Donald Trump has pardoned former senior adviser Steve Bannon, among scores of others including rappers, financiers and former members of Congress in the final hours of his presidency.
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Among the 74 people pardoned was Elliott Broidy, a leading former fundraiser for Trump who has admitted illegally lobbying the US government to drop its inquiry into the Malaysia 1MDB corruption scandal and to deport an exiled Chinese billionaire. Also on the list was Ken Kurson, a friend of Jared Kushner who was charged in October last year with cyberstalking during a heated divorce.
In the very last minutes of Trump’s presidency, most likely his final presidential act, a pardon was granted to Albert Pirro, a real estate lawyer who has represented Trump in some business deals before he became president and is the ex-husband of Jeanine Pirro, a fervently pro-Trump commentator on Fox News. He served just over a year in prison after being convicted of conspiracy and tax evasion in 2000.
Rappers Lil Wayne and Kodak Black – who were prosecuted on federal weapons offences – and the former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who is serving a 28-year prison term on corruption charges, were also pardoned. A further 70 people had their sentences commuted.
There was just one pardon with any connection to the Russian election interference investigation which hung over more than half of Trump’s presidency. It was given to a Republican consultant and gun-rights activist, Paul Erickson. His Russian girlfriend, Maria Butina, pleaded guilty to acting as an unregistered foreign agent in her efforts to court the National Rifle Association on Moscow’s behalf. Erickson was not charged in Butina’s case, but was sentenced to seven years in jail for unrelated fraud charges.
The omissions from the president’s valedictory pardon list were in many ways more striking than who is on it. Trump did not attempt to give himself a pre-emptive pardon, and has not pardoned members of his family or Rudy Giuliani, his former personal lawyer with whom he fell out in the last days of his presidency, as the attempt to overturn the election result finally ran out of steam. Giuliani also egged on the mob that staged the 6 January insurrection on the Capitol, calling for “trial by combat” to decide the election outcome.
None of the rioters who stormed the seat of US democracy were included on the list. Doing so would have counted against Trump in his forthcoming impeachment trial for inciting the insurrection.
Julian Assange was another figure subject to speculation who was not on the list. Prosecutors and scholars have, however, said a grey area in the constitution means a president may be able to issue “secret” pardons, without notifying Congress or the public.
Another unsuccessful supplicant was Joseph Maldonado-Passage, better known as Joe Exotic, the central protagonist in Netflix’s Tiger King docuseries. He is serving a 22-year sentence after being convicted for a murder-for-hire plot and violation of federal wildlife laws. He had handwritten a note to Trump hailing him as a hero, and his supporters had a stretch limo parked outside the jail in Fort Worth, Texas, in anticipation of a pardon.
The pardoning of Bannon, a former editor of Breitbart, is widely seen as a last-minute pre-emptive move to protect Bannon from his upcoming fraud trial. He was arrested in August last year on a luxury yacht off the Connecticut coast, accused of siphoning money from We Build the Wall, an online fundraiser for Trump’s contentious border wall with Mexico.
Federal prosecutors allege Bannon used a non-profit he controlled to divert “over $1m from the … online campaign, at least some of which he used to cover hundreds of thousands of dollars in personal expenses”.
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Officials said We Build The Wall raised more than $25m. Bannon has denied one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and another of conspiracy to commit money laundering.
The official citation on Bannon’s pardon was notable in that it did not cite any mitigating circumstances or virtues of the recipient.
It said only that “Mr Bannon has been an important leader in the conservative movement and is known for his political acumen”.
The news on Bannon and Broidy brought swift outcry. Noah Bookbinder at the legal watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said: “Even Nixon didn’t pardon his cronies on the way out. Amazingly, in his final 24 hours in office, Donald Trump found one more way to fail to live up to the ethical standard of Richard Nixon.”
The Democratic congressman Adam Schiff tweeted: “Steve Bannon is getting a pardon from Trump after defrauding Trump’s own supporters into paying for a wall that Trump promised Mexico would pay for. And if that all sounds crazy, that’s because it is. Thank God we have only 12 more hours of this den of thieves.”
Bannon was recently banned from Twitter for calling for the beheading of Dr Anthony Fauci and the FBI director, Christopher Wray.
He and Trump have been estranged since the former adviser left the White House and made critical remarks about the president in a tell-all book about the president called Fire and Fury by journalist Michael Wolff. Trump said his former consigliere had “lost his mind”.
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Despite Trump’s last-minute move on Bannon, reportedly delayed because the president was so torn on the issue, it would not protect his former adviser from charges brought by state prosecutors.
Andrew Weissmann, the lead prosecutor in the special counsel investigation into Russian election interference, said that some Trump pardons had been narrowly drawn, allowing loopholes for future prosecution.
“If the Biden administration’s Department of Justice wants to rectify some of Trump’s abuse of the pardon power, there are now options at its disposal,” Weissmann wrote on the Just Security website.
Trump has also been mulling future political ambitions, according to the Wall Street Journal, reportedly speaking to aides about the possibility of forming a new political party. The president favoured the name Patriot party, it reported.
Multiple Republican party figures defending Trump in his second impeachment, for inciting the Capitol attack on 6 January, counseled him not to offer pardons to any of the more than 100 people arrested as a result.
Presidential pardons and acts of clemency do not imply innocence. Presidents often bestow them on allies and donors but Trump has taken the practice to extremes.
Previous recipients include aides and allies Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, George Papadopoulos and Paul Manafort, all convicted in the investigation of Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow, and Charles Kushner, the father of Trump’s son-in-law and chief adviser, Jared Kushner.
Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump were reportedly closely involved in the process deciding Trump’s final pardons.
Trump faces state investigations of his business affairs and could face legal jeopardy over acts in office including his attempts to overturn election defeat and his incitement of the Capitol riot on 6 January, over which he was impeached a second time.
If Trump is convicted in his second Senate trial, he could be barred from running for office again.
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