By Aaron Blake, CNN
US President Donald Trump. Photo: AFP
Analysis: So much of the coverage of US President Donald Trump's pardons is focused on how political they are. And they are certainly political - extraordinarily so.
But as Trump's latest batch of pardons reinforces, that's only half the story.
The more ominous trend is not just that he's pardoning political allies; it's that he's pardoning allies in very transactional ways.
He's pardoning lots and lots of people who helped Trump, specifically.
After previously dangling pardons over allies involved in sensitive investigations involving Trump himself - and later delivering those pardons - he's now pardoned oodles of people who took illegal or legally dubious action on his behalf.
Trump is creating a permission structure in which people will credibly think they can't be held accountable in federal court, as long as what they're doing benefits Trump. He's been cultivating this for a long time, but he seems to be getting more brazen about it.
Trump's most recent pardons, which were announced overnight by Justice Department official Ed Martin, are for 77 people who played roles in trying to overturn his 2020 election loss. These officials include former Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell and the president's former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, along with many of the people involved in the so-called fake electors scheme.
The pardons are symbolic, in that these people haven't actually been charged with federal crimes. Some of them face state-level charges, for which Trump cannot pardon them.
But that's also what makes these so notable. Trump is using this symbolic gesture to expand the ranks of people who went to great and legally dubious lengths to help him try to overturn the 2020 election and who later received pardons.
When you combine these new pardons with the pardons and commutations given to January 6, 2021, defendants and Trump allies who testified in cases involving the president, across his two terms Trump has now pardoned more than 1,650 people who played significant roles in matters involving him personally.
Those people account for more than 84% of pardons and commutations awarded by Trump. (Trump has otherwise been remarkably stingy with his clemency powers, when the matters didn't involve him or his allies.)
And many of these people engaged in violence, including against police, in the name of helping Trump.
What message does that send to other people who might go to remarkable lengths to help Trump carry out his agenda? To participate in legally dubious administration actions - things like its boat strikes in the Caribbean? To carry out his deportation agenda in rather brutal ways? Or to perhaps even try to help him stay in power, as more than 1,600 people did before receiving pardons for their actions?
The sheer volume of these self-serving pardons is hardly the only indicator that Trump is wielding them for political and transactional purposes.
Official reports from the various Russia investigations referred to how Trump appeared to dangle pardons over people who were in positions to provide potentially derogatory information about him. These people included former advisers Roger Stone, Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn.
Special counsel Robert Mueller said in his report that Trump's repeated comments about potentially pardoning Manafort "had the potential to influence Manafort's decision whether to cooperate with the government."
All were later pardoned by Trump in his first term. And perhaps most notably, Trump's pardon of Manafort came after Manafort lied to investigators in ways that threw them off in a key portion of the probe.
Manafort's lies came after he cut a deal to cooperate with investigators. A bipartisan Senate report seemed to regard these lies as particularly inexplicable, given they opened Manafort up to much more prison time.
But ultimately, Manafort's gamble appeared to pay off with Trump, when the president gave him the pardon he had repeatedly dangled as a potential reward for staying loyal.
Both the Mueller report and the Senate report also referred to how Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen said he was led to believe the Trump White House would help him with his pardon if he stayed in line.
Cohen told the Senate Intelligence Committee that he discussed a potential pardon with a fellow Trump lawyer more than half a dozen times. He said the lawyer told him after he testified to Congress that Trump "heard that you did great, and don't worry, everything's going to be fine. He loves ya."
Giuliani himself also publicly floated pardons related to witnesses in the Russia investigation. He at one point told the New York Daily News that when "the whole thing is over, things might get cleaned up with some presidential pardons." He told CNN around the same time that "When it's over, hey, he's the president of the United States. He retains his pardon power. Nobody is taking that away from him."
And then there are the comments of another lawyer who figured prominently in the efforts to overturn the 2020 election, John Eastman.
Just a few days after the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol, Eastman emailed Giuliani, saying, "I've decided that I should be on the pardon list, if that is still in the works."
We still don't know who was keeping such a "pardon list," or why. But it signalled that those around Trump seemed to sense their actions were at least legally problematic and were preparing accordingly very shortly after January 6.
Indeed, some involved had either been told their plans were illegal or acknowledged it in the days and weeks beforehand, but they pressed forward anyway. Then they rather quickly seemed to start talking about pardons.
Nearly five years later, Eastman has joined Giuliani in actually being on a Trump "pardon list."
- CNN
