By Kevin D. Williamson
Monday, May 25, 2026
President Donald Trump’s abuse of the pardon power has
been consistently corrupt, of course, but it also has been expensive: While the
president made headlines last week by proposing to hijack around $1.8 billion
from the Treasury to hand out to his political supporters, he already had come
close to equalling that sum by means of the pardon power, depriving
federal coffers—and crime victims—of some $1.5 billion in fines, restitution,
and other obligations owed by—let’s remember this part—criminals. For
comparison, President Joe Biden’s pardons, also frequently corrupt, molested
the fisc to the tune of only a relatively measly $680,000—not even enough money
to buy a (really) good used Ford. Dan Greenberg writes for Cato:
Trump’s pardon pen
was a boon to ex-criminals like Trevor Milton (who no longer must repay the
investors he defrauded $660 million) and Lawrence Duran (who no longer must
repay the government he defrauded $87 million). It was also a boon to HDR
Global Trading Ltd., which owed the nation a $100 million fine; in this case,
Trump also made history by granting the nation’s very first pardon to a
corporation.
HDR Global, no one will be surprised to learn, is one of those shady crypto firms for which the Trump clan
has evident enthusiasm. It is reasonable to expect that Trump will attempt to
find some way to use his traditional pardon powers to protect himself and his
allies from future criminal prosecution—he is better positioned than almost
anyone else to appreciate the extent and depth of his criminality and that of
his circle—but there is a limitation there: The presidential pardon power
applies only to criminal proceedings, not civil suits, to which Trump may find
himself vulnerable when he is an ex-president. (This assumes that he does
become an ex-president, i.e., that he does not execute a more effective coup
d’état than his failed 2021 attempt. Trump himself may be incapable of
learning, but there are those around him who are not.) And so there is the
“addendum” to his bulls–t payola “settlement” with the IRS—an “addendum” that
probably ought to be understood as the main point of the entire exercise. The document
amounts to something the law does not give the president even in the context of
his very broad pardon power: the power to grant himself, his family, and his
business associates federal civil immunity for a lifetime’s (so far) worth of misdeeds—“FOREVER,” all-caps in original.
The document reads:
The United States
RELEASES, WAIVES, ACQUITS, and FOREVER DISCHARGES each of the Plaintiffs from,
and is hereby FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED from prosecuting or pursuing, any
and all claims, counterclaims, causes of action, appeals, or requests for any
relief, including injunctive relief, monetary relief, damages, examinations or
similar or related reviews, appeals, debt relief, costs, attorney's fees,
expenses, and/or interest, whether presently known or unknown, that—as of the
Effective Date of the Settlement Agreement—have been or could have been
asserted by Defendants against any of the Plaintiffs or related or affiliated
individuals (including, without limitation, family or others filing jointly),
or parties including trusts, parent, sister, or related companies, affiliates,
and subsidiaries, by reason of, with respect to, in connection with, or which
arise out of (1) any matters that were raised or could have been raised in the
Case or the Pending Agency Claims; (2) Lawfare and/or Weaponization; or (3) any
matters currently pending or that could be pending (including tax returns filed
before the Effective Date) before Defendants or other agencies or departments.
This is a characteristic Trump move: He gets something he
wants for himself by greasing the wheels with money for his allies paid out of
someone else’s pocket—in this case, your pocket and mine—with the attendant
controversy focused on the relatively small matter (the money) rather than the
more critical matters (an extraconstitutional civil self-pardon and the broader
extraconstitutional power grab).
At this late date, I suppose that it is nearly pointless
to call the roll of cowardly constitutionalists and fair-weather patriots
knuckling under and going along with this abuse of presidential power, an
outrageous one even by the standards of an administration that has been
murdering people on the high seas for public relations purposes. (It’s okay!
They’re only massacring Spanish-speaking foreigners!) That the DOJ settlement
has been signed off on by Todd Blanche, who was Trump’s personal lawyer in the
criminal matters in which the once and future president was enmeshed during the
all-too-brief interregnum—in contravention of every legal norm related to
conflicts of interest—is only the fecal frosting on the cake of this
corruption. But, that said, let us note once again the supine complicity of Ted
Cruz, Rand Paul, John Thune, Tom Cotton, Mike Johnson, Thom Tillis, Tim Scott,
and the rest of them. Marco Rubio, who has emerged as Trump’s most devoted
factotum, is worse than complicit. J.D. Vance is more than content to be in
harness, happier than a dung beetle at Trump’s all-you-can-eat raw-sewage
buffet.
The most Republican senators have been able to muster in
response to this so far is a sad little off-the-record bitch-and-moan session.
