Tag: Jeanine Pirro

Get in line and take a number

As if President Trump did not pardon enough criminals on January 20 when he pardoned some 1,500 insurrectionists from January 6, 2021, he has continued to issue pardons on a fairly regular basis. He has made a mockery of Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 of the US Constitution:

“The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.”

Traditionally, US presidents have used the power of the pardon to correct a miscarriage of justice – when a person known to be innocent was imprisoned, for instance. Sometimes its use has been questionable; however, it is a power given to the US President and there is no recourse.

Most pardons in the past would have been reviewed by pardon attorneys within the US Department of Justice. They would have advised the President about each particular case. Those attorneys are gone now, under Trump. There is no one to question or advise him except his political appointee Ed Martin.

President Trump appears to interpret the presidential power of the pardon to mean it is a “get out of jail free” or “avoid going to jail” card for registered Republicans who support him through violence against the peaceful transfer of power or through monetary contribution. And along the way, throw in activists who are supported by your anti-abortion base.

Before leaving office in 2021, Trump pardoned Steve Bannon, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn and seven Republican members of Congress who had been convicted of corruption.

1,500 January 6, 2021 Insurrectionists

He hit the ground running on Inauguration Day 2025 by pardoning 1,500 Capitol rioters, including those convicted of attacking police officers.

Photo of a newspaper box showing a newspaper with the headline: Pro Trump Mobs Storm US Capitol
Photo by little plant on Unsplash

23 Anti-Abortion Activists

He pardoned 23 anti-abortion activists who were convicted of being in violation of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act by blocking patients’ entry to a facility. Under the Act, individuals can peacefully protest but they can’t block entrance to a facility that offers abortion services.

Former Illinois Governor Blagojevich

Then, Trump pardoned former Illinois Governor Rob Blagojevich. Blagojevich had served eight years in prison after being charged with trying to sell Barack Obama’s seat in the US Senate after Obama was elected President in 2008. NBC News reported that Blagojevich was convicted of “shaking down” a children’s hospital executive for campaign contributions. He also held up a bill in Illinois involving horse-racing in exchange for campaign contributions. In pardoning Blagojevich, Trump said, “I think he’s a very fine person. This shouldn’t have happened to him.”

Tennessee State Senator Brian Kelsey

On March 11, Trump pardoned former Tennessee State Senator Brian Kelsey who had served two weeks of a 21-month sentence for campaign finance fraud. It was beside the point that Kelsey had pleaded guilty.

Former Las Vegas City Councilmember Michele Fiore

In April, Trump pardoned former Las Vegas City Council member Michele Fiore. She was convicted of six felonies stemming from her raising tens of thousands of dollars to pay for a statue of a slain police officer. The problem was that the statue was never made and she used the money for rent, plastic surgery, and her daughter’s wedding.

Culpeper, Virginia Sheriff Scott Jenkins

On May 26, Trump pardoned former Culpeper County, Virginia Sheriff Scott Jenkins. Charged with taking $75,000 in bribes, including $15,000 in cash from undercover FBI agents, Jenkins had been sentenced to ten years in federal prison. Trump said the case against Jenkins was “an elaborate conspiracy against an obscure local sheriff who was targeted by ‘monsters’ for political reasons.” Although Jenkins was sentenced after Trump took office, the president is blaming the Biden Administration for weaponizing the Justice Department against Jenkins.

Health Care Businessman Paul Walczak

On Tuesday, The New York Times reported that Trump had pardoned Paul Walczak. Walczak pleaded guilty in November to “not paying employment taxes and not filing his individual income tax returns.” The Department of Justice presented evidence that Walczak had withheld nearly $7.5 million in taxes from his health care companies’ employees but did not pay that money to the Internal Revenue Service. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison, two years of supervised release, and ordered to pay more than $4 million in restitution. But Walczak’s mother paid $1 million to attend a Trump fundraiser at Mar-a-lago and a month later her son is miraculously pardoned. He gets to walk away from his prison time and he does not have to pay any restitution.

