President Donald Trump has set off a "frenzy" of bidding from convicted criminals seeking one of the 250 pardons he's dangling as part of the July 4 semiquincentennial celebrations.
The Atlantic's Sarah Fitzpatrick reported this week with colleague Michael Scherer that the jockeying from individuals seeking clemency has been intense, and she told "CNN This Morning" about the "three-ring circus" described by lawyers, lobbyists and others in Trump's orbit about the process.
"Can you give me some names?" asked host Audie Cornish. "Who are they batting around?"
"There's quite a large group of names that's being discussed," Fitzpatrick said. "But there are some incredibly controversial names that have come up that even the lobbyists, even the people who are making these deals, feel very uncomfortable with. For example, the Malaysian fugitive Jho Low, who is credited with laundering billions and billions of dollars, the rapper Pras, who was involved in an illegal influence campaign of Trump officials, and then we've seen even such a discussion, a very serious high-level discussion of a pardon for the founder of the OneTaste orgasmic meditation cult."
"So you're seeing a kind of a mix of people who can afford to go after these pardons," she added, "as opposed to the traditional people that you would see pardons who truly are doing it on merit and that's what's making everyone very concerned."
The list of candidates includes a number of wealthy, well-connected foreign entities from Asia, Europe and the Middle East, which she said has raised concerns from those involved in the negotiations.
"Our Justice Department, our law enforcement entities, have spent so many years, hundreds of thousands of dollars, prosecuting, you know, these are very, very serious cases," Fitzpatrick said. "Of course, the president, it's up to the president. The president can decide this at any moment, but it really does speak to kind of what is the purpose, you know, is our justice system truly free and fair for all?"
Fitzpatrick explained why this process was different from how other administrations approached pardons.
"I think what's different here is that there are people who are making money off of this," she said. "You know, this is an example of, I think, a leadership vacuum or the mixed messaging that comes out of this White House. This is a frenzy. I cannot tell you, I have lawyers and lobbyists who are telling me, 'I'm so exhausted, I have to turn off my phone,' because everyone thinks that this is an option for them if they pay enough money, and the White House came out with a statement, it was very interesting, in response [to] when we came to them with this reporting and said the president, you know, thinks it's detestable that anyone would try and profit off this."
"But that's not the messaging that's coming from the president's closest aides," she added. "In the Biden administration, we did see efforts to say, like, knock it off, everything goes through DOJ – we are going to keep this very close and very tight. That's not the message here. The message here is when you come to the White House, hey, if you've got a client that might be interested, let us know, and so I think that, you know, we're seeing the opportunities for real corruption happening at a massive scale."
Cornish reacted to her reporting by warning that the scheme could become a massive political problem.
"It only takes one of those names to come out that it goes sideways for it to blow back hard and backfire with the public," Cornish said.
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