Donald Trump, the Puff Daddy of pardons
Why, of course, he'll consider a pardon for Sean Combs. Funny you should ask.
By Sam Bellamy
Attorneys for Sean Combs, who changed his name to Sean Love Combs a few years ago, are no doubt counseling their client to let it be known that he absolutely adores the president. In fact, another name change – to Sean Loves Donald Trump Combs – might be prudent.
During an Oval Office farewell Friday to Special Employee Elon Musk, who’s not really going away, the ever-solicitous Pete Doocy of Fox News asked Trump (30-minute mark below) if he would consider pardoning Combs. Mind you, the singer is still on trial in Manhattan on charges of racketeering and sex trafficking.
Ordinarily, a president would decline to respond, pointing out that it’s improper to comment on an active case and especially inappropriate to discuss a pardon before a verdict is announced.
Not Trump. He let loose. He said no one has asked about a pardon for Combs yet, aside from Pete. But, Trump added, he’s aware the Combs team is talking about a pardon, and he’d eventually review the facts.
“I haven't seen him, I haven't spoken to him in years,” Trump said of Combs. “He used to really like me a lot, but I think when I ran for politics, that relationship busted up from what I read. I don't know – he didn't tell me that, but I'd read some little bit nasty statements in the paper.”
When Trump was a candidate in 2015, Combs described him as a friend who works very hard. But in 2020, Combs supported Joe Biden. “White men like Trump need to be banished. That way of thinking is real dangerous. This man literally threatened the lives of us and our families about going to vote,” he said, referring to Trump’s “stand back and stand by” comment about the Proud Boys.
Combs added, “If Trump gets elected, I really do believe in my heart there will be a race war. This man is really trying to turn us against each other and put us in a situation. America messed up.”
Last fall, then-U.S. Attorney Damian Williams announced charges in New York against Combs, stating that the singer “abused, threatened, and coerced women and others, and led a racketeering conspiracy that engaged in sex trafficking, forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery, and obstruction of justice, among other crimes.” Williams stepped down after last fall’s election. Another of his high-profile cases – corruption charges against NYC Mayor Eric Adams – was later tossed by Trump’s Justice Department.
In a slight nod to the quaint notion that presidents shouldn’t interfere in ongoing trials, Trump said Friday that he would not be influenced by Combs’ little-bit-nasty comments, “It's not a popularity contest, so I don't know. I would certainly look at the facts if I think somebody was mistreated. Whether they like me or don't like me, it wouldn't have any impact on me.”
Why, of course not. Fealty means nothing to the man.
A million dollars does help, though. Trump recently granted an unconditional pardon to Paul Walczak, a former nursing home executive – less than three weeks after Walczak’s mother paid $1 million to attend a fundraising dinner at Mar-a-Lago.
Here’s how The New York Times summarized Walczak’s crimes involving tax fraud:
Mr. Walczak, 55, joined his mother’s nursing home business after dropping out of college, eventually becoming chief executive. After she sold the company in 2007, they invested $18 million in a new nursing home venture based in South Florida, where they lived a luxurious lifestyle.
By 2011, prosecutors said, Mr. Walczak had stopped paying employment taxes.
Between 2016 and 2019, they said, he withheld more than $10 million from the paychecks of the nurses, doctors and others who worked at his facilities under the pretext of using it for their Social Security, Medicare and federal income taxes. Instead, he used some of the money to buy a $2 million yacht and to pay for travel and purchases at high-end retailers, including Bergdorf Goodman and Cartier, prosecutors said.
In his request for a pardon, Walczak claimed that his conviction and sentence (18 months in prison and $4.4 million in restitution) had less to do with ripping off his employees than it did with his mommy’s involvement in publicizing the diary of Joe Biden’s daughter Ashley, who’d left it behind in a Florida house with the intention of returning to pick it up along with other belongings.
Trump has been on a pardon binge of late, thanks in part to his new pardon advisor at the Justice Department, wingnut Ed Martin, who is stupendously unfit to be anywhere near a government job.
In recent weeks, according to The Times and others, Trump has rescued an assortment of campaign donors and conservatives convicted of various crimes, particularly tax fraud. So far, more than two dozen people have been pardoned or had their sentence commuted, and he’s said he’s considering others, including pardons for a group of men convicted of conspiring to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, in 2020. Trump said their trial “looked to me like somewhat of a railroad job.”
Among the pardons and commutations so far, according to The Times:
§ Former Republican congressman Michael Grimm, a Trumper who failed to pay “nearly $1 million in gross receipts and hundreds of thousands of dollars in employee wages from a Manhattan restaurant”
§ Convicted tax fraud Jeremy Hutchinson, a former Arkansas state lawmaker whose father is a former U.S. senator and whose uncle is a former governor
§ Tanner Mansell and John Moore, two commercial divers who were convicted of removing sharks from federally protected waters (Trump hates sharks, as Stormy Daniels famously told us)
§ Former Connecticut Gov. John Rowland, a Republican convicted of numerous corruption charges
§ Imaad Zuberi, a venture capitalist convicted of violating campaign, lobbying and tax laws related to donations to Trump’s first campaign and of obstructing an investigation into Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee
Perhaps the most inevitable of the pardons were those extended to fellow reality-TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley. Here’s the summary of their crimes from The Times:
According to the Justice Department, the Chrisleys conspired with a former business partner to defraud banks around Atlanta into giving them more than $36 million in personal loans. They submitted false bank statements, audit reports and personal financial statements to obtain the loans, the Justice Department said, and spent the money on luxury cars, real estate and clothing, while also using new fraudulent loans to repay older ones. After spending all the money, the Justice Department said, Mr. Chrisley filed for bankruptcy.
Then, after earning millions of dollars from their show, the Chrisleys, along with their accountant, Peter Tarantino, defrauded the I.R.S., prosecutors said. To avoid paying about $500,000 in back taxes that Mr. Chrisley owed, the couple opened corporate bank accounts in Ms. Chrisley’s name, then transferred ownership of an account to a family member to hide their income from the I.R.S., prosecutors said.
Last summer, their daughter Savannah told the crowd at the Republican Convention that “persecuted by rogue prosecutors” – including Trump’s mortal enemy Fani T. Willis – because of their public profile on “Chrisley Knows Best” and their conservative beliefs.
But a pardon was just a matter of time because Trump clearly sees a lot of himself in the Chrisleys.
Prosecutors spelled it out for him, saying the Chrisleys’ empire was “based on the lie that their wealth came from dedication and hard work” but they were “career swindlers who have made a living by jumping from one fraud scheme to another, lying to banks, stiffing vendors and evading taxes at every corner.”
Reads like Trump’s future Wikipedia page.