The former president undermined negotiations between Jonathan Braun and prosecutors who hoped Braun would testify against other predatory lenders in exchange for his release
Very early in the morning on Donald Trump‘s last day in office, the president announced he was pardoning Jonathan Braun, a loan shark who had been convicted of running a vast marijuana ring. Braun, who at the time was serving a 10-year sentence, was pardoned along with 142 others, including rappers Lil Wayne and Kodak Black.
Trump’s move undermined a years-long federal investigation, The New York Times reported Sunday. The paper also uncovered ties between Braun and the family of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
Federal prosecutors were in the midst of negotiations hoping to secure Braun’s cooperation in a Justice Department investigation into predatory lenders in the merchant cash advance industry when Trump announced his clemency. Investigators felt that an industry insider like Braun could reveal information about predatory lending agreements, but after he was released from incarceration, prosecutors no longer had leverage they could use to compel Braun to talk.
The problem is, it turns out a lot of the US government works on a sort of honor system, where it’s assumed whoever is put in office a) has the US’s best interest at heart and b) has the trust and support of the people who voted them in, and that they’d swiftly removed by the democratic process upon violating that trust. Unfortunately, the past few years have made it painfully clear that neither of these things are necessarily true.
This isn’t the first time presidential pardons have stirred up controversy, though. Another famous case was following the Watergate scandal in the '70s, which led to president Nixon resigning. His vice president, Gerald Ford, became president as a result, and used his power to pardon Nixon of any crimes he may have committed as president. His approval dropped sharply as a result, and it probably cost him his chance at reelection.
Ford was probably right to do so. We held off a few decades on the divisiveness and anger we have today, on seeing whether the laws apply to them as well, on the hatred and outrage. Because of that pardon, we got over it more quickly
Nixon going down would have caused all of his cronies to go down with him.
Instead, as a result of the pardon, Nixons cronies just reinstalled themselves over and over and led to the bullshit we see today.
If all of Nixons cronies would have been permanently dislocated from power, the country would be in a much much better spot today.