Sovereigns of old tended to bear a staff
or baton as an emblem of authority, a scepter if you will. Such items were
borne on high as a sign to the rabble to heed the power of the reigning monarch
or suffer unpleasant consequences.
Hence, the king or emperor or princeling
might wave such a staff or baton during his time sitting in court, or
overseeing his lands, or instructing his people.
His authority was absolute, and the
scepter tangible.
The Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible even
beat his son Ivan the prince to death with a scepter in 1581 when his son
attempted to prevent his father from attacking his pregnant wife, who
subsequently miscarried. A warning to all who disagree with the sovereign.
Imagine if you will the substitution of a
mere power—an absolute power designed to flout established authority for real
and imagined enemies—for a physical symbol of authority, a power with so far a
reach that it could entice the most craven of enemies to lust after it.
I am referring to the presidential power
to grant reprieves (commutations) and pardons for federal crimes vested in
Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution, i.e.,
“[H]e shall have
Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States,
except in Cases of Impeachment.”
Traditionally, such pardons are requested
through a pardons office located within the DOJ Office of the Pardon Attorney.
And, also traditionally, individuals are not eligible to request a presidential
pardon until five years after completion of a sentence.
But these are not traditional times under
the reign of Emperor Donald Trump.
Let us look at the pardons Trump has
granted or is considering granting thus far during his short presidency, only
two of which were actually requested through the DOJ Office of the Pardon
Attorney:
JOE ARPAIO
— First up was former Maricopa County
Sheriff Joe Arpaio, reviled for terrorizing Latinos in Arizona for decades,
ordering that motorists be stopped for the “crime” of appearing to be illegal
immigrants (many were not even Latino) and then reported to federal immigration
authorities.
The sheriff also ran notorious outdoor
prison camps that denied inhabitants the most basic rights and protections from
the weather, both hot and cold. Some prisoners died in his care at a
suspiciously high rate. Arpaio described his electrically fenced prison for
Latinos as a “concentration camp.”
After Arpaio’s conviction for violating a
federal court injunction against detaining anyone not suspected of a state or
federal crime but prior to sentencing, less than a year ago, Trump ignored the
established pardon system and gave Sheriff Joe a Get Out of Jail Free Card.
As a follow-up, the 85-year-old Arpaio is
on the primary ballot for an August 28th Republican primary election for the
U.S. Senate from Arizona. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
SHOLOM RUBASHKIN
— Next is Sholom Rubashkin, the former
chief executive of the country’s largest ultra-kosher slaughterhouse and meat
packing plant (and the only one authorized by Israel's Orthodox rabbinate to
export beef to Israel). Rubashkin had his sentence commuted by Trump late last
year after being convicted of more than 80 counts of financial fraud in 2009
and serving eight years in prison. This followed a massive immigration raid on
the family-owned facility in Iowa.
Rubashkin is a member of the
Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic sect of Judaism, centered in Brooklyn, a known power
center to New York politicians seeking affirmation of their influence.
Rubashkin was convicted of profiting from
the labor of hundreds of undocumented immigrants, including children, and had
defrauded lenders of more than $26 million. After Rubashkin had been sentenced
to 27 years in prison for bank fraud, Trump commuted his sentence on December
20, 2017.
There had been calls from a number of
prominent politicians to commute the sentence—which was imposed for non-violent
offenses—due to its length.
Rubashkin had contributed significant
sums to Republican politicians over the years as well as lesser amounts to
Democratic politicians, which appears to account for the keen political interest
in his welfare.
Rubashkin and fellow company executives
had been charged with a variety of offenses including conspiracy to harbor
undocumented immigrants for profit and over 9,000 child labor law violations.
The defendant had also laundered money through a secret bank account and
falsified bank documents in order to continue borrowing additional sums.
Robert Teig, former assistant U.S.
attorney from Iowa who helped prosecute Rubashkin, criticized the commutation
of his sentence because of the defendant’s significant involvement in enabling
illegal immigration. As described in The Washington Post,
“Authorities
rounded up 389 undocumented immigrants, more than 20 of them minors, who
described a long list of abhorrent working conditions, including 12-hour shifts
without overtime pay and exposure to dangerous chemicals. A spokesman for
a food workers union compared it to scenes from Upton Sinclair’s ‘The Jungle.’”
Hence, a virulently anti-immigrant
president has commuted the sentence of an egregious and politically powerful
expediter of illegal immigration and exploiter of the labor of hapless
immigrants. This one appears to have hit home in spades.
