If you’re not corrupt, you generally don’t have to say certain things.
Let’s take a look at ex-NYC mayor Eric Adams who, while dealing with plenty of corruption investigations and allegations, protested his innocence by saying stuff no one who wasn’t hip deep in corruption would ever say:
“Investigators have not indicated to us the mayor or his staff are targets of any investigation,” the mayor’s chief counsel, Lisa Zornberg, said in a statement. “As a former member of law enforcement, the mayor has repeatedly made clear that all members of the team need to follow the law.”
This isn’t something that’s nuanced or complex. Most people in any supervisory position never need to tell their subordinates to not break the law. It’s the lowest of low bars that doesn’t even deserve comment, much less “repeatedly.” On the rare occasion that someone does break the law, you may want to reinforce this concept.
But this statement suggests a lot of people working for the mayor really wanted to break the law, but were perhaps occasionally deterred by the “repeated” reminder that breaking the law wasn’t acceptable. Not that this repeated reminder worked. Plenty of people in Mayor Adams’ orbit were subjects of law enforcement investigations. So, this exhortation seems less like a deterrent and more like the laziest form of plausible deniability.
President Trump has repeatedly promised his top administration officials pardons before he leaves office, according to people who have heard his comments.
“I’ll pardon everyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval,” Trump said in a recent meeting to laughs, according to people with knowledge of the comments. That radius appears to be expanding as the president repeats the line. Another person who met with Trump earlier this year said the president quipped about pardoning anyone who had come within 10 feet.
In one conversation with advisers in the dining room next to the Oval Office last year, Trump said he would host a news conference and announce mass pardons before he left office, some of the people said.
It’s not just a question of “why would you say that?” It’s also a question of “why would you feel the need to say that?”
We already know Trump isn’t afraid to use his pardon powers to reward supporters and financial benefactors. His mass pardon of January 6 insurrectionists was startling in its transparent self-interest. Trump now appears to be offering pre-emptive pardons, which is only going to encourage his officials to break more laws and engage in more open corruption, now that they’ve been assured they’ll never be punished for it.
“The Wall Street Journal should learn to take a joke, however, the President’s pardon power is absolute,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said.
That deflection is just as damning as Trump’s own statements. Even if he’s just making a joke (something that’s almost impossible to believe since Trump seems incapable of humor, much less self-deprecating humor), it’s an incredibly stupid joke to make when he’s already abused this power to pardon a group of people who committed federal crimes in hopes of illegally elevating him to the position of president despite losing the election.
This “it’s just a joke” deflection is further undercut by the press secretary’s next words: Trump’s “pardon power is absolute.” That says that even if Trump isn’t joking, these pardons are going to happen and no one can stop them from happening.
That’s what really matters here. Trump has nothing to fear from anyone. The Supreme Court has already blessed a lot of his theories of absolute executive power. The only thing stopping Trump from pardoning people who commit crimes on his behalf is shame, and he’s entirely devoid of that human quality.
We can already see the scorched earth this political party will leave behind if it’s forced from office in the next election. All we can hope is that Trump fails to follow through with his pardon threat, allowing a bunch of loyalists to be punished for his actions. And that end result is all but assured. Trump has fired plenty of loyalists and yet still has people willing to be thrown under the bus for the cause. Wait, that’s not entirely accurate. Trump is surrounded by loyalists who are willing to ask where each bus is located and when they should lie down under the wheels.
Of course, this is all win-win for Trump. If he doesn’t pardon anyone, those punished for enabling him will be treated as martyrs. And if he does wipe the slate clean as he exits the Oval Office, he’ll once again escape the accountability that is supposed to come with the position. Given what’s been said by Trump, I’d expect his underlings to amp up their illegal efforts. When you have nothing to lose but your soul, it makes sense to sell it while it’s still a seller’s market.
60 Minutes is under new management and things are getting stupid faster than you might expect. Last night’s episode featured President Trump, which is currently being described as “nuts.” There are all sorts of crazy moments to call out, but let’s start with the recursively meta nonsense.
60 Minutes edited out a segment where Donald Trump tells them to edit out a segment in which he brags about getting CBS to pay him because of them editing out part of an answer by Kamala Harris, and he notes that CBS clearly did the wrong thing in editing Harris in the same fucking sentence he tells them to edit out what he’s saying.
It is so fucking stupid.
