The controversy surrounding Trump's pardons goes from bad to worse [View all]

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The controversy surrounding Trump’s pardons goes from bad to worse
The White House has confronted questions for months about whether presidential pardons are effectively for sale. Those questions just got louder.

Jan. 19, 2026, 8:46 AM EST
By Steve Benen


(MSNow) As the first year of Donald Trump’s second term progressed, and the list of scandalous presidential pardons grew, the White House confronted a question without modern precedent: Were pardons effectively for sale?

The question became unavoidable after the Republican started rewarding generous donors with clemency, culminating in a Wall Street Journal report, published shortly before Christmas, that described a dynamic that has “spawned a pardon-shopping industry where lobbyists say their going rate is $1 million. Pardon-seekers have offered some lobbyists close to the president success fees of as much as $6 million if they can close the deal, according to people familiar with the offers.”

Last week, these concerns reached a new level. The New York Times reported:

In late 2024, while [Julio Herrera Velutini, a Venezuelan-Italian banker] was facing felony bribery and other charges in the case, his daughter, Isabela Herrera, donated $2.5 million to MAGA Inc., a super PAC devoted to Mr. Trump and run by his allies.

In May, her father’s lawyer, Christopher M. Kise, who had served on Mr. Trump’s legal defense team, negotiated an unusually lenient deal with the Justice Department. Under the deal, which was authorized by a top Trump appointee, Mr. Herrera agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor campaign finance charge, disappointing career prosecutors who had pushed for a harsher sentence.

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The White House announced Friday that Trump is also pardoning former Puerto Rico Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced, who pleaded guilty to a corruption charge related to her 2020 campaign — a scandal that also included campaign contributions from the aforementioned Julio Herrera Velutini.

An NBC News report noted, “President Donald Trump’s pardon of former Puerto Rico Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced did not include all of the criminal cases she’s faced, and the White House is planning to make a fix out of an abundance of caution, an official said Sunday.” .....................(more)

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