CRIMINALITY AS CREDENTIAL
Trump’s pardons are a map of what he values
WHEN I READ that Donald Trump had pardoned former Republican congressman Stephen Buyer, it made me sick. Not physically ill but the deep revulsion I often feel in the mornings when I’m lying in bed in a dark, silent room when my sense is the world isn’t quite awake—at least, my world isn’t. But I lie there reading the latest news, getting caught up with Trump’s most recent atrocities. I use that word with purpose. Our bodies and minds are under attack every day, as we’re pummeled with news of injustice, corruption, wickedness, and pure stupidity.
It wasn’t that I was surprised by Buyer’s pardon. We are long past surprise. And Buyer wasn’t some poor soul crushed by Trump’s cruelty. He was a former member of Congress convicted of insider trading—of using confidential information for profit. Prosecutors said he made more than $300,000 from illegal trades tied to corporate merger information, including the Sprint-T-Mobile merger. He was sentenced to 22 months in prison. (Why is it that these sentences for white-collar crime are a slap on the wrist?) The Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal in May, 2025. That June, Trump gave him a full, unconditional pardon. Of course.
Every single day, we are hammered with Trump’s corruption, his self-dealing, his contempt for the law, and his endless rewarding of unethical, illegal, and criminal behavior. But Buyer’s pardon stopped me for a moment because it felt like one more piece of a much larger picture—and it’s that larger picture that in some ways we’re becoming immune to. It’s just another pardon for a greedy mercenary, just another corrupt billion in the Trump family’s pockets, just another incompetent sycophant appointed to a critical position, while we watch on.
Take for example, Trump donor/supporter Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) William J. Pulte, whom Trump has now appointed Acting Director of National Intelligence. Pulte has absolutely no qualifications or experience that is mandated by law for this critical role in our security. (Trump used a technicality of Pulte being “Acting Director” and not the permanent one…yet.) Not to mention Pulte’s own prominent family has publicly distanced themselves from him. As The New York Times reported… “These days, one of Bill Pulte’s primary connections to the residential real estate business is a group of five aging mobile home parks he owns in Florida, some badly in need of repair.” How appropriate for a Trump man. (Meow.)
And then there’s Todd Blanche. As Robert Reich said, “Let me get right to the point. The Senate should not confirm Todd Blanche as attorney general.
“Blanche, who used to be Trump’s private lawyer, has treated the Justice Department as Trump’s private law firm. He still believes that Trump — rather than the United States — is his client.
“At the very least, the Senate should insist, as a condition of confirming Blanche, that the May 19 deal Blanche devised to immunize Trump and his family from all future prosecutions — which Blanche alone signed — be nullified.
“The purpose of that immunity deal — which resulted from Trump’s own bizarre lawsuit against the IRS — should by now be clear. It’s to prevent any future government inquiry into the corrupt dealings of Trump and his family.”
But not just that travesty. Trump rewarded Blanche’s obsequious loyalty with his DOJ position, which has allowed Blanche to not only protect Trump from the release of the unredacted Epstein Files (with the sexual abusers names—not the victims—being protected) but also other rich, powerful predators who assaulted/molested/raped these young women.
Never mind questions of integrity and honor. Is there a plan in place for Trump to reward, through pardon, all these loyalists who continue to do his corrupt bidding?
My—and I’m sure your—hope is that Trump and his family are held accountable when the world is sane again. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. I want to see every one of them in orange jumpsuits. All those women with their Mar-a-Lago faces and impossibly high heels that must cripple them—and those smarmy sons of his. Orange is the new black.
***
ONE THING THAT is apparent throughout history is that people like Trump and his friends have no interest in doing good in the world or taking care of anyone besides themselves. They have no thought of civic or humanitarian duty. They literally don’t care about anyone but themselves. Part of the horror of what’s happened in our country is watching the MAGA people who have been so completely fooled by Trump that it’s like their brains were sucked into his piehole vacuum of a mouth. They have no critical reasoning left as they live inside his flesh. It’s not their fault that Rupert Murdoch’s version of American politics and culture has rendered them unable to discern truth from lies.
Trump doesn’t merely excuse criminality. He rewards it. He turns it into a credential. And it got me thinking: Of all the miscreants Trump has pardoned, who exactly are these people?
But first, take note: Not every presidential pardon is corrupt. The pardon power exists for a reason. It can correct injustice, temper cruelty, and recognize when the legal system has failed. Other presidents have issued controversial acts of clemency, even shameful ones. Andrew Johnson pardoned many former Confederates after the Civil War. That was not the same kind of personal graft machine, but morally and historically it was catastrophic: It helped restore power to traitors and white supremacists rather than remake the South on the basis of justice.
Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon before Nixon could face possible prosecution for Watergate. (We The People were told that an American president could not be sent to prison. I totally disagree with that now.) George H. W. Bush pardoned six figures from the Iran-Contra scandal, the Reagan-era scheme involving secret arms sales to Iran and support for Contra rebels in Nicaragua despite congressional restrictions. Bill Clinton pardoned Marc Rich, the fugitive commodities trader indicted on tax-evasion and illegal-trading charges who had fled the country rather than face trial—and he didn’t pardon one of his and Hillary’s (former) best friends, Webb Hubbell, who embezzled money from his and Hillary’s law firm. George W. Bush commuted Scooter Libby’s prison sentence after Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, was convicted of perjury and obstruction in the Valerie Plame CIA leak investigation. Trump later gave Libby a full pardon.
So, no, Trump didn’t invent the shameful pardon, but he did something worse. He made the shame the point. Other presidents have abused the pardon power. Trump has industrialized the abuse.
Before the current-term pardon spree, there was the first-term round of scoundrels, who were Trump’s gang of unscrupulous bad players. Roger Stone was convicted of obstruction, five counts of making false statements, and witness tampering. (Not to mention how just plain gross he is.) Paul Manafort’s cases involved tax fraud, bank fraud, foreign bank accounts, conspiracy, and witness tampering. Steve Bannon was charged in the “We Build the Wall” case with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering before Trump pardoned him. Charles Kushner, Jared Kushner’s father, was convicted of 18 federal felonies, including tax evasion, illegal campaign contributions, and witness retaliation. (In case you didn’t know: Kushner hired a sex worker to seduce his brother-in-law, who was cooperating with federal investigators. He videotaped the encounter and mailed it to his own sister to intimidate her husband.) The Blackwater contractors were convicted in connection with the killing of Iraqi civilians; DOJ lists Nicholas Slatten’s offense as first-degree murder and the others’ as voluntary manslaughter and firearms-related crimes. And this is just skating on the surface for these guys.
P.S. And after Trump pardoned Kushner, he appointed him the Ambassador to France. The French must hate him—and it’s so humiliating for us as a country. The Trumps and the Kushners are two of the real crime families of New York.
This is not justice. It’s like Trump bellowing on a bullhorn—or one of his tweets on Truth Social: Lie for me. Protect me. Serve me. Flatter me. Fund me. Fight for me. Embody my contempt for the law. And I’ll take care of you.
In the pardon sequel of his current presidency, Trump widened his criminal circle. The categories are:
January 6 defendants
This is the biggest bucket by far. On his first day back in office, Trump granted sweeping clemency to nearly 1,600 people convicted or charged in connection with the January 6 attack on the Capitol. That alone establishes the pattern: Violence on behalf of Trump can be forgiven by Trump. By now, most readers have read plenty about the people convicted in Trump’s attempted coup—too many of whom have been charged with or convicted of other crimes since then. One of them—Elias Irizarry—just landed a job at the Pentagon. Another, Andrew Paul Johnson, was later convicted in Florida on five counts of child molestation in February, 2026, and then sentenced to life in prison the next month. And he reportedly attempted to use anticipated government compensation funds to bribe his victim into silence.
Across the numerous post-clemency cases involving January 6 defendants researchers and watchdogs have tracked, the newly committed offenses run the gamut from severe felonies to public safety violations:
1. Violent & Threatening Behavior: Stalking, domestic violence, and physical assault.
2. Property Crimes: Home invasion, grand larceny, and severe property damage.
3. Weapons & Drugs: Illegal firearms possession, driving under the influence (DUI), and public intoxication
Political allies and Republican figures
This bucket includes Rod Blagojevich, Brian Kelsey, Devon Archer, Michael Grimm, John Rowland, George Santos, Stephen Buyer, and others. Buyer is the one who started me down the road of this particular subset of Trump corruption. And Santos, of course, is the bizarre and disgraced former U.S. Representative from New York. His weird inappropriateness spans his fabricated life story, his expulsion from Congress, his prison sentence, and the legal and ethical wreckage around him.
We can safely say that Trump never met a criminal he didn’t like.
Wealthy executives, financial criminals, and crypto figures
This bucket includes Changpeng Zhao, Trevor Milton who became infamous for orchestrating a massive corporate fraud scheme; Benjamin Delo, BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes and CTO Samuel Reed who were both convicted of willfully failing to implement anti-money laundering protocols at their crypto exchange; Terren Peizer who was convicted of securities fraud and insider trading for using an automated stock trading plan to avoid over $12.5 million in personal losses; David Gentile who was convicted of a $1.6 billion Ponzi-like wire and securities fraud scheme; Joseph Lewis, and others. This is where the corruption argument becomes impossible to miss, because the offenses often involve securities fraud, Bank Secrecy Act violations, money laundering, insider trading, tax evasion, or fraud.
