Don’t Pardon Trump’s Pardons
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Slate
3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 17 August 2024
⏱️ 44 minutes
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Summary
The power of the presidential pardon is a holdover from America’s colonial roots. But no one had used it like former President Trump. Over and over he kept pardoning his allies, and then, he’d welcome them back into the fold. . It seemed like he was rewarding these criminals for their loyalty, and belittling whole categories of crime, like fraud, campaign finance violations, and corruption. Is that what was really happening?
This week in our series called The Law According to Trump, we go deeper into Trump’s use of the pardon with Ciara Torres-Spelliscy. Torres-Spelliscy is a professor of law at Stetson University and the author of Corporate Citizen?: An Argument for the Separation of Corporation and State and Political Brands. Torres-Spelliscy speaks with host Andrea Bernstein about how Trump’s pardoning has hurt democracy, and what it means for the future of the country.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the law according to Trump from Amicus. |
| 0:17.0 | Slade's podcast about the courts and the law. I'm Andrea Bernstein sitting in for |
| 0:21.3 | Dahliaith Wick for a few weeks while she takes a break. |
| 0:25.0 | In this series, we're taking a look at how Donald Trump deploys the law, how he's used lawyers |
| 0:29.3 | and lawsuits and sometimes even judges to enhance his brand, his money, and his power. |
| 0:35.2 | And this week we're turning our attention to Trump's use of the pardon power and how it connects |
| 0:39.8 | to the taint of corruption that emanated from his first presidency and could engulf a second |
| 0:45.2 | one. |
| 0:46.2 | Let's think for a minute about the people Trump pardoned while he was president. |
| 0:53.2 | His second 2016 campaign manager Paul Manafort, guilty of fraud, obstruction of justice and |
| 0:58.8 | conspiracy against the United States. |
| 1:01.2 | His third 2016 campaign manager Steve Bannon charged with |
| 1:05.1 | fraud. His campaign advisor Roger Stone found guilty of what the judge in his |
| 1:09.5 | case called covering up for the president. Trump's former national security advisor Michael Flynn, |
| 1:15.0 | who lied to the FBI about contacts with the Russians, |
| 1:19.0 | all of them convicted of crimes during Trump's first term, all of them pardoned by then President Trump. |
| 1:27.1 | There were more than a hundred others convicted of things like accepting bribes, making illegal |
| 1:31.7 | campaign contributions, and more fraud. |
| 1:38.0 | Nor is Trump finished? |
| 1:39.9 | It's clear, if elected, he'll have the Justice Department drop the two cases against him. |
| 1:45.4 | This is what he said when he was asked by ABC's Rachel Scott at the conference of the National |
| 1:51.1 | Association of Black Journalists |
... |
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