Trump\u2019s decision to pardon him. And DeBartolo\u2019s cause was championed by a large group of former professional football players, whose favor Trump has often sought.<\/p>\n

The former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, whose fourteen-year prison sentence was commuted, was a contestant on Trump\u2019s TV show \u201cCelebrity Apprentice.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In short, then, the pardons were entirely personal in origin, and so the granting of them was exclusively an exercise of Trump\u2019s own power. That was their point. A benevolent leader dispensed favors. The world will not change much because of these actions; of the four, only Blagojevich was still incarcerated. Some of the others may receive a few minor benefits, such as a restored right to purchase guns legally. The only cost is the further degradation of the government, moving our system closer to a cult of personality. In this era of mass incarceration, many people deserve pardons and commutations, but this is not the way to go about it. All Trump has done is to prove that he can reward his friends and his friends\u2019 friends. The chilling corollary is that he knows he can punish his enemies, too.<\/p>\n

________________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Jeffrey Toobin<\/a> has been a staff writer at <\/em>The New Yorker since 1993 and the senior legal analyst for <\/em>CNN since 2002. He is the author of, most recently, <\/em>\u201cAmerican Heiress<\/a>\u201d and is at work on a book about Robert Mueller\u2019s investigation.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 newyorker.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

19 Feb 2020 – Authoritarianism is usually associated with a punitive spirit\u2014a leader who prosecutes and incarcerates his enemies. Authoritarians also dispense largesse, but they do it by their own whims, rather than pursuant to any system or legal rule. The former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, whose fourteen-year prison sentence was commuted, was a contestant on Trump\u2019s TV show \u201cCelebrity Apprentice.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":154737,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[1023,550,555,651,546,1213,249,70,1557],"class_list":["post-154735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-banksters","tag-corruption","tag-elites","tag-justice","tag-oligarchy","tag-super-rich","tag-trump","tag-usa","tag-wall-street"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}