As the first year of Donald Trump’s second term progressed, and the list of scandalous presidential pardons grew, the White House confronted a question without modern precedent: Were pardons effectively for sale?
The question became unavoidable after the Republican started rewarding generous donors with clemency, culminating in a Wall Street Journal report, published shortly before Christmas, that described a dynamic that has “spawned a pardon-shopping industry where lobbyists say their going rate is $1 million. Pardon-seekers have offered some lobbyists close to the president success fees of as much as $6 million if they can close the deal, according to people familiar with the offers.”
Last week, these concerns reached a new level. The New York Times reported:
In late 2024, while [Julio Herrera Velutini, a Venezuelan-Italian banker] was facing felony bribery and other charges in the case, his daughter, Isabela Herrera, donated $2.5 million to MAGA Inc., a super PAC devoted to Mr. Trump and run by his allies.
In May, her father’s lawyer, Christopher M. Kise, who had served on Mr. Trump’s legal defense team, negotiated an unusually lenient deal with the Justice Department. Under the deal, which was authorized by a top Trump appointee, Mr. Herrera agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor campaign finance charge, disappointing career prosecutors who had pushed for a harsher sentence.
Two months later, Isabela Herrera donated another $1 million to MAGA Inc., culminating in a pardon from Trump late last week. (The White House claimed the political contributions did not lead to the pardon.)
The Times’ Peter Baker summarized the circumstances this way: “Her father faced bribery charges. She donated $2.5 million to a pro-Trump Super PAC. Trump’s Justice Department gave her father a lenient deal, overruling prosecutors. She gave another $1 million. Now Trump has pardoned her dad.”
Well, sure, when you put it that way — which is to say, accurately — it sounds bad.
The Times’ Thomas Edsall recently noted that in late 2008, George W. Bush pardoned Isaac Robert Toussie, a developer in Brooklyn who had pleaded guilty to mail fraud and making false statements to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. One day later, the then-Republican president revoked the pardon — because Toussie’s father had contributed $28,500 to the Republican Party, and Bush concluded the circumstances “might create an appearance of impropriety.”
Nearly two decades later, the incumbent Republican president clearly no longer cares about such “appearances.”
The White House announced Friday that Trump is also pardoning former Puerto Rico Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced, who pleaded guilty to a corruption charge related to her 2020 campaign — a scandal that also included campaign contributions from the aforementioned Julio Herrera Velutini. An NBC News report noted, “President Donald Trump’s pardon of former Puerto Rico Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced did not include all of the criminal cases she’s faced, and the White House is planning to make a fix out of an abundance of caution, an official said Sunday.” Last fall, during a briefing, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters, “When it comes to pardons, the White House takes them with the utmost seriousness.” The president’s top spokesperson added that each pardon is subjected to “a very thorough review process,” conducted by a team of “qualified lawyers.” I continue to believe this was one of the more unintentionally amusing things Leavitt has ever said. As for the bigger picture, the bottom line appears increasingly unavoidable: Trump is abusing his pardon power; he apparently knows that he’s abusing his pardon power; he knows that we know he’s abusing his pardon power; and he just doesn’t seem to care.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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