It’s been a challenge keeping up with the flurry of pardons Donald Trump has issued in recent days, specifically rewarding his political allies and donors, though one trend is increasingly unavoidable: The incumbent president has a real soft spot for congressional Republicans who’ve been convicted of felonies.
Take former Republican Rep. Michael Grimm of New York, for example. NBC News reported:
Trump this afternoon pardoned former Rep. Michael Grimm, R-N.Y., who was convicted in 2014 of tax fraud and related charges. Grimm pleaded guilty to a single count of tax fraud after he was accused in a 20-count indictment of underreporting nearly $1 million in earnings and lowering payroll taxes through “off-the-book” payments at a Manhattan restaurant he previously managed. After the conviction, Grimm resigned from Congress and was sentenced to eight months of incarceration. He was released in 2016, according to Spectrum News.
Grimm had a brief and unfortunate career on Capitol Hill, punctuated by an incident in which he threatened physical violence against a reporter, vowing to break him “like a boy” after the journalist had the audacity to ask the lawmaker about the criminal investigations pending against him at the time. There was also a memorable incident in 2021 when Grimm, who ran on an anti-Affordable Care Act platform, was asked whether he would forgo the taxpayer-financed coverage he hoped to deny others.
The Republican responded, “What am I, not supposed to have health care?” Two weeks later, Grimm voted to repeal the ACA and deny coverage to millions.
But it was Grimm’s crimes that derailed his career. Though he initially claimed he was the victim of a “political witch hunt” — a familiar phrase, to be sure — the New Yorker ultimately agreed to plead guilty to a felony count of tax fraud. Though Grimm tried to remain in Congress anyway, GOP leaders pressed him to resign. He succumbed to party pressure soon after.
More than a decade later, Grimm, who was seriously injured in a polo tournament last year, is the beneficiary of a presidential pardon. It coincided with Trump also pardoning former Connecticut Gov. John Rowland — who served three terms as a Republican member of Congress — whose record is even more controversial.
As The New York Times reported, Rowland was forced to resign in 2004 to avoid impeachment stemming from a corruption scandal. The Times added, “He pleaded guilty later that year and was sentenced to a year and a day in prison. Ten years later, Mr. Rowland was convicted again of public corruption, including obstructing justice, conspiracy, falsifying documents relied on by federal regulators and other violations of campaign finance laws.”
There’s nothing to suggest there was anything wrong with his prosecution, but Trump pardoned him anyway.
If at this point readers are thinking that the president has pardoned several former GOP members of Congress, there’s ample evidence to bolster the point. The Washington Post published this memorable roundup on the last day of Trump’s first term: Since Trump took office, two incumbent Republican congressmen have been convicted of crimes, Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) and Duncan D. Hunter (R-Calif.), as has a former congressman, Steve Stockman (R-Tex.). Trump pardoned all three of them. Trump also pardoned four former Republican congressmen convicted before his presidency: Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.), Robin Hayes (R-N.C.), Mark Siljander (R-Mich.) and Randall “Duke” Cunningham (R-Calif.). … [A]ccording to GovTrack’s Legislator Misconduct Database, Trump has now pardoned a majority of Republican congressmen convicted of felonies in the 21st century. With the Grimm and Rowland pardons, the new total of Trump pardons for congressional Republicans convicted of crimes has reached nine — and counting. (While some congressional Democrats have also been convicted of crimes in recent years, to date, none of them has benefited from the incumbent president’s magnanimity.) What’s more, if we widen the aperture a bit, it’s also worth emphasizing that the Trump administration has also abandoned the criminal case against a former Republican congressman who’d already been found guilty of corruption by a jury, while simultaneously taking steps to abandon a corruption investigation targeting an incumbent Republican congressman. The message to Republican politicians convicted or accused of corruption couldn’t be clearer: You have a friend in the Oval Office. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
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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