original-honeychiles:

justinspoliticalcorner:

Sarah K. Burris at Raw Story, via NCRM (12.22.2020): 

Calling it a “bizarre night,” MSNBC host Rachel Maddow addressed the veto threat from President Donald Trump along with his slate of pardons for people involved in the Mueller investigation and murderers of unarmed civilians in Iraq.

Maddow noted that along with the names of the people he was pardoning he also added names of those who endorsed the pardon as if to bring them in as accomplices in the pardons.

New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt explained that there’s a process through the Justice Department for pardons to ensure that those who are being pardoned match a kind of acknowledgment of grace and mercy.

“They’ve had the system to ensure that there’s a uniform process to it,” he told Maddow. “We know that Trump has ignored that process in his past pardons, that he has gone off and done things on his own. He’s allowed Kim Kardashian into the Oval Office to lobby him for pardons. At first glance, when looking at these pardons tonight, it’s clear that many of them don’t even meet the basic criteria to receive a typical Justice Department recommendation for a pardon.”

[…]

“It’s something that the president can create instantaneous loyalty when he does,” said Schmidt. “And because of that, if you look at the past numbers that he has granted, the pardons he has granted, of the 45 he granted up until today, 40 of the 45 — 88 percent — were either tied to one of his allies, someone who had special access to him, or was tied to something that politically benefited him personally.”

That last piece of information was something that Maddow predicted would someday be heard in a Congressional hearing on the pardons.

On Tuesday night’s edition of MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, NYT journalist Michael Schmidt noted that 88% of Trump’s pardons were motivated by political reasons for his benefit.

From the 12.22.2020 edition of MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show:

He trying to pardon anybody that could say anything to the grand jury to pin his wings back