Hunter Biden painting sale update
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I’m not sure that the Supreme Court using multiple strands of doctrine to make it legal for the president to get bribes and to quid pro quo favors in return was a good idea:
In 2021, a convicted fraudster named Adriana Camberos was freed from prison when President Trump commuted her sentence.
Rather than taking advantage of that second chance, prosecutors said, Ms. Camberos returned to crime. She and her brother were convicted in 2024 in an unrelated fraud.
This week, Mr. Trump pardoned both siblings, marking the second time Mr. Trump had opened the prison gates for Ms. Camberos.
Their pardons were among a handful of clemency grants quietly issued by Mr. Trump this week.
Among the other lucky recipients: a man whose daughter had given millions to a Trump-backed super PAC, a former governor of Puerto Rico and a former F.B.I. agent — all of whom had pleaded guilty in a political corruption case.
The pardons, most of which have not been previously reported, were supported by people with close ties to Mr. Trump’s orbit, including lawyers who had worked for him.
They continue a trend in which Mr. Trump has used the unfettered presidential clemency power to reward allies and those who have paid his associates or donated to his political operation. The approach stands in contrast to Justice Department guidelines that prioritize the clemency applications of people who have completed their prison sentences or demonstrated remorse and a lower likelihood of recidivism.
The pardons, several of which forgave white-collar crimes and frauds by affluent perpetrators, strike a discordant note with the Trump administration’s announcement that it was suspending federal funding for programs intended to serve poor people in Minnesota in order to root out fraud.
While the point about the compounded bad faith in this last graf is an obvious one, it’s still not necessarily something you expect to be pointed out in a news story. Anything this administration does with the pretext of rooting out fraud really needs to be put in the context of it being an open floating criminal enterprise.