High-profile convicts are rushing to cast themselves as victims of a vengeful justice system in the hope that President Donald Trump will free them from prison sentences, Politico reported Tuesday.
Among them are Sam Bankman-Fried and ex-Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ).
But many others are kowtowing to Trump and his allies in an effort to get convictions dismissed or charges dropped, according to the report.
The moves follow the president’s appointment of Alice Johnson as a “pardon czar,” signaling he intends to up the use of the presidential power. On Friday, the Justice Department lawyer appointed by former President Joe Biden to oversee pardons was fired.
“Everybody that is in prison now is keenly aware of the environment, and it’s become a very hot topic within the low- and minimum-security inmate communities,” consultant Sam Mangel told Politico. Mangel has worked with Steve Bannon, Bankman-Fried and George Santos after they faced criminal allegations.
“Their maneuvers offer a glimpse of a legal landscape shifting in real time to a chief executive undeterred by the informal constraints that previously limited presidential interventions in the criminal justice system,” Politico reported.
Mangel told the website he was receiving two to four inquiries about clemency per day. In three years previous to Trump’s election, he got two in total.
“The level of interest is unheard of,” he told Politico.
Democratic megadonor Bankman-Friend, a crypto entrepreneur sentenced to 25 years in prison, has been attacking his judge, Lewis Kaplan, in an attempt to show Trump he is a victim of the legal system. Kaplan is the same judge that oversaw the Trump’s defamation trial brought by E. Jean Carroll.
And Menendez — convicted of corruption charges last year — is using the same tactic.
“President Trump is right,” he said last month, “This process is political and it’s corrupted to the core.”
