After issuing a series of high-profile pardons to individuals accused of committing tax and bank fraud, among other offenses, President Donald Trump is being accused of using the presidency to extend favors to friends and supporters, normalizing white-color crimes similar to those he himself has been convicted of or accused of committing.
On Tuesday, President Trump pardoned reality TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley, who were convicted in 2022 for financial fraud and tax evasion. Their daughter, Savannah Chrisley, was a strong supporter of Trump in the 2024 election and lobbied for her parents’ clemency.
Paul Walczak, a former nursing home executive who pled guilty to withholding employees’ taxes used to fund his luxurious lifestyle, was also pardoned by Trump. Walczak’s mother, Elizabeth Fago, raised millions for Trump’s presidential campaigns. In 2020, she aided an effort to expose the diary of former President Joe Biden’s daughter, Ashley Biden, detailing her battle with addiction. The president also pardoned longtime Trump supporter Scott Jenkins, a former sheriff in Culpeper County, Va., who was convicted in 2024 of campaign bribery and conspiracy.
In each case, Trump argued that the Biden administration weaponized the Justice Department against them. However, critics of President Trump say otherwise.
“Trump is now on an all-out war against the justice system,” said political strategist Ameshia Cross, who noted his 2024 conviction of 34 felonies in New York related to falsifying business records to conceal an illegal scheme to corrupt the 2016 election.
Trump was also found liable in a civil fraud case in New York for falsifying property evaluation records to obtain more favorable bank loans. He faced three other criminal cases that were ultimately thrown out or stalled as a result of his 2024 election victory.
“Trump sees a mirror image of himself in the people who he is pardoning,” Cross told theGrio. “He is fine with individuals of means ignoring the law. He is fine with them committing fraud, because, he too, has committed fraud.”
Reecie Colbert, a political pundit and host of Sirius XM’s “The Reecie Colbert Show,” told theGrio she sees something more sinister at play at the Trump White House, which has faced recent criticisms after Trump accepted a $400 million plane from Qatar and hosted a crypto dinner with investors who spent nearly $150 million on Trump’s personal memecoin.
“He is signaling that the Oval Office is for sale. America is for sale,” said Colbert. “So we have to look at these pardons and what they’re excusing as a confession. Bribery is OK. Give me a plane. Buy my Trump coin. Whatever it takes to get the job done, name your price.”
Colbert said Trump’s latest pardons are “a confession,” revealing he has “no intention of upholding the law or enforcing it” to those that he deems should be above the law, like famous “white celebrities,” reality TV stars or law enforcement officers, who he has previously said should have “immunity” from crimes they may commit.
“All of these things are consistent with who Donald Trump is and where he has stated his beliefs lie,” explained Colbert, who also noted that the president has already pardoned Jan. 6 rioters who violently attacked the U.S. Capitol and assaulted police officers. She said President Trump is trying to “empower” his supporters to continue what she described as a “lawless regime.”
“He’s deputizing people to accept bribes to further his aims, including, himself. If anybody who is willing to spread the gospel of Trump, they’re going to be held to a different standard than people who are holding him accountable,” said Colbert.
Cross said Trump’s pardons are a thumbing of the nose to the judiciary branch more broadly.
“He’s continued to argue that the courts are insufficient, and he’s tried to weaken and bend them to his will for quite some time now,” Cross said of Trump, who has publicly slammed federal judges who ruled against his administration in the courts and even called for one’s removal from the bench.
“This is more of the same for him in terms of saying that the justice system doesn’t work and that there’s some level of grievance that he continues to push out about the people who he feels deserve to be punished versus those who he does not.”
