Presented in narrative form, rather than as a spread sheet. Either way Dollars is the story.
Candidates advertising themselves, their opponents. Games politicians play.
Then, after the election, figure who gets concerns heard by the winners.
How it is, how it not should be. The Supremes, with Leonard Leo's love are at fault.
Commerce in candidate credibility, while Trump sells pardons, or it is claimed he does.
search = Trump selling pardons
Sample returned items: here, here and here. That last one -
When President Trump returned to power, a group of his former campaign and administration officials started a federal lobbying practice. Mo Strategies, which has registered an array of corporate clients, is now expanding into the newly lucrative world of pardons.
Business is booming.
The Trump-linked firm has signed on to lobby for the law firm Blessinger Legal in Northern Virginia for "immigration and pardon-related discussions," federal lobbying disclosures in late May show. The engagement has already yielded the firm $500,000 in income, and more work is expected, Marty Obst, president of Mo Strategies, said in an interview.
"We're one of the fastest-growing firms in D.C., and are helping them navigate the landscape and process," Obst told CBS News. "What I've tried to do is provide guidance of what the process looks like, and what types of cases would appeal to this White House."
Emmer, while boosting crypto, has let the pardon buying industry, if it needs a name that serves, languish.
He and his acolytes could gin up a play in that park; where Crabgrass envisions those impecunious but wanting to spring a friend or relative being coached to use Go Fund Me.
Just saying.
Were Emmer so inclined, who'd be the acolytes? And would they turn Tom down? Or see it as a new way to practice law? I'd guess a no-thank-you, and that Tom would not do it. But hypotheticals help put pardon selling in a perspective, if the publishing about Trump is true. Crabgrass has no reason to doubt, even where Crabgrass has never bought one or put in a bid.
Even People has published:
60 Minutes Returns with Bombshell Hidden-Camera Exposé on ‘Pardon Brokers’ Taking Cash to Influence Trump
Rapper Boosie Badazz says he seeks to reclaim money he paid as he sought clemency from the president for a gun charge
After months of reporting on the firings, hirings and internal debate at CBS’ 60 Minutes, the iconic Sunday night news program opened its 59th season with a hidden-camera report on the thriving industry of pardon brokers taking cash for promises over influence on President Donald Trump.
Rapper Boosie Badazz has launched a legal action against two lobbyists he had hired in an unsuccessful bid to obtain clemency from the president for a gun charge.
“This is what I was led to believe: If you come with this money, you will get a pardon,” Boosie, born Torence Ivy Hatch Jr. and formerly known as Lil’ Boosie, told 60 Minutes’ Lesley Stahl.
The rapper said he paid $600,000 to D.C. lobbyists Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl, conservative conspiracists who in 2023 were assessed the largest-ever fine by the Federal Communications Commission in connection with a robocall scheme intended to discourage Black voters during the 2020 election.
The two were sentenced in Michigan to one year of probation in December 2025, and pleaded guilty to felonious telecommunications fraud in Ohio in 2022.
“I just thought, I mean, ‘This is the way it’s done.’ I’m paying these guys, you know? And they’re gonna make it happen,” Boosie said on 60 Minutes.
In a statement to PEOPLE, White House spokesperson Lauren Bis says that Wohl and Burkman have no relationship with the president.
“Anyone spending money to lobby for pardons is foolishly wasting their money and the President doesn’t even know who these so-called ‘lobbyists’ are,” Bis told PEOPLE.
Burkman and Wohl told CBS News their dealings with Boosie were above board: “We don’t owe him anything. ... We encourage him to drop the suit,” Burkman said. “It’s without merit.”
There has long been a market for lobbyists and orbiters of presidential administrations in Washington, D.C., promising to aid pardon-seekers in their pursuit of a clean slate — and an even longer history of presidents making controversial pardons.
President Gerald Ford pardoned his predecessor Richard Nixon after Watergate. President Jimmy Carter pardoned draft dodgers after the Vietnam War, and President Bill Clinton pardoned fugitive financier and donor Marc Rich.
But the 60 Minutes report on Sunday, Sept. 13, sought to highlight the “marketplace of money and mercy” that has resulted in pardons for political allies and “a string of unrepentant financial conmen who argued” to Trump that “they were wrongly prosecuted” by President Joe Biden’s Justice Department “just like him,” as Stahl said.
