Trump Pardons All His Election-Stealing Pals, Because Of Course
Guess we all knew this was coming.
Our President, Donald J. Trump, himself convicted of 34 felonies for crimes related to trying to steal the first election he won, has been on a pardoning spree since his second inauguration. A real Batman villain’s lair of fraudsters, scammers, and whoever is rich and connected enough. And January 6 rioters, of course.
Did somebody say CROOKED RIGGED FRAUD DEEP STATE CABAL and/or SWAMP?
SO MANY PARDONS!
Then at 2 a.m. this morning, very normal, Trump DOJ pardon chief Ed Martin announced more gifts for pro-Trump crimers: pardons for the most prominent figures in Trump’s 2020 fake-electors coup scheme.
You remember Ed Martin, the former lawyer for January 6 rioters. He was Trump’s nominee for US attorney in Washington DC, the job Jeanine Pirro now occupies, where he helped loyalty-purge DOJ employees until it came to light that he’d not disclosed accepting rubles from the Russian government to go on Russian television more than 150 times to repeat Putin’s talking points.
And Martin had slobbered praise upon and given a “patriotism” award to Timothy Hale-Cusanelli at Trump’s New Jersey golf course and wife cemetery, and had him on his podcast multiple times. Hale-Cusanelli is the rabid antisemite rioter who posted a picture of himself looking like this:
It was all too much for even this Senate.
So after Martin could not be confirmed, Trump found him three new jobs: first, director of the Weaponization Working Group, helping Pam Bondi target Trump’s enemies. Which is how he found himself in the position of peeping Tom, trying to peek in New York Attorney General Letitia James’s window, probably desperately hoping to catch her doing some crimes!
Trump also made Martin Associate deputy attorney general and pardon attorney. (Is he getting three salaries too?) And that’s the job that Ed Martin was doing when he proffered this 77-name list of sinners for Trump to flood pardons on.
Enlarge, enlarge, who is on the list? It’s a long one! And of course in the form of a scanned .gif so journalists and mommybloggers can’t lazily cut and paste. Glad we were forced to take typing classes in high school!
The lucky winners are coup ringleaders John Eastman, Jenna Ellis, Boris Epshteyn, Mark Meadows, Rudolph Giuliani, Kenneth Chesebro, James Troupis, Mike Roman Jeffrey Clark, Trump lawyer Christina Bobb, plus fake-elector-scheme underlings:
Mark Amick (GA); Kathy Berden (MI); Tyler Bower (AZ); Joseph Brannan (GA); Carol Brunner (WI); Mary Buestrin (WI); Darryl Carlson (WI); James “Ken” Carroll (GA); Brad Carver (GA); Burt Jones (the lieutenant governor of Georgia, former member of the state senate, now running for GA governor); Anthony T. Kern; Kathy Kiernan (fake elector and second vice chair of the Republican Party of Wisconsin); Timothy King (MI); Trevian Kutti (GA, Kanye West’s former publicist); James Lamon (a candidate for US Senate from Arizona); Cathleen Latham (GA) … whew, let’s heat up some coffee!
…Jesse Law (NV); Stephen Lee (GA); Michele Lundgren (MI); Meshawn Maddock (NV); Michael McDonald (NV GOP chair); Robert Montgomery (AZ); Daryl Moody (GA); Samuel I. Moorhead (AZ); Loraine Pelligrino [sic] (AZ); Sidney Powell; James Renner (MI); Eileen Rice (NV); Mayra Rodriguez (MI)’ Rose Rook (MI); Kelly Ruh (WI); Greg Safsten (AZ); David Shafer (GA); Marian Sheridan (MI); Ray Stallings Smith III (GA); Robert Cheely (GA); Hank Choate (WI); Vicki Consiglio (GA); Nancy Cottle (AZ); James DeGreffenried (NV); John Downey (GA); Amy Faccinello (MI); Bill Feehan (WI); Carolyn Fisher (GA); Harrison Floyd (GA); Clifford Frost (MI); Kay Godwin (GA); Edward Scott Grabins (WI); Stanley Grot (MI); John Haggard (MI); Scott Hall (GA); Misty Hampton (GA); David G. Hanna (GA); Mark Hennessey (GA); Mari-Ann Henry (MI); Durward James Hindle III (NV); Andrew Hitt (WI); Jake Hoffman (AZ); Robert F. Spindell Jr. (WI); Shawn Still (GA/finance chair of the Georgia GOP); Ken Thompson (MI); Pam Travis (WI); Kent Vanderwood (WI); Kelli and Michael Ward (AZ); and CB Yadav (GA).
