President Trump’s Pardons: An Embarrassment of Riches

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drudge X

President Trump’s Pardons: An Embarrassment of Riches​

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It's one thing to commit a crime and be pardoned by a corrupt president who is for sale. It's quite another for that pardon to cancel out restitution owed to the crook's victims.

But that's just what Trump has been doing.

"B-b-b-b-b-but Biden!"...

Biden’s pardons eliminated roughly $680,000 in financial penalties (fines, restitution, and forfeitures) owed to victims or the government. In contrast, Liz Oyer, the former lead pardon attorney of the United States, has calculated that Trump’s second-term pardons have forgiven criminal debts of more than $1.5 billion. This staggering sum—composed of money owed to crime victims and to government treasuries—has been zeroed out by presidential edict.

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$1.5 BILLION > 0.68 million


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Trump’s pardon pen was a boon to ex-criminals like Trevor Milton (who no longer must repay the investors he defrauded $660 million) and Lawrence Duran (who no longer must repay the government he defrauded $87 million). It was also a boon to HDR Global Trading Ltd., which owed the nation a $100 million fine; in this case, Trump also made history by granting the nation’s very first pardon to a corporation.
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Trump’s pardons are beginning to undermine the contemporaneous work of his own Department of Justice. Alina Habba, Trump’s own US attorney in New Jersey, announced Joseph Schwartz’s three-year sentence for $38 million in tax fraud in April; Trump pardoned him seven months later.


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Trump has been pocketing cash in exchange for pardons:

Trump pardoned Paul Walczak (who evaded millions of dollars in taxes) after Walczak’s mother raised millions of dollars for MAGA candidates and paid a million dollars to dine with the president at Mar-a-Lago. Trevor Milton—the securities fraudster mentioned above—donated $1.8 million to Trump’s campaign before a presidential pardon wiped out all $660 million of his restitution obligations. (That is, if nothing else, an impressive ROI.)

Before Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao—who headed the cryptocurrency exchange Binance while it fostered more than 1.5 million illegal virtual trades as well as prohibited transactions to Al Qaeda, Isis, and Hamas—Zhao had brokered a $2 billion investment in Eric and Donald Trump. Jr.’s cryptocurrency business, World Liberty Financial.

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You read that right, folks. Trump abused the power of his office to pardon then hire a money-launderer for Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Hamas for his own personal business venture.

The entire link I provided is worth a full read.

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Trump pardons wipe nearly $2 billion in victim repayment and taxpayer recovery for Medicare and tax fraud, and more​

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A new analysis finds that Trump’s pardons of criminals across his two terms have denied nearly $2 billion in victim restitution, forfeitures, and fines.

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Restitution isn’t optional — it’s a court-ordered requirement that criminals make their victims whole, paying back the money they have cheated, stolen, or defrauded. And when a case involves public programs or taxpayer dollars, fines and forfeitures are part of how we make the public whole. Trump’s pardons have erased those legal and moral obligations. Trump is showing who he is by favoring his friends and donors over the livelihoods of Americans who have been hurt by those he’s pardoned — and over the taxpayer victims left holding the bag.
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Based on restitution amounts listed on the U.S. Department of Justice’s official clemency pages for Trump’s first term, plus restitution amounts tied to current-term clemency actions, the amounts owed by those Trump has pardoned total more than $1.3 billion in court-ordered restitution and pending restitution requests. When forfeiture and fine amounts tied to Trump’s clemency actions are added, the combined total reaches nearly $2 billion in court-ordered and court-requested financial penalties.

 

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This page is well worth a look at the people Trump pardoned: Clemency Grants by President Donald J. Trump (2025-Present)


Lots and lots and lots of fraudsters. Drug smugglers. The guy who ran Silk Road. Even a murderer.

 

[drudge X]

Don't care. The supermassive fraud in CA is worth a look. Let's see, near $33 billion fraud on unemployment claim during covid. Healthcare programs, that's more than $140 billion. Pandemic loans, $8.6 billion fraud. Conservative estimate is $180 billion in fraud in a state run exclusively by Democrats. All under Newsom's watch.