(Don't blame me, I voted for Harris.)
In any event, Money and Mercy - that would be a hell of a trade name. Copyright it quick before the next guys with connections. If that's how it is done.
Last -- It probably is not that open a thing.
Do you guess that boutique mentioned in the earlier pargraphs before the People quote offers a money-back gurantee?
Perhaps a combo innovative startup is in gestation, using Go Fund Me and with a disclaimered-up gurarantee of some kind. No pardon, money-back -- with caveats of course.
A niche industry where the potential sings. It will happen, but perhaps more discrete than crypto. Like fumural parlors are more discrete in marketing than Glock. But with overlapping worldviews.
Discrete. Not wanting too much sunshine on the industry.
Zhou got his, you get yours, but there's reason not to be pretentious about it.
As the Big Oil friends of Trump are not at all loud about how long an elastic four weeks can be stretched
____________UPDATE___________
Those pardoned include the “fake electors” who approved fraudulent slates of electors falsely claiming Trump had won their state in the 2020 election, as well as a number of former Trump lawyers who worked with him to challenge the election results, such as Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro, Jenna Ellis, Christina Bobb, John Eastman.
Others who were pardoned after being employed by the president include Boris Epshteyn, a longtime Trump attorney and advisor, and former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
These most recent pardon recipients appear to have given Trump approximately $250,000 in combined political donations through 2025, according to Federal Election Commission filings, with David Hanna, a Georgia elector and CEO of Atlanticus Holdings Corporation, giving the most at $145,500.
Changpeng “CZ” Zhao: Trump pardoned the billionaire Binance founder after Zhao’s company worked extensively with the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial business, with World Liberty’s USD1 stablecoin used for a $2 billion investment made in Binance earlier this fall.
Binance launched a task force aimed at “striking a deal” with World Liberty after Trump won the 2024 election in hopes of easing Zhao and Binance’s legal woes, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday, with Binance’s engineers building the technology behind the USD1 token (World Liberty denies having any involvement with Zhao’s pardon).
[...] Who Are Democratic Lawmakers Questioning?Zhao’s pardon also came after Trump erased another legal trouble for his company, with the Securities and Exchange Commission dropping a lawsuit against Binance in May only days after the exchange began listing USD1.
Democratic lawmakers sent letters to some of the political donors and business partners whom Trump pardoned, including Milton, Zuberi, Zhang, Walczak and Chrisley. They also targeted a number of people without clear financial ties to the president, including Lawrence Duran, Jason Galanis, Marian Morgan and David Gentile, who were all convicted of fraud; British billionaire Joseph Lewis and Devon Archer, the former business partner of Hunter Biden who has since turned his allegiance to Trump. Former Nevada politician Michelle Fiore also received a letter, and was known as a longtime Trump supporter prior to the president pardoning her—even earning the nickname “Lady Trump.” The president previously endorsed her in a race for state treasurer while she spread his false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election. Lawmakers also sent letters to several people whom they noted had employed former Trump lawyers or Trump-friendly attorneys to help secure their pardons, such as Adriana Isabel Camberos and Andres Enrique Camberos, who were represented by former White House counsel Stefan Passantino and former Rudy Giuliani attorney Adam Katz. Ozy Media CEO Carlos Watson was questioned for receiving a pardon after employing law firm Aidala, Bertuna & Kamins, which lawmakers allege used Trump allies like Steve Bannon to help secure Watson’s pardon and made the defendant’s case to the White House directly, bypassing the Justice Department. Oak View Group co-founder Timothy Leiweke received a letter after he was represented in his pardon efforts by former Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., whom lawmakers allege successfully pushed for Leiweke’s pardon over a round of golf with the president. The Democrats did not send letters to a number of other pardon recipients with ties to the president, including Vázquez, Peters and Ulbricht, but lawmakers confirmed to Forbes that it’s possible additional letters could be sent out.
