War criminals, creepo dad: The Trump pardons that defy belief

The French, regularly described as “the oldest ally of the United States” by American politicians looking for a leg-up in the gorgeous halls of the Élysée Palace, must be thrilled.

Donald Trump’s pick for the next US Ambassador to Paris, you may have noted, is one Charles Kushner.

Trump’s next administration takes shape.Credit: Richard Giliberto

“Tu es serieux?” a world-weary Parisian might mutter. “You’re serious?”

Kushner was sentenced to two years in prison in 2005 for tax evasion, 16 campaign funding felonies and witness tampering.

While they may sound like run-of-the-mill offences these days among US real-estate billionaires like Kushner and Trump, court evidence revealed the witness-tampering charge was a spectacularly grubby effort that any self-respecting French citizen would surely find unforgivable.

Kushner spent $25,000 to hire a sex worker to seduce his brother-in-law, who was preparing to give evidence against him, and sent video footage of the encounter to the fellow’s wife – Kushner’s sister.

In 2020, Kushner was pardoned by then-president Donald Trump.

Well, naturellement.

Kushner’s son, we barely need mention, is Jared Kushner – husband of Ivanka and Trump’s son-in-law.

US presidents have always had the constitutional right to pardon or otherwise offer clemency. The Founding Fathers borrowed it from ancient English practice.

Known as the royal prerogative of mercy, it originally permitted the monarch to discontinue or provide alternatives to death sentences.

I was cogitating on this very matter recently while researching, with the help of a relative, the fate of one of my great-great-grandfathers.

A street pickpocket in one of the grim industrial cities of Yorkshire, he was convicted, aged 17, with a fellow thief, of stealing a gold sovereign to the value of £1, and two metal purses, both valued at sixpence, and separately, a silver watch and – good lord – a pair of trousers.

Grand larceny, defined as stealing goods to the combined value of more than 12 pennies, had been a capital offence – one of about 200 “crimes” deemed suitable for execution – for more than a century under England’s Bloody Code.

The “prerogative of mercy” was regularly applied, however, and 14 years’ transportation – first to America, and since 1788 to Australia – was the routine alternative to execution.

In 1832, just a few months before my great-great-grandfather was convicted, the death penalty for stealing was abolished in England under the curiously titled Punishment of Death, etc. Act. It was slow to be implemented, and the judge in Yorkshire handed my great-great-grandfather the full alternative to execution: 14 years’ transportation to Van Diemen’s Land.

Not terribly merciful. Still, it meant I’d eventually be able to write this column.

All these years later, the prerogative of mercy has devolved into a corruption of the term as Trump prepares for his second run as president.

Trump’s MAGA army is currently all but losing its collective mind – could such a thing exist? – over Joe Biden’s decision to pardon his son, Hunter, for incorrectly filling in a form during a gun purchase and failing to pay taxes.

It’s most awkward because Biden had previously declared there would be no such pardon.

He now says political forces (read: MAGA uglies) worked to unravel a run-of-mill plea bargain, and that “Hunter was singled out only because he is my son”. Sounds like Trump when he was facing the law.

Pardon, you.Credit: Matt Golding

And yet, how many of us, given the power to pardon, would have allowed our own child to be fed into the merciless US prison system, particularly if he were our only surviving son? (Hunter Biden’s brother, Beau, died of brain cancer in 2015, and his sister, Naomi – known as “Amy” – died in the same car crash that killed their mother, Joe Biden’s first wife Neilia, in 1972.)

Trump and his legions of devotees don’t have much to yelp about, really. Trump’s pardoning behaviour, even before he starts a second term, has been toxic.

During his first term, he pardoned 144 individuals charged with or convicted of federal criminal offences, and all up, granted 237 “acts of executive clemency”: pardons, amnesty (a pardon for a group), commutation (a reduction in sentence) and reprieve (delaying a sentence or punishment).

This, to be clear, is not a particularly high number for a US president.

Lyndon Johnson handed out 1187 executive clemencies, Richard Nixon gave 926, Jimmy Carter issued 566, and Gerald Ford’s score was 409 – including a full “pre-emptive” pardon for the crooked former president Richard Nixon, in case he ended up actually charged with a crime.

Barack Obama issued 212 pardons and 1715 commutations during his two terms, most for those serving sentences judged to be unduly harsh or delivered under outdated laws and for non-violent drug offences.

What is extremely unusual about Trump’s acts of clemency is that most of them were for his political and business cronies, or wealthy individuals who paid his advisers for their get-out-of-jail favours.

And of course, his son-in-law’s creepo father.

No less than five of Trump’s former campaign staff members and political advisers (who presumably knew where all sorts of skeletons were buried) were pardoned for various offences: Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Steve Bannon and George Papadopoulos.

Steve Bannon was on federal fraud charges awaiting trial when he was pardoned by Donald Trump. He is still facing state charges.Credit: Bloomberg via Getty Images

Worse, the vast majority of Trump’s pardons were issued without – or against – the advice of the Office of the Pardon Attorney, long-established to administer the clemency process.

Trump simply bypassed the office, choosing his own dubious favourites, ignoring even defence chiefs by pardoning soldiers convicted of war crimes.

And now, with his new term as president looming, Trump is giving every indication he’ll look kindly on those convicted of violently storming the Capitol following his false claim he won the 2020 election.

Meanwhile, Trump wants Kash Patel as the head of the FBI, among other bizarre picks for his executive team.

Patel is a conspiracy theorist who wants to close FBI headquarters and turn it into a “deep state” museum while taking revenge on those Trump perceives as his enemies, including journalists.

The prerogative of mercy? Trump couldn’t spell it.

Merde!

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