Questions have mounted over whether President Donald Trump has sold off pardons in exchange for donations to his MAGA allies.
The controversy surrounding these presidential pardons has "just got louder," wrote Steve Benen, producer of “The Rachel Maddow Show” and editor of MaddowBlog, in an analysis published Monday.
Trump has rewarded "generous donors with clemency," which was revealed in a Wall Street Journal report in December that detailed some of the alleged inner workings that have "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.”
Benen pointed to Julio Herrera Velutini, a Venezuelan-Italian banker who was facing felony bribery and other charges, and the recent donations from his daughter, Isabela Herrera, who donated $2.5 million to MAGA Inc.
In exchange for the move, "Herrera agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor campaign finance charge, disappointing career prosecutors who had pushed for a harsher sentence," according to The New York Times.
"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)," Benen wrote.
"Well, sure, when you put it that way — which is to say, accurately — it sounds bad," Benen commented.
And on Friday, Trump also pardoned former Puerto Rico Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced. Garced had "pleaded guilty to a corruption charge related to her 2020 campaign — a scandal that also included campaign contributions from the aforementioned Julio Herrera Velutini."
The move has raised eyebrows over how Trump and his legal team determine who to pardon — and why.
"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," Benen wrote.