This is what corruption decriminalized looks like.
Yesterday NPR reported that since returning to office, Donald Trump has pardoned at least fifteen former elected officials and their co-conspirators who were charged or convicted of public corruption. This on top of the 1,500 January 6 rioters he pardoned on day one of his current term.
Among them: former Virginia sheriff Scott Jenkins, sentenced to ten years for taking more than seventy-five thousand dollars in bribes in exchange for handing out badges, guns, and concealed-carry privileges to local businessmen, who was pardoned hours before he was due to report to prison. Former Tennessee state house speaker Glen Casada and his aide Cade Cothren, convicted in a kickback scheme involving taxpayer-funded mailers. Former Las Vegas councilwoman Michele Fiore, who spent seventy thousand dollars donated for a memorial to slain police officers on her daughter’s wedding. Former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich and former Texas congressman Henry Cuellar were also among them.
The Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, created after Watergate to prosecute public corruption and election crimes, has gone from around forty attorneys to two. Open cases have fallen from roughly two hundred to twenty.
Ed Martin, the administration official running the pardon process, has posted on social media: “No MAGA left behind.”
This is what corruption decriminalized looks like.
Notes To My Future Self 