Welcome back, Deadline: Legal Newsletter readers. There’s a new legal process in America. It used to be that a guilty verdict or plea was followed by years of appeals and, perhaps years after that, a prayerful pardon application. This week showcased a new playbook: skirt your tax obligations by millions of dollars to fund a lavish lifestyle, plead guilty and, instead of going to prison or paying restitution, have your mom raise money for the president and then get pardoned.
That’s the case of Paul Walczak in a nutshell, but he’s not the only new clemency recipient. Among this week’s winning contestants were the reality television couple Todd and Julie Chrisley, whom President Donald Trump sprung from hefty prison terms for financial fraud. Their daughter spoke last summer at the Republican National Convention, where she likened her parents’ purported persecution to Trump’s indictments. You could say they’re kindred spirits with the president when it comes to reality TV, fraud and, with those first two commonalities in mind, a knack for casting their cases as coming from unscrupulous prosecutors (in the Chrisleys’ case that prosecutor being a Trump appointee, by the way).
Remember, Trump’s pardon spree didn’t start this week or even this year. In his first term, he kicked things off by pardoning Joe Arpaio, the Arizona lawman convicted of contempt for disobeying a court order to stop racial profiling people for immigration enforcement. That set the “law and order” tone that carries through to this day, when shirking court orders in the name of immigration enforcement sums up the Trump administration’s legal work.
Another former sheriff was among the lucky winners on Trump’s clemency show. When Scott Jenkins of Virginia was sentenced to 10 years for bribery in March, the acting U.S. attorney had the temerity to criticize him for having “violated his oath of office and the faith the citizens of Culpeper County placed in him when he engaged in a cash-for-badges scheme.” The prosecutor’s statement from that bygone era continued, “We hold our elected law enforcement officials to a higher standard of conduct and this case proves that when those officials use their authority for unjust personal enrichment, the Department of Justice will hold them accountable.” That is, until — well, you know.
“No MAGA left behind,” Ed Martin tweeted upon Jenkins’ pardon. You may recall Martin as having effectively been deemed too extreme for confirmation by the Republican-controlled Senate for Washington, D.C.’s top prosecutor job. So the administration shifted his duties, and his portfolio now includes being the DOJ’s pardon attorney (the last one, Liz Oyer, was fired in March after she refused a speedy request to recommend restoring Mel Gibson’s gun rights, which the Trump-supporting actor lost due to his domestic violence conviction).
One gets the sense that corruption prosecutions are not a priority in the Trump administration. That’s evident not only through the president’s clemency but also through his Justice Department’s actions in court — perhaps most notably in moving to dismiss New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ corruption case for overtly political reasons. Ryan Reilly of NBC News observed a connection between the Adams and Jenkins cases, noting that they’re linked by the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section, which, he reported, “has shrunk in both size and influence during the Trump administration.”
The Adams connection leads us to another big story this week: Trump announced his intention to nominate Emil Bove to be a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit. Bove came onto the scene as then-candidate Trump’s criminal defense lawyer, losing the hush money trial alongside his co-counsel Todd Blanche. Blanche is now the DOJ’s deputy attorney general and Bove is principal associate deputy.
Putting Bove on the bench would reward a sinister use of his law license with a lifetime judicial appointment. His handling of the Adams case is just one example but it’s enough to show that he hardly deserves to be a lawyer, much less a judge. Recall that Bove not only pushed for an overtly political dismissal of the corruption case but caused several ethical prosecutors to resign rather than do his dirty work. And after all that, Bove failed to get the case dismissed in the shady way he wanted to — that is, in a way that would’ve given Trump’s DOJ the option of holding the charges as political leverage over the Democratic mayor. The reason Bove failed in his corrupt mission was that the judge presiding over the case, Biden appointee Dale Ho, saw through the farce and refused to allow it. To be sure, Democrats are at fault for failing to confirm a deserving nominee to the Philadelphia-based circuit when they had the chance last year, leaving a vacant seat for Republicans to fill. The consequences of that failure shouldn’t be forgotten, then, if Bove is privileged to be in the position of making decisions like the one Ho had to make, in rising above the base impulses of lawyers like Bove. Have any questions or comments for me? Please submit them on this form for a chance to be featured in the Deadline: Legal blog and newsletter.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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