Todd and Julie Chrisley

Involved in a reality show I’d never heard of, Todd and Julie Chrisley were sentenced to seven and 12 years, respectively, after being convicted of a $30 million bank fraud scheme and tax evasion.

On Tuesday, Trump called their daughter, Savannah, and told her he planned to pardon them because “they were unfairly treated.” (He is a broken record on himself being unfairly treated!) A jury found the Chrisleys guilty and the Appeals Court agreed with the jury.

It certainly did not hurt for Savannah to have been a speaker at the Republican National Convention. I guess that’s why Trump had her phone number.

Former US Congressman Michael Grimm

CBS News reported on Wednesday afternoon that President Trump had issued a full pardon for former FBI agent and former Congressman Michael Grimm of New York.

Grimm was convicted in November 2014 of tax fraud after underreporting wages and revenue and filing false tax documents related to a restaurant he owned. This went on for several years and then he lied about it under oath. He served eight months in prison.

Who’s Next?

During the swearing in ceremony for Jeanine Pirro as US Attorney for the District of Columbia on Wednesday, Trump said he is considering issuing pardons for the men who plotted to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020. Of course, Governor Whitmer is a Democrat.

Trump said he watched the trial and thought the defendants were railroaded.

It is shocking but not surprising that Trump would consider issuing the six people charged with conspiring to kidnap Whitmer because the indictment described some of the men as being linked to a militia group.

Included in the evidence presented by the FBI were videos defendants took of Whitmer’s vacation home, proof that they had estimated how long it would take police to respond to an incident at the home, and audio tapes of defendants talking about the “use of deadly force.” The US District Court Complaint, which lays out the evidence, including the use of explosives and tactical gear, can be read in full at https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdmi/press-release/file/1326161/dl?inline.

Trump has shown a liking for such groups since the deadly march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, after which he said “there were good people on both sides.” One side were neo-Nazis carrying torches and chanting, “Jews will not replace us!” The other side were peaceful protesters showing their dismay with neo-Nazis marching in the streets, spouting their hate.

People associated with militia groups were very much involved in the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, which included threats to “Hang [then US Vice President] Mike Pence, and threats against many individual US Representatives, including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

The irony is that on January 20, 2025, Trump pardoned the people who constructed a gallows on Capitol grounds and chanted “Hang Mike Pence”, but then claimed former FBI Director Jim Comey was threatening to assassinate him for posting a photo of seashells spelling out, “86 47.” The FBI investigated Comey over the incident and some Republicans in Congress said Comey should have been put in prison over the incident.

While campaigning, Trump said there were two systems of justice in the United States. He’s proving that is now true.

As I worked on this blog post on Wednesday afternoon, it was a challenge to keep up with the pardons being issued. I understand he pardoned seven people on Wednesday.

In case you’re keeping score

President Biden issued 80 pardons in four years. President Trump has issued at least 1,536 pardons since January 20, 2025. So far, Trump favors pardoning violent offenders and financial offenders. The only prerequisite is that they support Donald Trump.

Trump has appointed Ed Martin as his pardon attorney. Martin will vet applicants for pardons. Apparently, the floodgates are now open for anyone convicted of a crime while Joe Biden was President has a good chance of being pardoned… as long as they are registered Republicans.

I looked into Ed Martin’s past. In addition to his being a lawyer, there were three other prerequisites I found for him to get his new job: He organized “Stop the Steal” rallies for Trump, he called Russian interference in the 2016 US Presidential election that aided Trump’s election a hoax, and he said that 2020 US Presidential election results in which Trump lost to Joe Biden were a hoax.

Until my next blog post

I hope you have a good book to read this weekend and that you find other ways to relax and escape the stresses of this world.

Don’t take anyone or anything for granted.

Remember the people of Ukraine and western North Carolina.

Janet

The New American Dream?

Donald Trump campaigned in 2024 on “Make America Wealthy Again.”

Republicans tell us to be patient. They say it’s coming. We must suffer through short-term pain while we focus on long-term gain.

