Hmmmmm?
Seems that ex-President Trump’s son-in-law was a pardon connection…..
And?
A clemency connection also….
Even amid the uproar over President Donald J. Trump’s freewheeling use of his pardon powers at the end of his term, one commutation stood out.
Jonathan Braun of New York had served just two and a half years of a decade-long sentence for running a massive marijuana ring, when Mr. Trump, at 12:51 a.m. on his last day in office, announced he would be freed.
Mr. Braun was, to say the least, an unusual candidate for clemency.
A Staten Islander with a history of violent threats, Mr. Braun had told a rabbi who owed him money: “I am going to make you bleed.” Mr. Braun’s family had told confidants they were willing to spend millions of dollars to get him out of prison.
At the time, Mr. Trump’s own Justice Department and federal regulators, as well as New York state authorities, were still after him for his role in an entirely separate matter: his work as a predatory lender, making what judges later found were fraudulent and usurious loans to cash-strapped small businesses.
Nearly three years later, the consequences of Mr. Braun’s commutation are becoming clearer, raising new questions about how Mr. Trump intervened in criminal justice decisions and what he could do in a second term, when he would have the power to make good on his suggestions that he would free supporters convicted of storming the Capitol and possibly even to pardon himself if convicted of the federal charges he faces.
Just months after Mr. Trump freed him, Mr. Braun returned to working as a predatory lender, according to New York State’s attorney general. Two months ago, a New York state judge barred him from working in the industry. Weeks later, a federal judge, acting on a complaint from the Federal Trade Commission, imposed a nationwide ban on him.
A New York Times investigation, drawing on documents and interviews with current and former officials, and others familiar with Mr. Braun’s case, found there were even greater ramifications stemming from the commutation than previously known and revealed new details about Mr. Braun’s history and how the commutation came about…..
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Since returning to predatory lending after being freed, Mr. Braun is still engaging in deceptive business tactics, regulators and customers say.
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In working to secure his release, Mr. Braun’s family used a connection to Charles Kushner, the father of Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and senior White House adviser, to try to get the matter before Mr. Trump. Jared Kushner’s White House office drafted the language used in the news release to announce commutations for Mr. Braun and others.
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A spokesman for Mr. Trump said all pardon applications “went through a vigorous vetting and review process,” but he did not address specific questions about Mr. Braun’s commutation.
William P. Barr, a Trump attorney general who had left by the time of the Braun commutation, said when he took over the Justice Department he discovered that “there were pardons being given without any vetting by the department.”….
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“The pardon process at the end of the administration was so unseemly it would make the Clintons blush,” Mr. Short said, referring to the final-days pardons issued by President Bill Clinton — including one to the fugitive financier Marc Rich, whose ex-wife donated $450,000 to Mr. Clinton’s presidential library….
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In a filing this summer, the New York attorney general said Mr. Braun, through his companies, “continues to commit usury.”
Note….
The power to Pardon is absolute to the American President….
While there IS a process that should be followed?
President’s do NOT HAVE TO do so……
And?
A pardon actually implies there WAS a crime and guilt…