As you’ll no doubt recall, last year, Trump sued CBS over the show. Right before last year’s election, 60 Minutes had interviewed Kamala Harris. As every such news show does, it had edited the interview down to make it fit into the TV time slot. MAGA culture warriors, desperate for anything to culture war about, started screaming that 60 Minutes had edited Harris to sound more coherent. This was nonsense.
What had happened was that in one question, Harris had given a long answer. CBS broadcast part of the answer on 60 Minutes. But it had broadcast a different part of that answer during the CBS Sunday morning show, Face the Nation. This… happens all the time. The full answer was too long. They edited it down to a shorter bit. The two different broadcasts chose different parts. That’s basic, fundamental, editorial discretion.
Given how often Trump is edited to make him sound more coherent, he should appreciate this. But Trump will never, ever care about how much leeway he is given and will always seek to gain whatever advantage he can. So he sued, claiming it was “election interference,” which it wasn’t. And even if it was (it wasn’t) he still won the election.
But Trump’s censor in chief Brendan Carr made it clear that the only way he’d approve Paramount’s (owner of CBS) sale to Skydance was if they first bribed Trump by agreeing to settle this frivolous case. So they paid a $16 million bribe just to get the case settled, while agreeing to install a Trump lackey as an internal censor at the network.
Trump’s full interview was 73 minutes long, but 60 Minutes only aired 28 minutes of it. They then did release the longer interview online along with a transcript, which caused people to look at what was edited. And that included this segment:
TRUMP: And actually 60 Minutes paid me a lotta money. And you don’t have to put this on, because I don’t wanna embarrass you, and I’m sure you’re not– you have a great– I think you have a great, new leader, frankly, who’s the young woman that’s leading your whole enterprise is a great– from what I know.
I don’t know her, but I hear she’s a great person. But 60 Minutes was forced to pay me– a lot of money because they took her answer out that was so bad, it was election-changing, two nights before the election. And they put a new answer in. And they paid me a lot of money for that. You can’t have fake news. You’ve gotta have legit news. And I think that it’s happening. I see–
NORAH O’DONNELL: Mr. President–
TRUMP: –I see good things happening in the news. I really do. And I think one of the best things to happen is this show and new ownership, CBS and new ownership. I think it’s the greatest thing that’s happened in a long time to a free and open and good press.
Again, I feel the need to repeat this because it is so incredibly stupid. Literally in the same sentence where he says CBS had to pay him “a lotta money” because it edited a 60 Minutes interview, he tells them to edit the interview not to air that section. Then he claims “you can’t have fake news.” Even though what he’s claiming is literally fake news. They didn’t pay him because they changed the answer. They paid him to get their merger done. Everyone knows it.
And, yes, I’m sure some people will try to defend this, but come on. There’s no defense. The President views everything in simple terms: “if it helps me, it’s good, if it doesn’t, it should be illegal.” It’s a narcissistic simpleton’s understanding of the world. And he’s in charge. It’s fucking crazy.
Speaking of fucking crazy, there were so many other crazy bits in the interview, but let’s just call out two. After all, the request to edit the section of the interview, while hypocritical, is nothing compared to the blatant corruption he admits to, or his desire to unleash the American war machine on American people.
Let’s start with this: just last week, MAGA loyalist Rep. James Comer released what may be the least self-aware report ever, screaming about how White House aides covered up Joe Biden’s mental and physical decline and because of that he didn’t know who he was pardoning, meaning those pardons should be null and void.
This comes the same week that people are raising serious questions about White House aides covering up the true nature of Trump’s physical and mental decline. And, now he’s admitting he has no idea who he’s pardoning—the very thing the Comer report claims means the pardons are void.
Two weeks ago, Trump (or whoever within the White House) pardoned CZ, the founder of Binance, who had pleaded guilty to money laundering. Though, when asked about it that day, Trump appeared to have no idea who CZ was, even though he had also (just coincidentally) given billions to the Trump family’s cryptocurrency business.
And even though he’d flubbed that question when he was asked about it right after the pardon was announced, when 60 Minutes asked him about it, he doubled down—seemingly proud of his ignorance. Which is bold, considering his administration’s entire argument against Biden’s pardons rests on the claim that Biden didn’t know who he was pardoning:
O'DONNELL: Why did you pardon Changpeng Zhao?TRUMP: Are you ready? I don't know who he isO'DONNELL: His crypto exchange Binance helped facilitate a $2b purchase of World Liberty Financial's stablecoin. And they you pardoned him.TRUMP: Here's the thing — I know nothing about it
From the full (unedited) transcript, which is way worse than that short clip above:
NORAH O’DONNELL: This is a question about pardons. The Trump family is now perhaps more associated with cryptocurrency than real estate. You and your son– your sons, Don Jr. and Eric, have formed World Liberty Financial with the Witkoff family.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Right.
