Trump pardons well-connected offenders
US PRESIDENT Donald Trump has gone on a clemency blitz, commuting former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich’s 14-year prison sentence and pardoning former New York City police commissioner Bernie Kerik, among a long list of others.
Those who got a break from Mr Trump include financier Michael Milken, the “junk bond king” who served two years in prison in the early 1990s after pleading guilty to violating US securities laws, and Edward DeBartolo Jr, the former San Francisco 49ers owner convicted in a gambling fraud scandal after building one of the most successful NFL teams in history. But Mr Trump also commuted the sentences of several women with more sympathetic cases to balance out the men convicted of corruption.
In all, Mr Trump took clemency actions related to 11 people, his latest interventions in the justice system as he faces growing criticism for weighing in on the cases of former aides. Mr Trump made clear that he saw similarities between efforts to investigate his own conduct and those that took down Blagojevich, a Democrat who appeared on Trump’s reality TV show Celebrity Apprentice.
The clemency actions come as an emboldened Mr Trump continues to test the limits of his office now that impeachment is over.
Blagojevich was convicted on charges of political corruption, including seeking to sell an appointment to former president Barack Obama’s old Senate seat and trying to shake down a children’s hospital.