Whew, it’s a Wonkette This is your Life! If you can recognize all of these names, you are probably Liz Dye.
But let us focus on the more bold-faced names in this motley who’s who!
There’s Scotch-swilling perv and America’s Mayor™ Rudy Giuliani, who pushed the scheme to submit a slate of fake electors to the National Archives. We still do not know who paid off Giuliani’s $148 million-plus-interest debt right before the election that he owed the Georgia elections workers he was found to have racistly and contemptuously defamed, allowing him to keep his World Series rings and Lauren Bacall’s Mercedes. Probably we will never know! And in September Roodles settled his $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit from Dominion voting systems, though his lawsuit from Smartmatic continues. As does his $10 million sexual battery lawsuit from his former assistant, Noelle Dunphy.
And there’s his tagalong/catcher of COVID farts, Jenna Ellis, who had previously wept, apologized and pleaded guilty in Georgia for her part in the scheme.
Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows, who’d been indicted in Georgia. Remember that time pre-coup-attempt that Ginni Thomas was texting him that he was her BEST FRIEND, and how she couldn’t wait to see the “Biden crime family” on a barge to Gitmo? What a sweet Christian lady.
REMEMBER WHEN?
There’s Trump’s other coup lawyers/liars: Kenny the Cheese Chesebro and John Eastman, who came up with the idea of the fake electors in the first place, and helped push that “plenary executive theory” to states to convince them they could help Trump coup. And then Eastman and Trump tried to dog and threaten Vice President Mike Pence into going along and doing just one eeny weeny crime — “one more relatively minor violation” — so Trump could steal his choice of states. Then Eastman confessed to plotting the coup on national TV, and later he, Chesebro and Roodles all got disbarred.
PREVIOUSLY!
There’s Sidney “Space Lasers” Powell, QAnon nut, who had the bright idea to break into voting machines in Coffee County, Georgia, and also the elections workers there who helped her. She was also the first to plead guilty in state court in Georgia to misdemeanors.
And ol’ oil spill himself, Jeffrey Clark! Trump had wanted him to take over the Justice Department as part of his magical plan to overthrow America, so he could be the one at the top of the DOJ dishing out to states the official DOJ lies about voter fraud, so they could all help do their parts in the coup. But DOJ lawyers threatened to quit instead, and Clark got indicted in Georgia, and has also been recommended for disbarment in DC on account of all of that stolen-election lying he did.
Of course, you might be asking, were all these people indicted federally? Haha no! But these are federal pardons:
The pardons, which only apply to federal crimes, are primarily symbolic. None of those named on the list are currently facing federal charges, and the pardons cannot shield them from continuing state-level prosecutions.
That fake elector case still exists in Georgia, but currently is hanging by a thread. Judge Scott McAfee set a deadline of this FRIDAY to appoint a new prosecutor for the case, or else he will dismiss it. The Arizona case still exists too, though the New York Times says the cases there against Giuliani, Ephsteyn, Meadows and Eastman are in “a kind of legal limbo” right now.
All of these people should all have been in prison a long time ago, of course. But our system is slow and deliberate, because we would rather have a hundred guilty people run free than one guilty person go to prison, something something.
And now we are in the upside-down.
Still, shame, shame, shame on them. How we hope karma is real.
[Georgia Recorder/Guardian/CBS]
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After all this I still have relatives insisting Trump is the Law and Order President...
And just to make this day complete, the contractor that demolished the East Wing has now filed a lien against Trump and the White House for non-payment.