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Home » Trump grants pardons and commutations

Trump grants pardons and commutations

The New Neo Posted on by

Trump grants clemency to Eddie De Bartolo Jr., Blagojevich, Keric, Milken, and others. Blagojevich had his sentence commuted (after serving eight years) and the rest were pardoned, along with clemency in other less high-profile cases. There is a big difference between a commutation and a pardon, because in the former the sentence of guilt remains.

I previously wrote (in 2018) about Trump’s previous pardons and his plans to commute Blagojevich’s sentence here.

Milken’s conviction is something I hadn’t previously studied. It occurred way before the time I had any special interest in politics (see this). But some of the comments on Milken at that Instapundit link are of interest in terms of what’s been happening in the law these days, such as for example this one:

Probably forgotten in all this is that the Feds got Milken to plead guilty on reduced charges by threatening to indict and prosecute Milken’s brother for crimes that guaranteed him a very long prison sentence. This is, of course, the same despicable tactic Fed prosecutors used on General Michael Flynn. I’m sure the parallel in the two cases is not lost on Trump.

I got a late start today and haven’t had time to look into whether that’s true or not, but I have little doubt that some commenters here will have opinions on it.

[ADDENDUM: Here’s a whole lot more about the Blagojevich case, by William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection.]

Comments

Trump grants pardons and commutations — 22 Comments

  1. The Blago commutation is interesting. Not so bad, because he is still guilty and he served a number of years. I don’t think I buy the spin that he only hinted at a quid pro quo but did not actually do one. I think it is true that the prosecutor laid out much of his case in the media, just after the indictment. Last time I checked, that is a no-no.

    I don’t know much more than Neo about the old Milken case. I know that way back then, there were lots of unethical, or seemingly unethical things in the financial securities biz that were not illegal. Hillary’s trader’s commodity straddle trades on cattle futures were not illegal, then. They would be now. Milken’s done many exemplary things since then.

    The DeBartolo thing is almost bizarre. He went to prison for what? The Federal Bureau of Intimidation strikes again.
    ____

    Flynn, Stone, etc. pardons up next??

  2. Here’s a link to the White House statements on the President’s pardons and commutations: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statement-press-secretary-regarding-executive-grants-clemency-2/

    The focus will be on the famous people and not the normal ones Trump is benefiting but at least Trump is doing the famous folks out in the open where everyone can take note, not when he’s on the way out the door like Clinton did with Marc Rich.

    Mike

  4. Andy,
    My terminology may wrong. The straddles I’m talking about are where traders sign up to take the losing half of the paired trade (one long, one short), i.e. a laundered bribe.

    Of course, bribes have always been illegal, but I think the problem with Hillary’s actually trading was that either names were not attached to specific sides of the trade at the time they were placed or that names were changed after the fact. Either of those last two tricks is highly suspect, but one or both were not illegal at the time. I am assuming that Hillary was not mind bogglingly lucky or skilled.

  5. Milken was hated because of “junk bonds” and his arrogance. I think Giuliani was involved in his prosecution and it is interesting that he seems to be involved the pardon. There are a lot of people who think there were no crimes committed, sort of like the Conrad Black case.

  6. Here is first part of the WSJ editorial. A little long.

    President Trump issued several controversial pardons and grants of clemency on Tuesday, but the most welcome was the pardon to legendary financier Michael Milken. The presidential action recognizes that the Milken prosecution of the late 1980s-early 1990s was an example of prosecutorial excess in an era like our own when political gales were raging about “the greed decade.”

    Mr. Milken was one of the great financial innovators of the 20th century. In the 1980s he invented the high-yield bond market that is now a financial staple but in the 1980s made capital available to entrepreneurs and young companies that otherwise couldn’t get it. In the process Mr. Milken and his employer, Drexel Burnham, challenged established Wall Street firms and corporate elites. The innovation helped to usher in two decades of rapid American growth and prosperity.

    It also made them political targets as prosecutors riding an anti-Wall Street populist wave investigated insider trading. The prosecutions, using the RICO statute usually reserved for the mob, turned up some genuine crooks but also prominent Wall Street figures who were largely innocent. Ivan Boesky, a genuine crook, produced information in return for leniency that led prosecutors to Mr. Milken, a bigger prize.

    Drexel Burnham eventually went bust under the pressure. Mr. Milken fought the charges for some time but eventually pleaded guilty to six felonies after prosecutors targeted his brother Lowell. He was never charged with insider trading but was given a 10-year sentence out of proportion to his offenses that the judge later reduced to two years.