Thune, that titan of the Senate whose tenure as majority
leader evidently is dedicated to the project of making Trent Lott look like
Cincinnatus by comparison, managed to say this much: “Our members have very
legitimate questions about it, and we’ve had some conversations about if it’s
going to be a feature going forward, what it might look like, and how we might
make sure that it’s fenced in appropriately.”
Look out, boys, the big man has some “legitimate
questions.”
Let’s do a little thought experiment: Say the chairman
and CEO of a publicly traded company, while maintaining his executive position,
files a lawsuit against his company; it is a silly lawsuit demanding an
implausible settlement, but, happily for the CEO, it never goes to court.
Instead, the head of the legal department—a guy with a mortgage and whom the
CEO hired and could fire at will—gets together with the head of the finance
department—a guy with a mortgage and whom the CEO hired and could fire at will—and
the two of them work out a “settlement,” creating an expense account that the
CEO controls but that does not technically hit his bank account as a matter of
income. Question: Would he go to jail for tax fraud first, or would the embezzling
charges work their way through the system first? Thune has an MBA, so perhaps
he has a view—as a matter of business administration, how kosher would
that be?
Trump is, indeed, dedicated to running the government
like a business—la Cosa Nostra.
Donald Trump is just walking up to the Treasury and
trying to take out nearly $2 billion for his own use with no congressional
authorization. Thune hopes this can be “fenced in appropriately.” But there is
nothing appropriate here—not even an appropriation.
Mitch McConnell likes to quote a supposed Kentucky
proverb: “There is no education in the second kick of a mule.” Sen. McConnell
ought to know: He might have spared us all this mess had he done the right
thing in 2021. McConnell and his colleagues have now been kicked more times
than Mory Kromah’s
sparring partner. They don’t seem to know whether they’re getting the sense
beat out of them or getting some sense beat into them.
The failed coup d’état in 2021. Massacres of
civilians in the Caribbean and elsewhere. The illegal war on Iran. And now
Donald Trump proposes to simply raid the Treasury on behalf of his supporters
and write himself a civil immunity deal into the mix. Sen. Thune has questions.
So do I, beginning with: What, exactly, is the point of
you, Sen. Thune?
And Furthermore ...
“Essentially idiots.”
Trump likes to boast about having “all the best people,”
about which I ask: Who are you going to believe? Him or your lying eyes?
The 3-degrees-short-of-mediocrity character of Trump’s
appointees—kooks and cranks such as Bobby Kennedy and Tulsi Gabbard (don’t let the door hit you), men with habitual girl trouble
and drinking problems such as Kash Patel and Pete Hegseth, utter incompetents
such as Peter Navarro, slavish sycophants such as Kevin Hassett, degenerates
such as sometime Trump employee Roger Stone—is a little bit perplexing. Only a
little bit: Surely the reputational damage of serving in the Trump
administration keeps many good people out of his employ, with more than a few
of them waiting around for the next respectable (ho, ho!) Republican
administration to get into, or back into, federal work. But Trump—imbecilic
former game-show host, quondam pornographer, failed casino operator though he
is—is still president of these United States of America. You’d think he’d be
able to get better people than the pro-wrestling lady or Howard Lutnick.
But, then, consider the cases of Hitler’s Germany,
Stalin’s Soviet Union, or Argentina under its junta. Christian Gläßel
and Adam Scharpf, two German political scientists, made a
rigorous study of those particular cases, inspired—see if this part resonates
with you!—by an Argentine military officer who observed that the military
regime’s “Dirty War” campaign had been carried out by people who were, in his
words, “essentially idiots.” Argentina, as it turns out, has detailed public
information on its military officers—including academic records and performance
reviews—that offered a goldmine of data confirming that officer’s claim: The key
figures in Argentina’s campaign of repression and brutality had been
mediocrities motivated mainly by career pressure. Their findings were published
earlier this year in a volume titled Making a Career in Dictatorship: The
Secret Logic Behind Repression and Coups.
A recent New York Times writeup includes this timely
observation:
Their in-depth
study of Argentina’s military during that country’s era of coups and forced
disappearances found that low performers — whom they refer to as
“career-pressured” individuals — filled the ranks of the secret police. That
service allowed them to “detour” around the ordinary military hierarchy, the
book shows, achieving promotions and career success they could never have
managed otherwise.
It turns out that
would-be authoritarians don’t need to staff their regimes with ideological true
believers, offer extreme enticements or impose draconian punishments in order
to make successful power grabs. They just need to figure out how to target their
ideal labor pool: the frustrated and mediocre.
Mystery solved. I recommend the book. Interesting reading.
