Rachel Maddow, host of MSNBC, called it a “bizarre night” and addressed President Donald Trump’s threat of veto and pardon for those involved in the Müller investigation and for murderers of unarmed civilians in Iraq.
Maddow noted that in addition to the names of those he pardoned, he also added names of those who advocated the pardon, as if to include them as accomplices in the pardon.
New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt stated that the Department of Justice is running a pardon process to ensure that those who are pardoned are conforming to some form of recognition of grace and mercy.
“They had the system to make sure there was a consistent process,” he told Maddow. “We know that Trump ignored this process in his previous pardons, that he went out and did things himself. He’s allowed Kim Kardashian to go to the Oval Office to seek pardons. At first glance, if you look at these pardons tonight, it’s clear that many of them don’t even meet the basic criteria for a typical Justice Department recommendation for a pardon. “
He continued, “That means they were essentially operating outside of the system, that anyone could have gone into the White House and put the President, Jared Kushner, or anyone in the West Wing directly on them. And it is this type of lobbying that people say is affected because it allows the process to be non-merciful. It enables connections and lobbying to be involved. “
Schmidt also doubted that either of these pardons was approved by Attorney General Bill Barr when he left the Justice Department.
“It doesn’t appear that the Justice Department was involved in many of these,” he said. “This has been a very White House driven process. This was the kind of thing the president got rid of because of the typical way that pardons are viewed. It has allowed people to come in and treat it like they are standing up for a business or an account. ”
Schmidt stated that Trump really enjoys the power he gets from people who approach him at events that ask for forgiveness.
“It’s something the president can instantly create loyalty when he does,” Schmidt said. “And because of this, if you look at the past numbers he’s granted, of the 45 he’s given to date, 40 of the 45-88 percent were either to one of his Allied bound, someone who had special access to him or was bound to something that was personally beneficial to him politically. “
That last piece of information was something Maddow had predicted would one day be heard in a Congressional hearing on pardons.
See the video below.
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