Trump's Pardons of White Collar Criminals Deprives Their Victims of Just Compensation While Filling His Pockets

Pardons for those who have been convicted of crimes may be justified if they have reformed—and paid restitution to their victims. But one consequence of Donald Trump’s haphazard and corrupt pardons is that they deprive victims of compensation that has already been granted to them by the courts.

The Washington Post reports:

At least 20 people who have received clemency from Trump so far this year—cutting their sentence short, restoring their civil rights after imprisonment or allowing them to avoid prison altogether—were also forgiven of financial penalties totaling tens of millions of dollars. Some of these offenders owed money to real-life victims of fraud. Marian Morgan, for example, was sentenced in 2013 to nearly 34 years in prison for running a Ponzi scheme and was ordered to pay $17.5 million to dozens of investors, most of which remains unpaid. In 2021, she filed a statement in court saying, “I want to pay restitution to my victims so they know I am truly sorry for the damage I caused.” But in May, Trump commuted her sentence “to time served with no further fines, restitution, probation or other conditions.” …

But unlike any other modern president, Trump has wielded his executive power to reward dozens of allies while condemning their prosecutions as politically motivated. He has routinely ignored Justice Department guidelines that state pardons should be given only to offenders who are five years past their conviction or imprisonment. The guidelines also say that accepting responsibility for their crimes and paying restitution to their victims should be “important considerations.” Presidents are not bound by the criteria because the Constitution gives them the near-absolute power to grant pardons for federal crimes.

The effect of these pardons is that Trump—himself a convicted white collar criminal—is making white collar crime legal, and profitable. In the process, he is hurting the victims of these crimes all over again.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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