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On the Media

Perps Walk

On the Media

WNYC Studios

Magazine, Newspapers, Media, 1st, Advertising, Social Sciences, Studios, Radio, Transparency, Tv, History, Science, News Commentary, Npr, Technology, Amendment, Newspaper, Wnyc, News, Journalism

4.68.7K Ratings

🗓️ 8 June 2018

⏱️ 50 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Rethinking presidential pardons, the breakdown in punishing white collar crime, and Seymour Hersh's reflections on reporting.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

From WNYC in New York, this is on the media. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

0:05.0

And I'm Bob Garfield. Well, this Wednesday development was a bit unexpected.

0:11.0

The president has commuted the sentence of Alice Marie Johnson, a woman now in her 60s,

0:17.0

who was convicted in the late 1990s of drug possession and money laundering.

0:20.0

A life sentence to a first-time offender on a drug case.

0:24.6

Yes, a commutation no-brainer.

0:27.0

But one wonders how an African-American woman with a drug history

0:31.3

would get on Donald Trump's radar to begin with.

0:34.7

Kim Kardashian, the reality TV star, was here at the White House to lobby the

0:38.5

president last week for this commutation of sentence. Kim Kardashian just tweeting out

0:44.2

best news ever to her legion of Twitter followers. That's one mystery solved. The intervention

0:49.8

of noted human rights advocate Kim Kardashian. But her timing was propitious, because pardons have been very much on the president's mind,

0:58.9

especially those of powerless, meek, remorseful victims of political persecution.

1:04.6

President Trump granting a full pardon to Dinesh D'Souza,

1:07.9

the conservative author and filmmaker who pleaded guilty to campaign finance fraud.

1:12.1

He issued a pardon to the former Tompade, the Vice President Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby, who was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in 2007.

1:20.6

President Donald Trump, pardoning former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

1:24.6

He's recently convicted of criminal contempt for violating a judge's order.

1:28.5

This was in a racial profiling case, and he continued to target immigrants at traffic stops.

1:34.0

And maybe this is all just a precursor to another pardon of another controversial elected official

1:40.2

currently in the sites of prosecutors on any number of potential crimes.

1:44.8

Tweeting, as has been stated by numerous legal scholars, I have the absolute right to pardon myself.

...

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