We Were Warned About This

Plus: Trump's Monument to Himself.

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

The East Wing is gone. Demolished. Razed and obliterated. There was no notice, no consultation, no debate, permits or approvals. It was simply erased to make room for Donald Trump’s Mighty Works, which, in this case is a colossal ballroom, an enduring metaphor for his vanity, arrogance, and what his presidency represents. (Do yourself a favor and read Rick Wilson’s essay here: “The East Wing Obscenity”.

Meanwhile, Trump took a break from his campaign of retribution to hand out a pardon to yet another corrupt crony, this time, Binance founder Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao.

In November 2023, Zhao pleaded guilty to violating anti-money-laundering guidelines — and agreed to step down as chief executive of Binance as part of the plea deal. Binance also agreed to pay a $4.3 billion fine, which at that time was among the largest ever levied against a corporation. It’s unclear what the pardon means for payment of the fine and Zhao’s ability to lead his company again.

This follows hard on the heels of his commutation of the serial-fraudster George Santos, who had been sentenced to seven years in prison for wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, and all-around grifty assholery (which should be a crime if it isn’t one).

Journalist Isaac Saul notes that the beneficiary of Trump’s latest pardon, Zhao, “is comically corrupt. And he just successfully won a pardon from Trump by boosting the Trump family crypto coin. I mean, this is a months-long scandal in any other normal administration.” Alas, in Trump 2.0, it is just another day that end with -y and will probably be forgotten by the weekend.

It shouldn’t be.

Happy Friday. Note to readers:

Keeping track of Trump’s corruption is, unfortunately, a full-time job. So is chronicling his attacks on American values and institutions. That’s why I do this, and why independent media has become so important. This is the challenge of our time and the fight of our generation. But we can’t do it without your help.

I’m not promising you a safe space. At times I’m going to push you to get out of your bubbles. But I can promise to tell you what I think and provide straight, sober, sane, and occasionally snarky commentary. Plus, dogs.

We were warned about the pardon power

For Trump, the pardons are not a one-off. They are a central pillar of his emerging kakistocracy. They are his instruments of immunity and impunity.

Thanks to the Supreme Court (and a supine Congress) Trump himself is effectively above the law, safe from legal accountability for his corruption or his crimes. (I wrote about this a few weeks ago: “The Seal Team Six President?”¹

His use of the pardon power to free his most disreputable henchmen extends that impunity throughout his entire enterprise. Trump’s enemies will face the wrath of the law, but his loyalists can shelter safely beneath the wings of his mendacity. They are required to be neither decent, nor honorable. They can steal, lie, grift, commit war crimes, accept bribes, and even engage in sex trafficking — but if they remain in Trump’s favor, they can walk free, untouched by the law.

Consider the wretched hive of villainy that Trump has already freed: Paul Manafort, Steve Bannon, Dinesh D’Souza, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Rod Blagojevich, and Jared Kushner’s father, who once paid a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law. He has doled out pardons like skittles to corrupt former GOP congressmen² and on his first day freed the January 6 rioters, including leaders of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys.

**

At this point, I think it is safe to say that the worst fears of some of the Founding Fathers have been realized.

George Mason tried to warn them. It was unlikely, Mason argued, that the presidency would always be held by someone of George Washington’s character. The president, argued Mason,

“ought not to have the power of pardoning, because he may frequently pardon crimes which were advised by himself.

It may happen, at some future day, that he will establish a monarchy, and destroy the republic. If he has the power of granting pardons before indictment, or conviction, may he not stop inquiry and prevent detection? The case of treason ought, at least, to be excepted. This is a weighty objection with me.”³

Back in 2020, Paul Rosenzweig wrote that “Trump’s Pardon of Manafort Realizes the Founders’ Fears.”

Obviously, Mason never met Trump. But clearly he had someone like Trump in mind. Trump’s pardon of Manafort and Stone, especially when added to his pardons of Michael Flynn, is of exactly the sort Mason feared—in which an apparent connection exists between the president’s personal acts and those of the people whose crimes he has excused. Manafort, Stone, and Flynn, in different ways, were connected to Trump and allegations of criminality. Their pardons may, in part, be rewards for their refusal to help in holding Trump to account—at least that is how it appears to many observers.

But, back in 1788, James Madison told Mason not to worry about giving the president the sweeping power to pardon at will:

“There is one security in this case to which gentlemen may not have adverted: if the President be connected, in any suspicious manner, with any person, and there be grounds to believe he will shelter him, the House of Representatives can impeach him; they can remove him if found guilty.”

See if you can spot the flaw

Exit take: The Founding Fathers were not naive; for the most part they were steely-eyed realists about history and human nature. They created a Republic they thought would be able to constrain tyrants. But, in the end, they got this one wrong, not because they couldn’t imagine someone like Donald Trump, but because they had too much faith in the institutions (especially Congress) and the American people themselves.

BONUS: Via Jay Nordlinger:

In recent years, words that might once have been clichés, platitudes, or banalities have become more meaningful to me. Very meaningful.

“A republic, if you can keep it.”

That was Benjamin Franklin, as you know.

What about Jimmy Carter, who, campaigning for president, said, “We deserve a government as good as its people”?

Let me ask you: In a democracy—a free and open society—isn’t a government always, or usually, as good as its people (and no better)?

That is a touchy, possibly painful, question.

