The Art of the Pardon: How Trump Turned Clemency Into a Business

From New York Times, I'm Natalie Kitroef. This is The Daily. Americans are now more worried about government corruption at any point in two decades. In the final stretch of the midterm election campaign, poll after poll has found that voters are latching on to the perceived corruption of the Trump administration. Fox News just asked voters what worries the most, and 88% said corruption corruption in government. 36% of our respondents of registered voters say government corruption is the top issue. And here's the killer number. 66% say Trump is using the presidency to enrich himself, up from 56% last fall. Today, my colleague, Ken Vogel, explores one major storyline feeding that perception. How those around the president have turned the pardon process into a business. It's Friday, October 30. Ken Vogel, welcome back the to The president Daily. It's lovely to have you here. Well, it's great to be with you. So we know that corruption has become a major issue in these midterm elections. We've talked on the show a lot about how president Trump and his family have profited already on this presidency. His financial disclosure form showed he made $2,200,000,000 just last year, most of that from his crypto empire. But you, Ken, on your beat of covering money and politics, have been focusing for the last year on a different way that large sums of cash have been flowing to people in Trump's orbit. And that is through something that you've come to call the pardon industry. So what is the pardon industry, and how big is it? Yeah. It's tough to measure, but it is an extremely lucrative niche within the broader influence industry here in Washington DC. And it is a network of lobbying and law firms and individual lawyers and consultants who have close ties or at least advertise having close ties to the president and charge quite large fees to wealthy people who are either charged with, have been convicted, or serving time for crimes and wanna get clemency, either pardons or commutations in order to get their cases before the president. So, obviously, presidents have, for all of time, always pardoned people. Right? So what is different about this? Yeah. The way that Trump has approached clemency really stands out. He's largely disregarded this justice department process that has been set up in order to identify and vet worthy recipients who meet certain criteria, like in the case of pardons having served their sentence and actually shown remorse, shown an unlikely hood to recidivate, paid back the victims of their crimes. Trump has completely set that by the wayside, and his pardon record makes clear that it's less important to show remorse and demonstrate that you're unlikely to reoffend and more important to have connections to him and to appeal to his grievances about the justice system being unfair. And I think it also appeals to him because it is truly a monarchical power. I mean, it is derived …