NORAH O’DONNELL: Helping to make your family millions of dollars. It’s in that context that I do wanna ask you about crypto’s richest man, a billionaire known as C.Z. He pled guilty in 2023 to violating anti-money laundering laws.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Right.
NORAH O’DONNELL: Looked at this, the government at the time said that C.Z. had caused “significant harm to U.S. national security”, essentially by allowing terrorist groups like Hamas to move millions of dollars around. Why did you pardon him?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Okay, are you ready?I don’t know who he is.
Trump’s own administration is claiming Biden’s pardons are invalid because he didn’t know who he was pardoning. And Trump just proudly announced, on camera, that he has no idea who CZ is.
Then he admits that his sons basically told him to do this for their crypto business:
My sons are involved in crypto much more than I– me. I– I know very little about it, other than one thing. It’s a huge industry. And if we’re not gonna be the head of it, China, Japan, or someplace else is. So I am behind it 100%. This man was, in my opinion, from what I was told, this is, you know, a four-month sentence.
But this man was treated really badly by the Biden administration. And he was given a jail term. He’s highly respected. He’s a very successful guy. They sent him to jail and they really set him up. That’s my opinion. I was told about it.
By who? Who told you about it? A good reporter would have stepped in and asked that question, but this is the new Bari Weiss 60 Minutes where you won’t see follow-ups like that. Or if you did, they’d be edited out.
He continues:
I was told that he was a victim, just like I was and just like many other people, of a vicious, horrible group of people in the Biden administration.
Again, “who told you this?” is the next question any reporter should be asking. O’Donnell did not. Though she at least did point out that he pleaded guilty to allowing terrorist groups to engage in money laundering, which seems notable for a guy who keeps talking about fighting crime.
NORAH O’DONNELL: The government had accused him of “significant harm to U.S. national security”–
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: That’s the Biden government.
NORAH O’DONNELL: Okay. Allowing U.S. terrorist groups to, you know, essentially move millions of dollars around. He pled guilty to anti-money laundering laws. That was in 2023. Then in 2025 his crypto exchange, Binance, helped facilitate a $2 billion purchase of World Liberty Financial’s stablecoin. And then you pardoned C.Z. How do you address the appearance of pay for play?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, here’s the thing,I know nothing about it because I’m too busydoing the other–
Um. Isn’t that exactly why your administration is claiming Biden’s pardons don’t count?
NORAH O’DONNELL: But he got a pardon–
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I can only tell you that–
NORAH O’DONNELL: He got a pardon–
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Norah, I can only tell you this.My sons are into it. I’m glad they are, because it’s probably a great industry, crypto. I think it’s good. You know, they’re running a business, they’re not in government. And they’re good– my one son is a number one bestseller now.
So here Trump admits (1) he doesn’t know who CZ is, then (2) admits that basically his sons are the ones into cryptocurrency and “not in government,” and effectively admits that (3) he pardoned CZ on the advice of his sons, who directly profit from the pardon through their cryptocurrency business, while claiming ignorance of the entire arrangement.
This isn’t just yet another example of the most corrupt pay-for-play administration in the history of the United States but one that literally does everything it falsely accuses past administrations of doing, but way worse. Just as they’re claiming that Biden’s pardons weren’t valid, Trump is effectively admitting he has no idea who he’s pardoning, but he’s doing it to help his corrupt sons.
And I won’t even get into the frenzy MAGA continues to go through about Hunter Biden supposedly enriching himself by using his father’s name. Remember all those stories claiming payoffs to the “Biden family”? Funny how those folks are all silent about the Trump family (1) actually doing what they falsely accused Biden of doing and (2) doing it way, way, way worse.
Speaking of crime, another part of the interview involves the President falsely claiming that immigration enforcement is targeting criminals (leaving aside that he keeps pardoning criminals).
When O’Donnell asks about CBP’s tactics in Chicago—tear-gassing residential neighborhoods, smashing car windows—Trump’s response is to call for more violence:
O'DONNELL: Americans have been watching videos of ICE tackling a young mother, tear gas being used in a Chicago residential neighborhood, and the smashing of car windows. Have some of these raids gone too far?TRUMP: No. I think they haven't gone far enough.