The “American Dream” has always been that if you work hard enough, you can accomplish anything you want. Another part of the American Dream is that each generation will be better off than the previous one.

That’s not the new message now from the Trump Administration.

Trump said he isn’t worried about empty store shelves.

US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, who has a permanent smile on his face, has said that with all the manufacturing facilities supposedly returning to the US, multiple generations in a family can look forward to working in the same factory.

That’s definitely a new twist on the American Dream of each generation being better off than the one before.

The Huffington Post quoted Lutnick as saying, “This is the new model, where you work in these kinds of plants for the rest of your life, and your kids work here, and your grandkids work here.”

That sounds bleak to me. It sounds more like a nightmare than a dream.

Trump Administration considers suspending habeas corpus

According to White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller on Friday, the Trump Administration is considering suspending habeas corpus.

Habeas corpus is a legal procedure by which a report can be made to a court alleging the unlawful detention or imprisonment of an individual, and requesting that the court order the individual’s custodian to bring the prisoner to court, to determine whether their detention is lawful.

We were a nation of laws until January 20, 2025. For any member of the Trump Administration to lecture us about the US Constitution is rich!

Mr. Miller, the United States of America has not been invaded. Illegal border crossings by people fleeing corrupt governments is not what the US Constitution means when it invokes the word “invasion,” and anyone with an ounce of common sense knows it.

Yes, we have a border problem, but we have not been “invaded” in the truest sense of the word.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been nabbing people and whisking them away in unmarked black vehicles for weeks now. The ICE officers are reportedly not usually in uniform. They present no identification. They rough up any bystanders who dare to ask them to show identification.

I have seen videos of some of the arrests. They look like the Gestapo, and they look a lot like the Proud Boys who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. We’ve never had law enforcement look like this in the United States, and it is unsettling to say the least. People, including young women as young as 16 are slammed face down on the ground or asphalt, handcuffed, and shoved into black military-style heavy vehicles.

People are being arrested and detained in undisclosed locations, usually hundreds of miles from home. The Trump Administration has ignored habeas corpus since he took office on January 20. The difference, if he decides to suspend it, will mean that his thugs can then legally arrest and detain people without a chance of a court hearing.

What has America become?

A Tufts University graduate student, Rumeysa Ozturk of Turkey, was ordered to be released by a Vermont judge on Friday. She had spent six weeks in a detention facility in Louisiana after being arrested on the street by ICE. It was all caught on video. ICE accused her of supporting Hamas. Judge William K. Sessions III ruled that the government did not have enough evidence to hold her. Their only “evidence” was that she co-wrote an op-ed in the Tufts Daily newspaper last year. The op-ed encouraged the university to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide” and “divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel.”

Rumeysa Ozturk’s case is proof that the Trump Administration is ignoring habeas corpus. If it can be ignored in cases against international students, it can be ignored for anyone.

Miscellaneous news from the Trump Administration

Via email last Thursday night, President Trump fired Dr. Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress. The Library of Congress is our national library. It houses the world’s largest collection of books, films, photographs, and manuscripts. It is the home of the US Copyright Office.

Dr. Hayden is a professional librarian and had been the Librarian of Congress since 2016. I cringe to think who from Fox News Trump will replace her. Fox News is functioning as Trump’s human resources department.

Apparently, Trump got wind of the fact that Dr. Hayden had worked to add more works from minorities into the library’s collections. He’ll have none of that!

But on Monday, when Trump tried to put his former personal lawyer and current Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanche, in as acting Librarian of Congress, the library staff would have nothing of it! Yea! Staff said Congress has a say in who holds that position, and they refused to let two top Department of Justice officials picked by Blanche to even enter the building! Way to go, librarians!

On Friday, US Copyright Register Shira Perlmutter had denied Elon Musk access to “troves” of copyrighted materials for the purpose of training Artificial Intelligence. It is no coincidence that she was fired by President Trump less than 24 hours later.

Perlmutter had been Register of Copyrights since October 2020. She had concerns about releasing copyright material for use by AI technology. As a holder of seven copyrights, I appreciate her efforts.

