I expect that politicians issue controversial pardons primarily on the basis of making alliances rather than acquiring donations.
For example, the pardon of the Weathermen by Bill Clinton in 2001, which was not exactly popular, was not because of their prospective future donations (though many of them received well-paying jobs after being freed), but because they would be reliable political allies in the future.
Pardoning Juan Orlando Hernández isn’t going to advance Trump’s political interests in any way, ever. This is a foreigner who has no influence with anybody Trump might want to please, and isn’t just unpopular with Trump’s opponents, but with his base. Pardoning Changpeng Zhao might please a few crypto bros, but is still surely a net political loss. What power or influence does Trump gain from pardoning Henry Cuellar? He’s not going to be reelected to anything.
I suspect Bill Clinton pardoned the Weathermen at least in part to send a signal to other people who might be allies, and also to make a point about their actual cause. Yes, there’s usually a political component.
Trump has also issued pardons just to reward people he thinks of as allies, or to send messages to allies. Obviously not every January 6 pardonee paid Trump anything. He probably also pardons people just on a whim sometimes. And it’s going to be harder to convince him to issue any given pardon if he sees it as “controversial”.
Also, to be fair, it’s not necessarily the case that the payments are going to (Donald) Trump personally. I overstated that. The money is more likely ending up with family members and others who can get in front of him and manipulate him into pardoning people. They may not mention the money to him; it’d be more effective and deniable to just wind him up about what a raw deal person X got in some “witch hunt”. He’s probably not acute enough to ask about money. Practice the script and you should get a really good success rate. So I should have said that people “that close” to Trump sell pardons, not that he does so himself.
I was wrong about the amount, too. I’d seen an estimate of $567,000 (or $576,000?) for one pardon or another (don’t remember which one), but apparently the Wall Street Journal sets the low end price at about a million dollars.
To be clear, these are not “donations”. They’re bribes. And Trump does not operate within the limits traditionally observed by “politicians” in general, not even approximately. Yes, you can point to some past President who’s done something analogous to almost any given thing Trump has done, but Trump does them all, and at larger scale and with less attempt at finding excuses.
On edit: Trump actually got something passed in the House on a relatively close vote with Henry Cuellar crossing the aisle, so I have to retract that. Trump pardoned Cuellar, and Cuellar did something political that Trump wanted.
I expect that politicians issue controversial pardons primarily on the basis of making alliances rather than acquiring donations.
For example, the pardon of the Weathermen by Bill Clinton in 2001, which was not exactly popular, was not because of their prospective future donations (though many of them received well-paying jobs after being freed), but because they would be reliable political allies in the future.
Pardoning Juan Orlando Hernández isn’t going to advance Trump’s political interests in any way, ever. This is a foreigner who has no influence with anybody Trump might want to please, and isn’t just unpopular with Trump’s opponents, but with his base. Pardoning Changpeng Zhao might please a few crypto bros, but is still surely a net political loss. What power or influence does Trump gain from pardoning Henry Cuellar? He’s not going to be reelected to anything.
I suspect Bill Clinton pardoned the Weathermen at least in part to send a signal to other people who might be allies, and also to make a point about their actual cause. Yes, there’s usually a political component.
Trump has also issued pardons just to reward people he thinks of as allies, or to send messages to allies. Obviously not every January 6 pardonee paid Trump anything. He probably also pardons people just on a whim sometimes. And it’s going to be harder to convince him to issue any given pardon if he sees it as “controversial”.
Also, to be fair, it’s not necessarily the case that the payments are going to (Donald) Trump personally. I overstated that. The money is more likely ending up with family members and others who can get in front of him and manipulate him into pardoning people. They may not mention the money to him; it’d be more effective and deniable to just wind him up about what a raw deal person X got in some “witch hunt”. He’s probably not acute enough to ask about money. Practice the script and you should get a really good success rate. So I should have said that people “that close” to Trump sell pardons, not that he does so himself.
I was wrong about the amount, too. I’d seen an estimate of $567,000 (or $576,000?) for one pardon or another (don’t remember which one), but apparently the Wall Street Journal sets the low end price at about a million dollars.
To be clear, these are not “donations”. They’re bribes. And Trump does not operate within the limits traditionally observed by “politicians” in general, not even approximately. Yes, you can point to some past President who’s done something analogous to almost any given thing Trump has done, but Trump does them all, and at larger scale and with less attempt at finding excuses.
On edit: Trump actually got something passed in the House on a relatively close vote with Henry Cuellar crossing the aisle, so I have to retract that. Trump pardoned Cuellar, and Cuellar did something political that Trump wanted.