[....] Big NumberMore than $1 billion. That’s likely how much the government lost in restitution and other fees from Trump’s pardon recipients. Presidential pardons erase any unpaid fees defendants have been ordered to pay as part of their sentences, though it’s unclear in many cases whether Trump’s pardon recipients had paid any part of their fees, making the exact amount the government lost out on unknown. Those who received clemency after offering some benefit to Trump were often those who owed particularly large amounts of cash: Zhao was ordered to pay $50 million in restitution; Milton owed approximately $676 million in restitution to shareholders and a Nikola investor; Ulbricht was ordered to pay $183.9 million and HDR Global Trading owed a $100 million fine. In Milton’s case, it’s unclear how much of his nine-figure fine he would have had to pay, however, as the amount was still being finalized and had not been approved by a judge at the time of his pardon.
Trump Pardons Other Political AlliesMany of Trump’s pardons and commutations in his second term have been for people who support him politically, though FEC filings suggest many haven’t given his campaign any notable donations. Former Nevada politician Michelle Fiore was known as a longtime Trump supporter prior to the president pardoning her—even earning the nickname “Lady Trump”—and he had previously endorsed her in a race for state treasurer while she had spread his false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election. U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin described Trump’s pardon of former Virginia sheriff Scott Howard Jenkins as showing, “No MAGA left behind,” while former Republican Rep. Michael Grimm earned a pardon after speaking out in Trump’s favor and becoming an on-air personality for Trump-friendly Newsmax. Former Tennessee state Sen. Brian Kelsey, indicted on campaign finance-related crimes, was pardoned after he repeatedly praised Trump on social media and later went to work as a lawyer for America First Policy Institute, a right-wing think tank widely credited for helping to spearhead Trump’s presidential transition. Most notably, Trump’s first pardons after his inauguration were blanket pardons to participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol building, after rioters stormed the Capitol in protest of Trump’s loss in the 2020 election. The president also commuted the sentences of 14 people who were convicted of harsher crimes related to Jan. 6, including leaders of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, though none are shown to have donated significant amounts to Trump’s campaign.
TangentJeremy Hutchinson, a former Arkansas state senator whom Trump pardoned for corruption and fraud charges, also spent significant money on his pardon, though it didn’t go to Trump directly. The New York Times reported in 2020 that Hutchinson’s father Tim Hutchinson paid a lobbyist $10,000 in 2020, during Trump’s first term, to lobby for his son’s release. Before Trump took up Ulbricht’s cause to shore up support among Libertarians, a man connected to the Silk Road founder, Brian Anderson, also spent $22,500 lobbying on Ulbricht’s behalf at the end of Trump’s first presidency. NBC News reported last week the Trump administration is now seeking to halt outside lobbying efforts around pardons, citing more recent reports in which people have attempted to solicit as much as $30 million to help secure clemency.
[...] Who Could Trump Pardon Next?
It’s unclear. Politico reported in May 2025 that Martin was reviewing pardon applications for Jan. 6 conspirators that Trump had already given commutations to, such as Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes. Crypto booster Roger Ver, known as “Bitcoin Jesus,” has also been angling for clemency from Trump for charges of tax evasion and mail fraud, Bloomberg reported in August, though a campaign to secure a pardon for Ver appears to have fizzled out. Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell—who was moved to a lower-security facility last after speaking with the DOJ and absolving Trump of any role in Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation—has also been angling for clemency, with whistleblower documents given to House Democrats suggesting Maxwell is preparing a “commutation application” for the president. Her attorney told Politico in April they would not seek a pardon until after the public interest in Epstein and the Epstein files has died down, however. Trump has not committed either way to giving Maxwell clemency, saying in October he would “have to take a look at it” and he “wouldn’t consider it or not consider,” and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in February that the last time she talked to Trump about it, “He said it’s not something he’s considering or thinking about.” Lawyers for Sean “Diddy” Combs, who was sentenced to four years in prison, have also said they’ve reached out to the White House about a pardon. Trump has complained Combs was “very hostile” to the president during his campaign, however, and told The Times in January he was not considering granting Combs’ pardon request. The president also ruled out pardons for now-indicted Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, former Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., and cryptocurrency entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried, and said he “[hadn’t] been asked” about pardoning Derek Chauvin, the officer convicted of murdering George Floyd in 2020.
Further Reading
Pardon buying agent = Cottage industry, or as big a heist as being a DC campaign consultant? That's a giant range. And, hypothetically, where should fraud vs abuse of pardon power draw a line?