“Freedom is always one generation away from extinction.” Ronald Reagan liked to say this. I thought it was a little ... alarmist. “There is a great deal of ruin in a nation” (Adam Smith).

But consider the example of Venezuela—which was a model for South America. Democratic, prosperous. In the blink of an eye, it was a police state, half starving. Eight million people have fled Venezuela, to form a vast diaspora.

Going back, we have John Adams…the second president. “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Those are the most famous sentences of his letter to the Massachusetts militia. But the two sentences that precede those are notable as well.

“... we have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.”

Flashback

Hey, Charlie did you feel this way when Biden pardoned Hunter? Why yes, I did, and I got a lot of sh*t for it. But I think it’s aged remarkably well: “Joe Biden to America: Never Mind.”

While I’m sympathetic with many of the defenses of Biden’s decision to pardon his only living son, none of them are persuasive, especially because winter is coming.

Exit take: We can’t confront what’s coming if we don’t confront the past, even the awkward parts. ⁴

The scariest story of the week

“Trump Empowers Election Deniers, Still Fixated on 2020 Grievances” - The New York Times

On a call with right-wing activists in March, before her appointment to the Homeland Security Department, Ms. Honey suggested that the new administration could declare a “national emergency” and justify dictating new rules to state and local governments. She said this could be based on an “actual investigation” of the 2020 election if it showed there had been a “manipulation” of the vote.

“And therefore, we have some additional powers that don’t exist right now,” she said in March, according to a recording reviewed by The New York Times from someone who joined the call, “and therefore, we can take these other steps without Congress and we can mandate that states do things and so on.”

She added, “I don’t know if that’s really feasible and if the people around the president would let him test that theory.”

Okay, maybe this is even scarier: Steve Bannon says ‘there is a plan’ for Trump to be president in 2028 | The Independent

Despite the U.S. constitution’s 22nd amendment barring candidates who have already successfully fought two elections from taking office for a third time, Bannon said the Trump administration will find a means to re-install the Republican leader.

“He’s going to get a third term. Trump is going to be president in ‘28 and people ought to just get accommodated with that”, Bannon told The Economist in a video interview.

Asked if the 22nd amendment could prove to be a hard barrier to remaining in the White House, Bannon expanded: “There’s many different alternatives. At the appropriate time we’ll lay out what the plan is, but there is a plan, and Trump will be the president in ‘28.”

The gelding of Congress continues. Trump has no plans to ask Congress for authorization to launch a war against Venezuela.

Asked if he’d declare war against the cartels, Trump said he didn’t necessarily see any reason to do so. “I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country — okay?” he said. “We’re going to kill them, you know they’re going to be like dead.”

Friday dogs

Big scary dog and his new friends.

Photo by JF Riordan

1. “Trump has not been subtle in signaling how far he would be willing to go. On his first day, he issued sweeping pardons to everyone who attacked the Capitol on January 6, including the rioters who assaulted and tased police officers.

This brings us back to a question that seems more urgent than ever: What are the limits of Trump’s immunity? Can he, in fact, order members of Seal Team Six, ICE, or any other branch of the government to murder a political opponent?”

2. Trump’s pardons include:

Michael Grimm, former Representative for New York, May 28, 2025

John Rowland, former Representative for Connecticut and the state’s former governor, May 28, 2025

Rick Renzi, former Representative for Arizona, January 19, 2021

Robin Hayes, former U.S. Representative for North Carolina, January 13, 2021

Randall “Duke” Cunningham, former Representative for California, January 13, 2021

Mark Siljander, former Representative for Michigan, December 23, 2020

Christopher Collins, former Representative for New York, December 22, 2020

Duncan Hunter, former Representative for California, December 22, 2020

Phillip Lyman, former Representative for Utah, December 22, 2020

3. Mason also argued that the Constitution should have a provision allowing for the impeachment of the president — which some of his colleagues thought was unnecessary.

“Shall any man be above justice?” Mason asked. “Shall that man be above it who can commit the most extensive injustice?” A presidential candidate might bribe the electors to gain the presidency, Mason suggested. “Shall the man who has practiced corruption, and by that means procured his appointment in the first instance, be suffered to escape punishment by repeating his guilt?”

4. I wrote:

We need to recognize that there was nothing either normal or routine about Biden’s decision. In the past, presidents have doled out pardons to their cronies, allies, and donors. But, until this week, no president had pardoned his own son.

And the pardon itself was breathtaking in its scope. Biden could have commuted Hunter’s sentence; or confined the pardon to the gun charges for which he’d been convicted or the tax crime for which he pleaded guilty. Instead, Biden issued a “full and unconditional pardon” for any offenses Hunter Biden has “committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024. Via Aaron Blake:

That’s a nearly 11-year period during which any federal crime Hunter Biden might have committed — and there are none we are aware of beyond what has already been adjudicated — can’t be prosecuted. It notably covers when he was appointed to the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma in 2014 all the way through Sunday, well after the crimes for which he was prosecuted….

Biden’s explanation made it worse. And the timing was ghastly.

At the very moment when the rule of law faces its grimmest challenge in decades, Biden undermined the credibility and integrity of the Justice Department, along with the judgements of prosecutors, judges, and juries. He echoed Trump’s claims of selective political prosecution. and seemed to validate the MAGA mantra that everyone does it. Everyone is dirty. Everyone abuses their power….

Even worse: the pardon came after Biden repeatedly promised the American people that he would not use his power to override the criminal justice system.