Trump's Flurry of Pardons Signals a Wholesale Effort to Redefine Crime
President Trump is employing the vast power of his office to redefine criminality — using pardons to inoculate criminals he happens to like, downplaying corruption and fraud as crimes and seeking to stigmatize political opponents by labeling them criminals.
In the past few days, Mr. Trump has offered pardons or clemency to more than two dozen people embraced by his obstreperous right-wing base, or favored by people in his orbit. Most are political allies, some are former officeholders accused of abusing power for personal gain, and almost all were convicted of white-collar crimes like fraud, tax evasion and campaign finance violations — not far removed from accusations Mr. Trump himself has faced.
'No MAGA left behind,' crowed Ed Martin, the pardon attorney at the Justice Department who suggested that the department should investigate Mr. Trump's adversaries to shame them if there was insufficient evidence to charge them.
Mr. Trump has said the current wave of pardons is justified by President Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s last-minute reprieves for inmates on federal death row, and pardons he issued to his family — which Mr. Trump called 'disgraceful.' The new pardons are necessary to right the wrongs of a politicized Biden Justice Department that twice indicted him, he has claimed.
Yet, critics say, Mr. Trump has used the pardon powers of the presidency to not only settle accounts, as Mr. Biden did, but to burn the ledger.
'Granting pardons or commuting sentences of public officials or other white-collar criminals convicted of fraud, tax evasion and other breaches of trust is likely to have the effect of normalizing nonviolent crimes,' said Barbara L. McQuade, a University of Michigan law professor who served as a U.S. attorney in the state during the Obama administration.
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