'No MAGA left behind': Trump turning pardons into partisan exercise, critics say
Trump's controversial new pardon attorney promises to re-examine cases
As U.S. President Donald Trump makes a dizzying series of tariff proclamations, puts Ivy League schools in his sights over their policies, and tries to broker ceasefire agreements in global conflicts, his administration is periodically issuing pardons and commutations that attract less media attention.
These recent decisions — which included a pardon Tuesday for a reality-show couple convicting of defrauding banks out of more than $30 million US — haven't led the widespread condemnation that met Trump's sweeping pardon of some 1,500 people, many convicted of violent assault, in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Based on the evidence so far, many of the subsequent pardons seem to be less about the legal nuances of specific cases than affiliation and partisanship.
Trump on Monday said he would pardon Scott Jenkins, alleging in a social media post that the Virginia sheriff was the victim of an "overzealous" Justice Department in president Joe Biden's term and by a judge appointed by Biden.
In fact, the Culpeper County sheriff was seen on video during his 2024 trial accepting cash, part of what prosecutors said was a pattern of taking money in exchange for auxiliary sheriff badges, as well as for personal gain. Jenkins, who's run as both a Republican and an independent, said last month he had hoped to plead for clemency directly with the Trump administration.
Democrat Abigail Spanberger, running for governor in Virginia, panned the pardon in a social media post that pointed out that a jury of U.S. citizens, not a politicized individual or body, voted to convict Jenkins on 12 separate counts.
Spanberger said the pardon was an "affront" to many officials, including "the law enforcement officers who investigated this case and hold themselves to the highest ethical standard every day."
Former Ronald Reagan administration official and longtime conservative commentator William Kristol excoriated the pardon of Jenkins, arguing it sends a signal to Trump-supporting sheriffs "that they can act with immunity."
"MAGA vigilantism over the next four years will be supercharged," Kristol wrote for the Bulwark.
MAGA loyalists, Biden antagonists
Nevada politician Michele Fiore, a staunch MAGA loyalist for a decade, was pardoned in April. Fiore was convicted after raising more than $70,000 for a statue for a slain Las Vegas police officer but instead spent some of the donations on cosmetic surgery, rent and her daughter's wedding.
Brian Kalt, a Michigan State University constitutional law expert who's written about presidential pardons, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal after the Fiore pardon that "the main criterion seems to be someone is a supporter and if [Trump] can sort of identify with them as the victim of a politically motivated prosecution."
In the case of Nikola electric vehicle founder Trevor Milton's pardon, issued in March, Trump said, "They say the thing that he did wrong was he was one of the first people that supported a gentleman named Donald Trump for president."
In response to the president's comments, the nonprofit watchdog organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington Inc. (CREW) posted: "Well, one thing's for sure: Trevor Milton and his wife donated more than $1.8 million to the Trump 47 Committee in the weeks before the election."
It also didn't escape notice from Democrats that Milton, convicted of wire and securities fraud, was represented during his legal travails by lawyers including Brad Bondi — brother of current Republican attorney general Pam Bondi — and Marc Mukasey, who has represented the Trump Organization.
There have also been pardons and sentence commutations for individuals who have, coincidentally or not, painted Biden's children in an unfavourable light.
Jason Galanis and Devon Archer, who gave critical testimony about one-time business associate Hunter Biden, the president's son, on Capitol Hill, had their sentences for defrauding an Indigenous tribe in a separate transaction commuted by Trump.
Paul Walczak, the son of a major Trump donor who was convicted of income tax fraud and ordered to pay over $4 million in restitution, received another pardon slammed by CREW and Democrats. In describing the presidential action, the New York Times headline read: Trump Pardons Executive Whose Family Sought to Publicize Ashley Biden's Diary.
Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy on the Walczak pardon:
Trump's Justice Department weaponized: legal analyst
Presidents have broad power to pardon federal crimes or commute sentences, as an act of mercy or justice, and Democratic presidents have faced criticism in certain cases: Jimmy Carter for executive actions involving folk singer Peter Yarrow and kidnapped heiress Patricia Hearst, and Bill Clinton for pardoning Marc Rich, an international fugitive whose former spouse was a Democratic donor.
But according to Liz Oyer, the cost of these 2025 pardons is significant. Oyer, the former chief pardon attorney who is suing the government after being fired in March, has argued in a series of TikTok videos that it's not just the optics that are suboptimal.
It costs taxpayers, Oyer says, as those pardoned no longer are mandated by the courts to pay back ill-gotten proceeds. She estimates that the total of debts wiped off the books is over $1.2 billion so far.
Biden was only the second president in over a century whose pardons overall did not number in the hundreds or even the thousands, according to Pew Research. But among the 80 he granted, he received considerable criticism for pre-emptive pardons for figures who are hated by many of Trump's MAGA supporters, including Dr. Anthony Fauci and military leader Gen. Mark Milley.
Legal analyst Dan Abrams, founder of Mediaite and host of a Sirius radio program, was in that camp, but said last week he'd changed his mind.
"President Biden was right to preemptively pardon these folks even though it sets a terrible precedent; what we have seen [so far] is much worse," he said.
Abrams said he changed his mind because "it is clear now that this administration is going to use the [Department of Justice] as a weapon," pointing to a series of threats from the White House and its cabinet members to investigate former or current Trump critics, from former FBI director James Comey for a seashell display on the beach, to former Trump administration cybersecurity expert Chris Krebs. In addition, Democratic Congress member LaMonica McIver has been charged over a fracas at an immigrant detention centre.
'We can't leave those guys behind'
Trump, indicted in four separate criminal matters until three of those cases fell away in the wake of his November election win, spent considerable time railing on the campaign trail about a justice system he said was weaponized against Republicans.
Democrats have pointed out that despite those claims, mimicked by some Republican Congress members, the Justice Department in Biden's term appeared to pursue cases without favour. Prosecutions were pursued against Hunter Biden, Democratic legislators Bob Menendez and Henry Cuellar, and Democratic Mayor Eric Adams in New York City.
It's not clear if federal prosecutors in this administration will aggressively probe suspected criminal activity by Republicans. But in Trump's first term, Justice Department officials under the auspices of then-attorney general William Barr sought to intervene in sentencing on behalf of Roger Stone and Michael Flynn, Trump loyalists charged with federal crimes. Both Stone and Flynn were subsequently pardoned.
Trump has tapped loyalist Ed Martin to replace Oyer as chief pardon attorney. Martin was originally chosen to be lead attorney in D.C., but the required Senate confirmation appeared doomed given his staunch support of 2021 Capitol rioters, including of an avowed white supremacist Martin referred to as a friend.
Martin, not needing Senate confirmation in his new role, recently told a radio host he's taking a "hard look" at the convictions of two men convicted in federal court over a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, adding, "We can't leave those guys behind."
Martin celebrated the pardon for Jenkins in a series of social media posts on Monday evening, including one that read, "No MAGA left behind."
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With files from The Associated Press