How quickly we forget. On the morn of President Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter, there is nary a column inch about who Trump pardoned before he left office. All the pearl clutchers — elected Democrats and liberal political commentators alike – have been lamenting that Biden “lied” or “broke his promise” not to pardon his son. Meanwhile, Trump’s pardons of multiple figures who could incriminate him criminally or merely for political corruption are going unmentioned. So, let’s take a little trip down the Trump pardon memory hole:
We will start with the odious Paul Manafort. He had all kinds of connections to possible Trump crimes. Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska hired him to run his influence operation in Ukraine, which included lobbying for an accused murderer seeking investment opportunities for his corrupt company, as well as running the political campaign of Viktor Yanukovych, the corrupt Ukrainian politician who would be elected president and then ousted in a peaceful revolution. Manafort met repeatedly with a Russian GRU agent working for Deripaska, Konstantin Kilimnik, while serving as Trump’s 2016 campaign manager and even transferred Trump polling information to him. Manafort was convicted on multiple counts of bank fraud and money laundering associated with his corrupt work in Ukraine. He lied to investigators looking into Trump’s Russia ties. He had connections to Trump’s so-called foreign policy adviser, Michael Flynn, whom Trump appointed as his first national security adviser, and who was ousted from that position after serving just two weeks for lying to the FBI about his connections to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Trump pardoned Flynn, too.
He pardoned George Papadopolous, another of his so-called foreign policy advisers, who met with Russian GRU agents in London offering “dirt” on Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign. Papadopolous was convicted of lying to the FBI about the Trump connections to Russia.
Trump pardoned the execrable Roger Stone, who was Trump’s cut-out to the Russian intelligence computer hackers who stole Hillary Clinton’s and Democratic Party emails and published them just before the 2016 election to undercut the Clinton campaign. Stone was another Trump crony convicted of lying under oath and obstructing a congressional investigation into Trump’s collusion with Russians during his 2016 campaign.
Trump pardoned Alex van der Zwaan, a lawyer who was convicted of lying about his conversations with Manafort’s partner and Trump campaign official Rick Gates concerning Russia collusion.
Trump also pardoned Steve Bannon, who along with Stone, had connections to the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys and One Percenters during the run-up to the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Are we seeing a pattern here? You bet. Each of Trump’s pardons listed above was to benefit himself. During his time in the White House, Trump repeatedly waved the promise of pardons to keep his co-conspirators from cooperating with investigations he faced. Shutting up Manafort alone helped him in his first impeachment for attempting to blackmail Ukrainian President Zelenskyy into opening a fake investigation in Ukraine of Joe Biden and his son Hunter. This created a savage backlash against Hunter Biden that was carried out for years by James Comer and his House Oversight Committee, which held countless hearings into what Comer called the “Biden crime family.”
Shutting up Michael Flynn got Trump out of his connections to Sergey Kislyak, who Trump invited to a meeting in the Oval Office, along with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, the day after he had fired FBI Director James Comey because Comey had opened an investigation into the Trump campaign’s Russia connections.
Let’s stop to consider what we’re talking about here. The first foreign official Trump invited into the Oval Office after becoming president was one Russian who had repeated meetings and phone calls with Trump campaign officials, and the Russian government official who, along with Vladimir Putin, controlled the Russian intelligence agents who were eventually indicted for hacking Democrats’ emails and interfering with the 2016 election.
Trump ended up pardoning several people who in one way or another had connections to these two men. Lavrov would go on to have key involvement in Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, the country whose president Trump had tried to blackmail, and to which his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, had multiple corrupt connections involving money, political influence, and Russian oligarchs close to Putin.
That is what Trump was doing with his pardon power.
And now President Biden has pardoned his son Hunter, explaining in a letter that “raw politics” had influenced his son’s prosecution and led to a “miscarriage of justice.”
The raw politics of Washington D.C. as we head into another four years of rule by Donald Trump involves pre-planned miscarriage of justice. The Project 2025 plan that Trump claimed he had nothing to do with – before appointing four of its authors to his Cabinet – has an entire section devoted to exacting revenge on political opponents of Trump.
It is a cliché to say that the gloves are off, but that is the situation Donald Trump has purposefully created. He has threatened to investigate and prosecute anyone who was ever involved in investigating and prosecuting him. That would include Robert Mueller and his entire team of investigators and federal prosecutors. Of course, special counsel Jack Smith and his entire office, which includes FBI investigators and federal prosecutors, some of whom came out of retirement to work on the Trump investigation, are on Trump’s list for retribution. Kash Patel, Trump’s prospective FBI Director, has given several interviews about his plans to investigate anyone who has ever so much as picked up a pencil to bother his master.
Joe Biden has his work cut out for him. He should empower an entire staff in the White House to begin working on blanket pardons for all the people mentioned above, plus members of the House of Representatives and the Senate who were involved in the two Trump impeachments and the House Jan. 6 committee.
The Biden pardon team should also take a serious look at the many reporters, columnists, and television news hosts who have stood up to Trump over the last eight years. That is another long list of people that Donald Trump has threatened to prosecute for simply doing their jobs as reporters, commentators, and cable news hosts.
That old aphorism “when they go low, we go high” was BS when it entered the political lexicon, and it’s a guarantee of a prison sentence at this point. There is no high road in the age of Donald Trump and his MAGA team of toadies and lackeys who are sworn to carry out the campaign of retribution Trump demands.
The Democratic Party isn’t just a political party anymore. It is an association of Americans who are under attack merely for their political beliefs. Loyalty to the Constitution and swearing to uphold its rights and guarantees of freedom has been turned into a crime by Donald Trump. People like Elon Musk and Leonard Leo are probably adding names to the list of enemies they would like to see behind bars for committing various “crimes” that aren’t crimes at all.
Nobody is safe. Trump has promised to build internment camps for undocumented immigrants he has declared war against. You won’t have to lack an American passport or work permit to be ushered into the walls of those camps once they’re built.
Trump has gone to war against the America we have known. We don’t need to ask ourselves what this country has done to deserve the war Trump has planned against us. Biden needs to deploy his pardon power as a weapon in that war, and the Democratic Party needs to start recruiting not only followers but fighters. This is going to be an ugly four years, and it is way past time to prepare ourselves