When I tried to look her up on the US Copyright Office website at 9:30 p.m. on Saturday, all her information was already gone.

Looking elsewhere online, I found that Ms. Perlmutter is no slouch. She hold a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania and has been a law professor. She has stated that copyright laws need to keep pace with technology. She was the chief policy officer and director for international affairs at the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

She has been executive vice president for global legal policy at the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry and vice president and general counsel for intellectual property policy at Time Warner.

No doubt, the guardrails protecting copyrighted material from AI will be off when Trump puts his choice in Perlmutter’s place. He is all in favor of AI. He has no concept of intellectual property and how copyrights work.

Seeing live video at 2:00 pm Eastern Time yesterday of the US President being whisked away at 9:00 at night in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in a souped-up shiny black golf cart driven by a Saudi with two perhaps US Secret Service agents anxiously hanging on in the back seat was more than a little unsettling. I guess the Qataris, the Saudis, and the Iranians are Trump’s new besties. I enjoy writing fiction, but I don’t have enough imagination to make this stuff up.

The day after stating in sworn testimony before a Congressional committee, Acting Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Cameron Hamilton, was fired by Trump. In the hearing, said, “I do not believe it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency.” The Trump appointee and former US Navy SEAL was fired on Thursday.

The newest Trump hire from Fox News is Jeanine Ferris Pirro. Although she had a career in the court system in New York more than 20 years ago, her real claim to fame has been serving as a TV host on the Fox News network. On Thursday, May 8, Trump appointed her as interim United States Attorney for the District of Columbia.

It is beside the point that Jeanine Pirro was one of the defendants in Smartmatic’s February 2021 defamation lawsuit against For News (Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News Network) because she made false accusations on the air about the voting machines being rigged against Donald Trump in the 2020 election. Fox News paid Smartmatic $787.5 million to settle out of court and was required to acknowledge that the statements made on air were false.

It is also apparently beside the point that she was charged with driving 119 miles per hour in the 65 mile-per-hour zone.

Now the attorneys working under Ms. Pirro will be expected to respect and abide by her directions and leadership.

Part of Trump’s “big, beautiful budget” is slowly working its way through Congressional committees and small snippets of it are coming to light. I’m angered that the budget proposal calls for four oil and gas lease sales in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge over the next ten years.

This Administration’s wholesale disregard for wildlife and the beauty and global importance of pristine areas is stunning in its greed, ignorance, and short-sightedness.

The leasing of 6,250 square miles of public land is mandated in his budget proposal to apparently help the coal industry. The world adopts solar and wind power as the US reverts to the filthy air of the 1950s and 1960s.

Coincidentally, Trump has cut off federal funding to support coal miners who suffer from Black Lung even as he pushes for more coal mining jobs and a resurgence of coal-burning power plants.

Voice of America Update

On a brighter note, CNN reported on Saturday that the US is bringing back Voice of America. That’s good news. Too bad the Trump Administration shut it down completely on a whim just two or three weeks ago. They had no appreciation of its 83-year history. We were supposed to get “tired of winning,” but so far we’re just tired of “losing” and being jerked around.

Trump takes a sledgehammer to an agency one day and then tries to resurrect it later. That’s no way to run a country. It is no way to run a business either, but I wish he’d give up his day job and go back to his businesses.

Another glimmer of hope

On Monday some two dozen clergy linked arms and stood outside the gate of the Delaney Hall ICE Detention Center in New Jersey where the Mayor of Newark was arrested on Friday and there was a confrontation between three Congress members and ICE security officers. The clergy spoke against what is going on at the detention center. One of them was quoted as saying that “what’s going on inside the center violates the tenets that God has laid down on this Earth.”

Until my next blog post

With librarians, park rangers, and clergy standing up to Trump, I have some hope that our current nightmare might eventually be stopped.

I hope you have a good book to read.

Don’t forget the people of Ukraine and western North Carolina. Eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina were rattled by an unusually strong (4.1 magnitude) earthquake on Saturday morning. They must be wondering what’s next!

Janet