    Most of the original securities prosecutions of that era were overturned by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, though only after Mr. Milken had served 21 months in prison. “The charges filed against Mr. Milken were truly novel,” said Tuesday’s White House statement on the pardon. “In fact, one of the lead prosecutors later admitted that Mr. Milken had been charged with numerous technical offenses and regulatory violations that had never before been charged as crimes.”

    In an irony for the ages, the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan at the time whose office led the prosecutions was Rudy Giuliani, who had his sights set on a campaign for New York mayor. Tuesday’s White House statement said Mr. Giuliani is among those who urged Mr. Trump to pardon Mr. Milken.

  7. Tommy: Hillary’s actually trading was that either names were not attached to specific sides of the trade at the time they were placed or that names were changed after the fact.

    That is essentially what happened.

    Tommy: The straddles I’m talking about are where traders sign up to take the losing half of the paired trade (one long, one short), i.e. a laundered bribe.

    This was essentially a spread trade and the losing part of the trade was covered before the end of the current tax year so that the losses were filed in the current tax year with profits pushed into next year. After that you can pay taxes next year or do the same thing next year. I think US addressed that issue by going mark-to-market accounting.

  8. The Dems willing to target rich folk, and their ability to get convictions, is likely an unwritten reason 7 of the 10 richest Americans are big Dem supporters, including Mini Mike.

    Good for Trump to reduce some of the “wrongly convicted or overly punished” errors in the selective Dem justice system.

    A huge advantage for Trump is that the Dems who hate him, insult him, and oppose him won’t really get new ammo out of this. In fact, as each of these “guilty” folk are compared to HR Clinton’s illegal email server, and McCabe’s unpunished lies, it will likely make the Dem Deep State look worse.

  9. I didn’t know that about Milkens brother.

    If called to jury duty , and if asked will I trust the testimony of an FIB agent, I will say not until German Nazi Müller hangs where his uncles hanged in Nuremberg

  10. Professor Jacobson reminds us that he was opposed to the impeachment of Blagojevich, for reasons that seem very familiar. Turley might almost be doing a reversed-party channeling of his analysis. As with the Stone case vs the McCabe non-case, the corruption of the legal and judicial systems date way back.

    This *may* surprise you, but I took Blago’s side on impeachment, Just Say No To The Flawed Impeachment Of Rod Blagojevich:

    I won’t repeat all of what I’ve said in over 50 posts over the past seven weeks, so here is the short version of why Illinois Senators should say no to this impeachment:

    The process is unconstitutional. The Senate delegated trial decision-making authority to Fitzgerald, in violation of the Illinois Constitution, which vests such authority exclusively in the Presiding Chief Justice and Senators. Fitzgerald started this process with his press conference, has made public only such evidence as supported his goal of removing Blagojevich from office, and has insulated that evidence from challenge. This fundamental flaw in the process has tainted the trial beyond remedy.

    The process is fundamentally unfair, in that it restricted Blagojevich’s ability to challenge the evidence against him as to the criminal complaint affidavit upon which the Senate relies almost exclusively for the allegations of criminal conduct. While we can debate to what extent Blagojevich is entitled to “due process,” we all should want removal of an elected Governor to require a fundamentally fair process and trial, which has been absent here.

    The non-criminal offenses do not rise to the level of impeachable offenses. While the Illinois Constitution does not define what is an impeachable offense, any reasonable understanding requires that the conduct be so extreme as to be the functional equivalent of a high crime or misdemeanor. The non-criminal offenses charged boil down to a political battle between the executive branch and the legislature as to the proper balance of powers. Such separation of powers contests properly are left to the courts to sort out. Impeachment on such matters merely becomes a tool for the legislature to assert its primacy in the political power game; but the players in a game should not also be the referees, which is what is happening in this impeachment proceeding.

  13. I’d love it if the pardon attorney’s office in the Department of Justice were abolished and you had a chancery office in the White House – largely staffed with non-lawyers – reviewing applications for pardons and commutations. Ideally, the focus would be locating cases of malfeasance, misfeasance, and nonfeasance by judges and prosecutors. Judges and prosecutors do not police themselves and (see Glenn Reynolds on this point) have attempted to seize comprehensive immunity from review for their bad acts.