Words About Words
Speaking of books, allow me to add my voice to the “Get
off my lawn!” chorus on the matter of the declining quality of book editing.
Two recent books on my mind—books I’ll be recommending in our summer-reading
list—were so full of minor errors and typographic mishaps as to be truly
distracting: The novel Lázár by first-time Swiss novelist Nelio
Biedermann, recently translated from German, and The Toscanini Conspiracy,
a novel by Filippo Iannarone, translated from Italian. I am tempted to make the
excuse that these books were translations, but the stuff in English that comes
across my desk is no better and often worse. We make our share of errors here,
of course, and I have made some bad ones in my time. (And a few amusing ones: I
recently wrote to a friend that I had spent part of a day “organizing my
wenches.” Wrenches!) Journalism in general is more error-prone than
books, I think, as a result of the short production schedule: Books have months
or even years to get done, journalism is a matter of hours.
The world needs more copy editors. It probably needs
better-paid copy editors.
(So writes the former copy editor.)
In Other Wordiness . . .
A bit from Carolyn Hax’s generally amusing Washington Post advice
column (which usually is complemented by very fun drawings). The
letter-writer shares a story about an unwanted romantic attraction to an old
friend and confesses that she thought she was too “evolved” for that sort of
thing. The response includes these lines:
Isn’t that what
“evolved” means? Animals who can choose how they act? By the definition you
imply — animals who actually aren’t — falling for one guy friend kinda means
your entire secular religion collapses. But if you define it as entrusting
friendships to your mind vs. your body, then you can still be an evolved person
with a long-standing male best friend on whom you oops have a stupid crush. You
can still honor your marriage, too, and love your husband — who sounds highly
evolved, by the way.
I wonder if that isn’t exactly backward, at least from a
more literal and less metaphorical point of view: If human behavior is, indeed,
evolved to the degree evolutionary scientists suggest, then we “evolved”
animals would seem to have a good deal less choice about how we act—or, at
least, about the direction, urgency, and relative power of our evolved
inclinations. I’m not entirely ready to write off free will as a necessary
fiction created to prop up our religious and moral sensibilities and spare us
from confronting some terrifying truth about how narrowly we are, in fact,
proscribed.
But I’m not not convinced!
In any case: To be evolved is not to be liberated
from the past or from our animal natures but to be, in a profound way, subject
to them.
And Furthermore ...
If Tulsi Gabbard is remembered for a famous quotation,
let it be this:
It is not the
intelligence community’s responsibility to determine what is and is not an
imminent threat.
Isn’t that . . . precisely the intelligence
community’s responsibility?
Also: Grove City College, an admirable Christian
institution, has a president named Bradley Lingo. If President Lingo does not
speak in tongues, I am going to be disappointed at the missed aptronym. Surely
a good laugh can be a gift from the Holy Spirit?
In Closing
I will not much miss Bill Cassidy in the Senate. Cassidy
is, in my view, a variation on the theme of Mike Pence, i.e., a generally
servile Trump enabler who grew a conscience for five minutes in 2021 (when it
seemed like the political wind was likely to shift) and then regretted it.
Cassidy voted to convict Trump in his 2021 impeachment after the failed coup
d’état, and that was the right vote. It cost him his seat. Cassidy now
says, “Who cares?” But that is not what he said during the campaign, when he
tried to wave the issue away, telling Politico:
That is not
something I think about. That is a decision I made five years ago. What I think
about is the present and the future of my state. If somebody wants to focus on
that, if my opponent is focused on that, she's thinking about five years ago.
I'm thinking about five years from now.
As I said last
week on The Dispatch Podcast, I think that was the wrong answer, and
that the right one was something like, “Yes, I voted to convict the son of a
bitch, because he was guilty as sin and tried to overthrow the government by
nullifying a legitimate election that he lost. It was the right thing to do,
and I’d do it again. But, sure, I agree with him on regulatory reform and
illegal immigration and a few other things.”
But, now—now that there is nothing more to lose—Cassidy
is getting frisky again. It is contemptible.
There are many people out there—“little people,” you
know—who lost their jobs, who had to move, who require police protection
because of Donald Trump’s self-serving lies about the 2020 election. Most of
those people do not have the position, money, and other resources enjoyed by
the likes of Bill Cassidy. The least he could have done was to stand up for
them—if only by standing up for himself in the matter of the most
important good thing he did as a senator.
“That is not something I think about,” Cassidy said. If
that was a lie, it was a cowardly lie. If it was the truth, then—well, what the
hell is wrong with that guy? Trump is putting things in place to try it again. To whom
will Americans look for leadership when that happens? Not to the likes of Bill
Cassidy. Pardon my lack of charity here, but: Good riddance.