KRISTIAN SAUCIER
— The third convicted person to benefit
from the largesse of Donald Trump is Kristian Saucier, a former U.S. Navy
sailor who took unauthorized cell photos of a nuclear reactor inside a U.S.
submarine and was subsequently convicted of illegal possession and retention of
national defense information.
Earlier this year, Saucier’s crime was
pardoned and Saucier's probation following his one-year sentence vacated by
Donald Trump following submission by counsel of a request through the Justice
Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney.
SCOOTER LIBBY
— Moving right along, we get to I. Libby
Lewis, Jr., more commonly known as “Scooter Libby,” who became embroiled
in the public outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame prior to the onset of the
deceptive lead-up to the Iraq war. Libby, who was Vice President Dick Cheney’s
chief of staff during the early presidency of George W. Bush, had leaked the
covert status of Plame to the press in response to a published column of
Plame’s husband Ambassador Joe Wilson which indicated that he, Wilson, had been
sent to Niger to investigate claims of Iraq’s resurgent effort to obtain
nuclear materials and that, further, there were no then-existing WMDs.
As a result, Plame’s long and honorable
career with the CIA cratered and the safety of Plame’s Agency contacts around
the world was imperilled.
James Comey was then deputy attorney
general, and he appointed prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to handle the case.
Libby was convicted in 2007 after a jury trial of four felony counts of
perjury, lying to investigators, and obstruction of justice. Libby was
subsequently sentenced to 30 months in prison, although the prison sentence was
promptly commuted by President Bush, who refused to grant a full pardon.
Not to be deterred, Trump has now completed
the process of legally exonerating a man who he clearly believes to be as much
a victim of James Comey and “retribution politics” as he himself has
purportedly become by granting Libby a full pardon at the request of his own
very recent former counsel Victoria Toensing and her husband and law partner
Joseph diGenova. Conflict of interest, anybody?
As Representative Adam B. Schiff,
Democrat of California and Ranking Member of the House Permanent Select
Committee on Intelligence, wrote on Twitter,
“This is the
president’s way of sending a message to those implicated in the Russia
investigation: You have my back and I’ll have yours.”
JACK JOHNSON
— Next on Trump’s list of pardoned felons
is the first African-American heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson (the
“Galveston Giant”), who was convicted in 1913 by an all-white jury (just
five years after winning the championship) for violating the 1910 federal Mann
Act prohibiting the transport of women across state lines for “immoral”
purposes (in this case the prostitute Belle Schreiber).
Johnson had angered many people prior to
that time as a result of
“his flamboyant
lifestyle and open relationships with white women, including three [successive]
marriages at a time when interracial marriage was outlawed in 36 of 46 states.”
Johnson’s career was ruined as a result
of his conviction, and Johnson thereafter fled abroad for eight years to avoid
imprisonment. He finally surrendered to U.S. authorities in 1920 and served ten
months in jail.
Jack Johnson has just been pardoned
posthumously by Donald Trump. As described by reporter Jessica Pliley, the
pardon
“came 105 years
too late [and] is not enough to address the scourge of racially motivated
policing, or the entanglements of white supremacy and sexual regulation.”
The conviction was always considered a
gross miscarriage of justice.
Johnson’s pardon was granted as a result
of a telephone request to Trump by actor and film producer Sylvester
Stallone—who plans to make a documentary about the boxing champion—and that
pardon will probably be the least controversial and most deserved pardon
granted by Trump.
Note that Stallone was asked by Trump if
he would consider assuming the role of chairman of the National Endowment for
the Arts, but said that he would rather work with veterans.
The irony of an openly racist president
pardoning a black sports champion for maintaining an interracial relationship
is palpable.
In addition, that this long-overdue
redress of a significant wrong resulted from a request by a Hollywood actor to
our Reality Show president cannot be overlooked. If the heirs of Jack Johnson
could not obtain a pardon for 105 years, why should a request from the star of
the “Rocky” boxing films accomplish the trick almost overnight? Why, indeed.
DINESH D’SOUZA
— Moving right along, Trump has now
pardoned prominent conservative provocateur and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza (an
elbow-throwing culture warrior like Trump), who was charged with making straw
donations to New York State GOP Senate candidate Wendy Long in 2012, i.e.,
convincing others to donate to Long and then reimbursing them, evading federal
contribution limitations on individual donations to any one candidate.