  14. A Virginia prosecutor whose blawging I follow has remarked that he’s been poleaxed by the severity of federal sentencing guidelines given how modest are corresponding sentences for state crimes. We would benefit from recalibrating federal sentencing rules and from reducing the scope of federal jurisdiction in criminal matters. An example would be the Subway pitchman and his sidekick, who were sent away for hideously long terms on federal charges, even though very little of which they did crossed jurisdictional lines. (The pitchman did at one point call an out-of-state friend and attempt to arrange for an assignation with an adolescent she knew who also lived out of state; the assignation never took place; criminal solicitation is ordinarily a minor crime unless you suggest murdering someone).

    Criminal justice at the federal level needs to be focused on combatting fraud, contraband trade, illegal immigration, racketeering, espionage, and species of bribery. No need to be manufacturing offenses out of banal activity, nor for pre-empting state prosecutors and investigators a propos of nothing you can defend. While we’re at it, why does the FBI have it’s nose in so many matters? We have state police services to provide technical aid to local law enforcement.

  17. FB:

    That second article you linked is not accessible.

    But just the title tells it all – meaning, the author is untrustworthy, because Trump is certainly not “as corrupt as they come.” Not even remotely close.

    Here’s Kerik’s prosecution history. And here’s another article about it. Trump doesn’t appear to be saying that Kerik was wrongly convicted, by the way. The pardon came because of his other work since conviction.

  18. Aesop, thanks for the quote from L.I. For the curious, the URL is

    https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/02/blago-is-back-trump-commutes-sentence-of-former-illinois-governor-rod-blagojevich/

    I watched the 3+ – minute video from Chicago’s own WGN, and I’m glad I did. I’d more-or-less assumed that Blago was yet another Dirty Dem Ill. Gov., but the video convinces me that I may have been dead wrong on that. If so, speaking as one who usually votes for a Dem as dogcatcher so that the Dems won’t think I’m so stupid as to make a habit of knee-jerk voting the straight Heffalump tickets (ditto for the Pachyderm Parade of course)*, I’m downright proud of our current Pres.’s commutation.

    Per vid: Blago was charged, by good ol’ Patrick Fitzgerald, on 24 counts; hung jury on 23 of them; convicted of “lying to the Feds/FBI [I already forgot which]) and for this he gets 24 years! in the slammer — give me a break! What about other lowlifes [“lowlives”?] like Comey … and … and … and the list goes on … ?

    *[She said, speaking factual truth as to the voting, but nevertheless with tongue firmly in cheek as to the reasoning behind it. Merely scratches a completely irrevelant, incompetent, and immaterial itch, to swipe a quote from a very famous writer of legal whodunits back when dinosaurs roamed. By the way — UT has many of his books as audiobooks, for those who miss P.M.

    ‘Scuse me now while I read Prof. Jacobson’s piece.

    Thanks again, Aesop.

  19. Interesting observations here, mostly speculative but not impossible.

    https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/president_trumps_list_of_pardons_and_grants_of_clemency_make_a_lot_of_sense.html

    What’s the thread tying all of these pardons and commutations together? In fact, there are a few threads, and they’re all important.

    DeBartolo, Milken, Kerik, Pogue, and Safavian all fell into federal traps. Each was entangled in the federal justice system because the government went after them for violating rules that relate solely to the government itself. Their situations parallel what happened to Trump associates caught in Mueller’s net.

    In Milken’s case, he gave up fighting an esoteric allegation only because prosecutors threatened his brother — which mirrors the way Mueller’s team threatened Mike Flynn’s son.

    Trump reminds us that the government writes the laws and regulations, and then uses those laws against people whom the government wants to destroy, whether righteously (e.g., Al Capone, brought down on tax fraud) or not (e.g., the people Trump pardoned). These pardons remind us that while Trump survived, many of his associates did not.

    David Safavian reminds us that McCabe walked free. Blagojevich reminds us that Trump not only doesn’t prosecute people because of their ideology, but will also reach across party lines to grant clemency.

    The pardons and commutations for lesser-known people emphasize Trump’s outreach to black and Hispanic communities through his First Step Act.

    Trump is a very sane genius.

  20. Neo
    Thank you for your thoughts, and thank you for the links you provided.

    I am not knowing in details the sort of crimes that lead to Kerik conviction, however, this man has many points that need to stop on his behaviours during his life (specially Kerik dubbed himself the “interim interior minister of Iraq.” British police advisors called him the “Baghdad terminator,”that may rise many questions about why he convicted.

    That second article you linked is not accessible.

    It works, I tested from my end….

    The link here

    https://www.salon.com/2004/12/09/kerik_6/

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