The Zhao/Binance/Trump-family crypto connection is especially nauseating. AP has reported that Trump’s family has profited heavily from crypto ventures, including World Liberty Financial, which is tied to the Trump family. The New Yorker’s David D. Kirkpatrick reported that Trump-family profiteering since Trump’s return to office had reached an estimated $4 billion. Government ethics experts cited in the article stated that no other president in U.S. history has ever commercialized the office on such a massive scale.
Trump seems to especially love greedy businessmen like himself. He clears the way for them, as he has the Tech Bros.
Reality-TV, celebrity, and culture-war pardons
Todd and Julie Chrisley are useful examples of this group. The Chrisleys are reality-TV stars, best known for the now-cancelled show Chrisley Knows Best, which presented their wealthy Southern family lifestyle. They were convicted in 2022 in a federal fraud and tax case. Prosecutors said they defrauded banks out of tens of millions of dollars and evaded taxes; they were sentenced to prison—Todd to 12 years and Julie to 7 years. Trump pardoned them in May 2025.
But never to lose an opportunity to feature freaks and scandalous creeps, reality television—in this case Lifetime—has hooked up with the Chrisleys to again aid in the dumbing down of America. After the Chrisleys were released from federal prison due to a presidential pardon by Donald Trump, cameras began tracking their family reunion. The resulting unscripted series, The Chrisleys: Back to Reality, premiered on Lifetime and focused heavily on their post-incarceration life, family rifts, and prison reform efforts.
And let’s add Amazon’s Prime Video to the dispensers of brain-killing television. Julie Chrisley and her daughter Savannah were cast in a new ‘emotionally raw’ Prime Video reality series with the working title Reality Retreat, focusing on emotional healing and personal accountability. What a joke.
Anti-abortion activists convicted under the FACE Act
This is another ideological bucket. Trump pardoned anti-abortion activists convicted under the federal law protecting access to reproductive health clinics. This was not simply Trump pardoning “pro-life activists.” It was Trump folding people convicted of interfering with clinic access into his culture-war clemency machine. Got to keep the Christian nationalist terrorists happy.
Foreign strongmen and international corruption
And then there is Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras, convicted in a U.S. cocaine-trafficking case. Trump pardoning him is stunning all by itself. It tells us something about Trump’s moral universe: Criminality isn’t at all disqualifying if the person fits Trump’s politics, Trump’s interests, or Trump’s story.
Once you start looking at the names, the pattern becomes impossible to miss. Trump pardoned people who lied. People who obstructed. People who committed fraud. People who abused public trust. People who made money illegally. People who intimidated others. People who served his politics. People who donated to his funds or causes. People who fit his story of grievance, persecution, domination, and revenge. This isn’t a random collection of pardons; it’s a map of Donald Trump’s personal concept of morality.
Not every Trump pardon can be reduced to a direct payoff. That would be too simple. What the pardons reveal is something broader and more dangerous: a system in which money, loyalty, silence, propaganda, violence, and political usefulness all become currencies of protection.
Trump sells access, influence, protection, and power. But the bargain is always the same: Serve the Trump world, and accountability is taken off the table.
The pardons are not separate from the rest of Trump’s autocratic project. They are part of the same system: loyalists installed in government, enemies targeted, allies protected, corruption rewarded, and accountability treated as something that only applies to the other side.
Nor is Trump just pardoning convicted criminals after the fact. He is creating a political culture in which criminality, if committed in service of him, becomes a credential. This is the bigger picture we risk losing when we read each new outrage as just another headline. A pardon here. A crypto deal there. A corrupt ally rewarded. A convicted insider trader forgiven. A January 6 defendant absolved. A fraudster recast as a victim. A loyalist made whole. Every day brings another piece of this system of rewards for people who are doing bad things. But taken together, these pieces form a system.
The pardon power was supposed to be one of the presidency’s most solemn responsibilities. In Trump’s hands, it has become something else entirely. A reward, a signal, a transaction, a medal for serving the strongman. And in his America, accountability is for enemies. Protection is for allies. The law is for suckers.
We can’t let ourselves say, it’s just another day in Trump Land. We can’t let ourselves feel or believe this is in any way normal.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Horrors! 😱 So very sorry that there was a major editing mistake on a very important point about Todd Blanche and the Epstein victims. Not quite sure how it happened. THIS SHOULD NEVER HAVE SAID: “Trump rewarded Blanche’s obsequious loyalty with his DOJ position, which has allowed Blanche to not only protect Trump from the release of the unredacted Epstein Files (with the victims—not the sexual abusers—being protected) but also other rich, powerful predators who assaulted/molested/raped these young women.” It is corrected now as you see above.
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SECRET ENDING…
It will take decades to undo the damage he did.
"Overwhelming" is not a strong enough word...