NORAH O’DONNELL: More recently, Americans have been watching videos of ICE tackling a young mother, tear gas being used in a Chicago residential neighborhood, and the smashing of car windows. Have some of these raids gone too far?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: No. I think they haven’t gone far enough because we’ve been held back by the– by the judges, by the liberal judges that were put in by Biden and by Obama. We’ve been held–
NORAH O’DONNELL: You’re okay with those tactics?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Yeah, because you have to get the people out. You know, you have to look at the people. Many of them are murderers. Many of them are people that were thrown outta their countries because they were, you know, criminals. Many of them are people from jails and prisons. Many of them are people from frankly mental institutions. I feel badly about that, but they’re released from insane asylums. You know why? Because they’re killers.
Note the question: she’s asking him about ICE (actually CBP) tear gassing residential neighborhoods and smashing car windows. And he says “they haven’t gone far enough.” He literally thinks he should be able to have the military attack Americans.
And he’s completely full of shit about targeting “criminals and murderers.” The vast, vast majority of them are not. Over 90% of those being grabbed have never been convicted of a violent crime. We already know that Trump’s advisor Stephen Miller has told immigration officials to just grab anyone they can and to ignore any efforts to target actual criminals (because Miller knows there just aren’t that many in reality—it was all a myth they fed Fox News to get Trump elected).
But Trump is so disconnected from reality he doesn’t know that.
And speaking of disconnected from reality: he still thinks migrants “seeking asylum” means they’re literally from mental institutions. He’s been making this claim for years. No one has corrected him. No reporter has asked him to clarify. The President of the United States genuinely appears to believe that foreign governments are emptying psych wards and shipping patients to America because they’re “seeking asylum.”
So let’s recap: in a single interview, the President (1) suggests CBS edit out his complaints about CBS editing while simultaneously claiming CBS’s past editing was corrupt enough to sue over, (2) admits he pardoned someone he’s never met on the advice of unnamed people who are most likely his sons who profit directly from that pardon—the exact scenario his own party claims invalidates Biden’s pardons, and (3) endorses escalating violence against American citizens in residential neighborhoods while lying about who’s being targeted and seemingly unable to comprehend who the violence is actually being used against.
We have a President so catastrophically disconnected from reality that he’ll pardon anyone his sons tell him to, endorse any level of violence his advisors suggest, and contradict himself in the same sentence without noticing. The people around him—his kids, his advisors, his handlers—do the things they’ve spent years accusing others of doing (except way worse), and Trump happily goes along with it because he either doesn’t understand or doesn’t care. They get away with it, and they do it again, more brazenly.
The media that’s supposed to be holding him accountable has instead hired a Trump-approved censor to monitor their coverage and installed an inexperienced right-wing propagandist to run their newsroom. So when Trump sits down for an interview and admits on camera that he’s doing exactly what he’s claiming others should be jailed for… they don’t follow up or ask any tough questions.
In Trumpworld, loyalty trumps all — even deeply held beliefs about crime and punishment. Shower Trump with praise and you can get away with murder (or at least drug trafficking). But dare to criticize him, and no punishment is too harsh. Making decisions based on who most inflated your ego may not seem like the most effective approach to governing, but it’s where we are.
Anyway, all of the following may be true:
Ross Ulbricht was almost certainly over-sentenced for the crimes he was convicted of.
Ross Ulbricht also likely did some other awful stuff which could justify criminal punishment, for which he was never actually convicted.
The case against Ross Ulbricht was a sloppy mess which the judicial system let slide.
As you’ve likely heard from other news sources, on Tuesday Donald Trump pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the original “dark web” Silk Road marketplace. This wasn’t all that surprising, given that supporters of the “Free Ross Ulbricht” movement had spent years sucking up to Trump, and he had promised to do this, even as (at the very same time) he has insisted over and over again that drug dealers deserve the death penalty (sometimes even without due process).
Yes, there are arguments that the vast majority of users for Silk Road were using it to engage in illegal behavior, but even so, it seems that the majority of the blame should be placed on those actually using the platform to violate the law, rather than pinning it to the guy running the marketplace (FWIW, Section 230 doesn’t really apply here, since it exempts federal criminal law, but the general principle of pinning the liability on the party actually doing the thing seems like it should still be true).
When you see that the average sentence for drug dealers is 77 months, it does feel that multiple life sentences may seem a bit harsh.
Lots of people will point to the claims of Ulbricht trying to take out a hit on some people (which doesn’t seem particularly true to his supposedly Libertarian outlook), but he wasn’t convicted of that, and I’m uncomfortable with him being sentenced for things he wasn’t actually convicted of doing.
