Still Free

Yeah, Mr. Smiley. Made it through the entire Trump presidency without being enslaved. Imagine that.

Wednesday, February 19, 2020

What's Behind The Trump Pardon Spree?

So Trump went on a pardon spree. For a while I couldn't figure out why. I was particularly baffled by Blagojevich's pardon. After all he's a Democrat...who's not black. Yes, there's the whole Apprentice thing but I think it goes deeper than that. People in the press are saying that Trump is pardoning people with connections to him. I'm actually sure that's a part of it but I think it to be a small part of it. I think we can find the reasoning in commentary that Trump has made recently regarding the Roger Stone. So here's Trump talking about Stone

So you see Trump is highly upset about the way the "justice department" has been handling cases. To underscore this point, look at this Washington Examiner piece:

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz referred Comey for possible criminal prosecution after an investigation into the former FBI chief's handling of his memos, after which the agency quickly determined there was little on which to build a case.

Upon hearing the news, Trump spiraled into frequent tirades, raising his voice and swearing in the Oval Office, according to the Washington Post. "Can you [expletive] believe they didn’t charge him?” Trump said the night of the decision...

Comey has become a vocal Trump critic since being fired in May 2017, appears to be the subject of another leak investigation into a dubious Russian intelligence document that factored into how he handled the FBI investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's email server.

Trump also has complained about FBI Director Christopher Wray in recent months and believes it was unacceptable that Comey's former deputy, Andrew McCabe, has not been charged with a crime.

So I believe what Trump is doing is a "two can play this game" thing. The way I see it, Trump is showing that if the people in the "Justice Department" want to go easy on their friends and colleagues while going on hard on people they don't care for or who are not in their circle, then He's going to use his pardon power to reverse their decisions. I'm sure Bill Barr is not happy about it as it does, in fact, make the department look bad. However; this is a problem made by the department itself. Personally, I don't see how anyone involved with presenting false information to the FISA court has not been arrested and charged with perjury at a bare minimum. And I'm not talking about that one guy who falsified that one report. The reason it hasn't happened is because it goes all the way up the chain. And I mean ALL THE WAY UP. Like Dan Bogino says:

They all know each other.