Some of the People Trump Pardoned Are on a Crime Spree

Regarding presidential pardon power

A NYT Editorial Board opinion (not paywalled), focuses on the topic of Trump’s criminal pardons. Probably more clearly than anything else, the pardons show his callousness, cruelty and utter contempt for the rule of law. Under the Constitution presidential pardon powers are essentially unlimited. Before Trump, public opinion and presidential “decency” were the only meaningful checks on that power. Trump blew the old system of presidential restraint and decency to smithereens.

Trump’s pardon business

There are so many self-serving Trump pardons that the public cannot keep up. The high volume of pardons is just one small part of the MAGA strategy that Steve Bannon described years ago as “flooding the zone with shit”. People cannot easily follow the wreckage Trump’s pardons caused. He released so many criminals that no one can easily keep up with either (1) the consequences to crime victims, or (2) criminal activities once the pardoned thugs are turned loose on us.

Asdiscussed here before, Trump runs a pardon industry. Part of the wreckage is ~$1.3 billion that crime victims will be screwed out of. The pardons included nullifying court-ordered payments to the crime victims. Trump callously screws innocent crime victims, even though some of the criminals are very wealthy and can easily afford restitution. Oh well, that’s just Trump being Trump.

Trump’s racket works like this. Convicted thug-criminals pay people with White House connections in return for a pardon. It’s simple pay-to-play politics. The pardons include wealthy tax cheats, murderers, drug dealers, and dozens of fraudsters, i.e., crooks just like himself. Trump really likes fraud. Fraud is why he’s a convicted felon.

Among the drug dealers, Juan Orlando Hernández, a former president of Honduras bought a pardon. That drug lord helped traffic hundreds of tons of cocaine into the US.

On the first day of his second term, Trump pardoned all the rioters and traitors who stormed the Capitol in his Jan. 6, 2021 coup attempt. He did not distinguish between rioters who were relatively peaceful and traitors who attacked police officers. All ~1,500 got a clean slate. That’s serious contempt for the rule of law.

What they’ve been up to

So, what has the happy band for criminals and thugs been doing since they were given or bought their pardons? Not surprisingly, some have been busy doing more crime. At least 12 have been charged with other major crimes, including child molestation, assault, harassment, murder plots and a vicious dog attack. That outcome was predictable. Trump’s pardons signaled that crime has no consequences. Some people who commit crimes but are absolved will become repeat offenders.

One of the pardoned “fine people” at Trump’s 1/6 coup attempt, Andrew Paul Johnson, is especially disgusting. On 1/6, Johnson entered the Capitol through a broken window and attacked police officers. In March 2026, a Florida court sentenced him to life in prison for molesting a 12-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl. His pedophilia began some months after he received his pardon. He used online gaming platforms to make his initial contact with the children. Johnson kept his pedophilia victims quiet by promising to pay to them from a federal Jan. 6 restitution fund that he falsely claimed he would receive.

Andrew Paul Johnson - pedophile &

pardoned Trump supporter

The NYT opinion mentions other examples of pardoned crooks getting caught in post-pardon crimes, e.g., one 1/6 traitor who attacked capitol police with a baseball bat and a riot shield, committed felony vandalism in Minnesota and organized an illegal anti-Muslim rally in New York City that turned violent. What no one knows is what new crimes the more intelligent criminals have committed. Presumably, most of the white-collar criminals that Trump pardoned now know better how to commit crimes like fraud without getting caught again.

For the most part MAGA politicians in congress openly support most of Trump’s pardons, especially for the rioters and traitors in the 1/6 coup attempt. One congressional MAGA elite refuses to answer questions about about Trump’s pay-to-play pardons, offering the ludicrous deflection that it is “looking backward” to comment on them.