So, on the whole, I think there is a reasonable argument that Ulbricht’s sentence was way too strict for the thing he was actually convicted of, but also that he did some pretty bad shit at the same time that would give an ordinary president pause.
But nuance and proportionality have little place in the upside-down world of Trumpian justice. This was solely a matter of the leaders of the Free Ross campaign correctly calculating that their best chance to achieve their goals was to ingratiate themselves with Trump and hope he won the election. And it worked.
But it certainly makes a mockery of Trump’s ridiculously hardline positions on drug dealers and how to treat them. However, it fits with a clear pattern: just look at Trump’s pardon of the January 6th insurrectionists who either planned or did attack Capitol police officers while simultaneously pretending that he’s all about defending the police. The only consistency is fealty to Trump’s fragile ego.
If you pledge undying loyalty to Trump, you may be able to get away with all sorts of lawlessness. If you don’t, then anything you do may be considered unlawful. It seems like a pretty bad way to run a country, but it’s what we get for the foreseeable future. It creates an environment where criminality is excused as long as you pledge fealty to the president. Left unchecked, this attitude will rot away the foundations of our justice system and replace the rule of law with the rule of ego.
In a big interview with the German media outlet Der Spiegel, President Obama was asked about his interest in pardoning Ed Snowden in response to the big campaign to get him pardoned. Obama’s response was that he could not, since Snowden has not been convicted yet:
ARD/SPIEGEL: Are you going to pardon Edward Snowden?
Obama: I can’t pardon somebody who hasn’t gone before a court and presented themselves, so that’s not something that I would comment on at this point. I think that Mr. Snowden raised some legitimate concerns. How he did it was something that did not follow the procedures and practices of our intelligence community. If everybody took the approach that I make my own decisions about these issues, then it would be very hard to have an organized government or any kind of national security system.
At the point at which Mr. Snowden wants to present himself before the legal authorities and make his arguments or have his lawyers make his arguments, then I think those issues come into play. Until that time, what I’ve tried to suggest — both to the American people, but also to the world — is that we do have to balance this issue of privacy and security. Those who pretend that there’s no balance that has to be struck and think we can take a 100-percent absolutist approach to protecting privacy don’t recognize that governments are going to be under an enormous burden to prevent the kinds of terrorist acts that not only harm individuals, but also can distort our society and our politics in very dangerous ways.
And those who think that security is the only thing and don’t care about privacy also have it wrong.
This is simply incorrect — as is known to anyone who remembers the fact that Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon before he had been indicted.
And it appears that the President knows this. Because, as the Pardon Snowden campaign points out, Obama pardoned three Iranian Americans who had not yet stood trial. That happened this year. So for him to say it’s impossible to pardon someone who hasn’t gone before the court is simply, factually, historically wrong.
And there’s a Supreme Court ruling that makes this abundantly clear. 150 years ago, in the ruling on Ex Parte Garland, the Supreme Court stated:
The power of pardon conferred by the Constitution upon the President is unlimited except in cases of impeachment. It extends to every offence known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment. The power is not subject to legislative control.
A pardon reaches the punishment prescribed for an offence and the guilt of the offender. If granted before conviction, it prevents any of the penalties and disabilities consequent upon conviction from attaching; if granted after conviction, it removes the penalties and disabilities and restores him to all his civil rights. It gives him a new credit and capacity. There is only this limitation to its operation: it does not restore offices forfeited, or property of interests vested in others in consequence of the conviction and judgment.
Separately, the argument that if Snowden goes to court he can “make his arguments” is also wrong. And President Obama also knows this. The Espionage Act, under which Snowden is charged, does not allow any sort of whistleblower or public interest defense at all.
As Snowden?s lawyer, the ACLU?s Ben Wizner has explained, this isn?t hypothetical. When Daniel Ellsberg stood trial under the Espionage Act, his attorney asked him why he decided to leak the Pentagon Papers to journalists. The prosecution objected to the mere question, and the judge sustained the objection. No matter the egregiousness of the government?s actions, a whistleblower?s motivation has no place in an Espionage Act trial.
That means that Snowden wouldn?t be able to explain why he felt the public should know what the NSA was doing, he wouldn?t be able to point to the federal courts that ruled against the NSA in the aftermath of the disclosures, and he wouldn?t be able to cite subsequent advances to cybersecurity. His conviction and severe punishment would be a foregone conclusion.
There may be reasons why the President doesn’t wish to grant a pardon to Snowden, but his stated reasons are completely bogus.