D’Souza pled guilty, and joined a cadre
of egregious straw donors who have been identified and often prosecuted,
including Democrats. Some straw donors have also been prosecuted under
equivalent state law. The sentence D’Souza received was relatively light: five
years of probation and eight months in a halfway house.
Why would Trump pardon this particular
felon? No doubt because D’Souza was prosecuted by then-U.S. Attorney Preet
Bharara in the Southern District of New York during the Obama administration.
Recall that Bharara was publicly and summarily fired by Trump shortly after
Trump took office, and has since become an occasional vocal critic of Trump. (And
when he was pardoned, D’Souza Twittered a personal attack against his fellow
Indian nemesis Bharara.)
It’s all personal in Donald Trump’s
world. Tit for tat.
Finally, we come to two more intertwined
probable sentence revisions on Trump’s Wish List:
MARTHA STEWART
— Style maven Martha Stewart was
convicted in March 2004 of four counts of obstructing justice and lying to
investigators concerning a stock trade she had made several years previously,
along with her former stockbroker. Stewart served five months in jail.
The lead prosecutor for the Southern
District of New York when Stewart was tried was none other than James Comey,
not exactly Trump’s Best Friend.
In addition, “business tycoon” Stewart
had previously appeared on “The Apprentice: Martha Stewart,” a reality game
show and spin-off from the Trump series “The Apprentice.” The Stewart version
of the show was far more professional and much less confrontational, and was
shorn of the mean-spirited approach of the original Trump version.
Nevertheless, both the Comey involvement
in Stewart’s conviction and Stewart’s appearances on a spin-off show from
Donald Trump’s much ballyhooed original show make Stewart a probable shoo-in
for a pardon.
ROD BLAGOJEVICH
— And last but not least, we get to the
second sentence change being considered by our intrepid emperor president, a
commutation of the sentence of “thoroughly corrupt” former Illinois Governor
Rod Blagojevich.
Sports fans will recall that Blagojevich
attempted to auction off Barack Obama’s vacant U.S. Senate seat in Illinois to
the highest bidder following the 2008 presidential election. There were
apparently “bids” in excess of half a million bucks.
The Governor also sought promises of campaign cash, as well as a cabinet post
or ambassadorship in exchange for his Senate choice.
For starters, Blagojevich was impeached and
removed from office by the Illinois legislature. Then he was tried and
retried, and successfully convicted of a total of 17 charges of wire fraud,
attempted extortion, and conspiracy to solicit bribes.
Ironically, “Blago” and his chief of
staff had been wire-tapped, a claim that Trump has repeatedly (and falsely)
made against the Obama administration. Just to round out the salient factors,
Blagojevich appeared on Trump’s show Celebrity Apprentice when he was on trial
in 2010. (Wouldn’t you just know it?)
As a result, Blagojevich is currently
cooling his heels in a Colorado prison in the middle of a 14-year bribery and
corruption convictions sentence. The Chicago U.S. Attorney who oversaw the
federal prosecutions was, again, Patrick Fitzgerald, currently counsel for
James Comey—the man at the top of the Trump Enemies List.
Trump must be salivating at the thought
of smearing the name of Barack Obama in yet another context. The fact that
President Obama played no part in the downfall of Rod Blagojevich is, of
course, irrelevant, this being Trump Land.
So there you have it, so far. As John
Kass of the Chicago Tribune has remarked,
“Trump dangling
pardons as he himself is under investigation in the Mueller Russia collusion
probe is full of theatrical drama. It’s fascinating in the way political
intrigue among the powerful is always fascinating, like a game of thrones. It
is the true pastime of Washington.
“And Washington is
our modern Versailles, just as sick as the palace of the French royals but
without the rouge and powdered wigs and countertenors.”
Are the newest pardons and proposed
pardons an obvious sign to Mike Flynn, Paul Manafort, and Michael Cohen to Keep
the Faith Until Daddy Can Spring You? A not-so-subtle request not to cooperate
with Robert Mueller and his team no matter how bleak things appear to be?
Kass continues with his comparisons:
“Blagojevich is
the kind of politician Trump knows only too well. During his campaign for
president, Trump told us as much, said he knew how to buy them and sell them.
“Blago was for
sale. People’s lives were ruined. A life was ended, Chris Kelly, Blagojevich’s
fundraiser, killing himself in a dirty shack south of Chicago.”
As
if the Emperor and Blago had considered the human costs. As if Trump ever will.
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