By Aiyeku Timothy
As President Donald Trump enters his final days in office, his allies are reportedly taking money from wealthy felons or their associates to push the White House for presidential pardon, documents and interviews with lobbyists and lawyers have revealed.
Pardons and commutations are intended to show mercy to deserving recipients, but it seems to be used by Trump to reward personal or political allies.
A former CIA officer, John Kiriakou, convicted of illegally disclosing classified information, was told that Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, could help him secure a pardon for $2 million, an offer he rejected.
Kiriakou ended up paying $50,000 to a onetime top adviser to the Trump campaign for the same reason and agreed to a $50,000 bonus if the president granted it, according to a copy of an agreement.
Trump’s former personal lawyer, John M. Dowd, has also presented himself to felons as someone who could secure pardons because of his close relationship with the president, accepting tens of thousands of dollars from a wealthy felon and advising him and other potential clients to leverage Trump’s grievances about the justice system.
Also, one lobbyist, Brett Tolman, a former federal prosecutor who has been advising the White House on pardons and commutations, is reported to have monetized his clemency work, collecting tens of thousands of dollars, and possibly more, in recent weeks to lobby the White House for clemency for the son of a former Arkansas senator; the founder of the notorious online drug marketplace Silk Road; and a New York City socialite who pleaded guilty in a fraud scheme.
A prominent eye doctor from Palm Beach, Florida, Dr. Salomon Melgen, who is in prison after being convicted on dozens of counts of health care fraud, joins the list of those that could be included in the clemency list, three sources allege.
It is therefore, claimed that Trump is preparing to issue around 100 pardons and commutations on his final full day in office.
The White House held a meeting on Sunday to finalize the list of pardons, two sources said and it feared that most of them were bought through Trump’s allies.
“There are a lot of people urging the President to pardon the folks” involved in the insurrection, Trump ally, Sen. Lindsey Graham, said Sunday on Fox News. “To seek a pardon of these people would be wrong.”
Meanwhile, Trump has reportedly suggested to aides he wants to take the extraordinary and unprecedented step of pardoning himself, although it was not clear whether he had broached the topic since the rampage.
The report added that he has also discussed issuing preemptive pardons to his children, his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, and Giuliani.
Trump is expected to leave the White House on January 20 and could issue pardons up until noon on Inauguration Day.
