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The usual dementia jokes aside... of all the things surrounding this administration, this is amongst the most harmless. It may be a "presidential" power to par

The usual dementia jokes aside... of all the things surrounding this administration, this is amongst the most harmless. It may be a "presidential" power to pardon on paper, but the reality is that unless the President (or in other countries with powers of clemency to the head of state, whoever wields that power) intervenes personally for whatever reason, petitions for clemency pass through layers of bureaucracy, reviews and meetings. And sometimes, that also includes that candidates get inserted into the process by influential aides - something that has been the case for a lot of Presidents on either side of the aisle. Of course, the issue gets a bit more spicy given Trump's derogatory nickname of "Autopen" Biden, but leaving that aside it's no surprise to me that a US President isn't involved in dealing with clemency petitions all that much.

watwut 1y ago
Considering Trump getting rich of crypto grifting and Trump making sure crypto is as unregulated as possible, this particular pardon is perfectly consistent with Trump policies.
sholain 1y ago
To the contrary, this is possibly an extremely dangerous and corrupt action (I'm saying 'possible' here). Zhao manages Binance upon which Trump's nefarious crypto operation - World Liberty Financial is hosted. Zhao is guilty of wilfully ignoring a lot of very bad and illegal activity by all sorts of bad actors. World Liberty Financial is receiving $100's of millions inbound, coincident with 'deals' made by US and Middle East actors etc.. WLF is co-managed by Steve Witkoff, the 'real estate magnate' who has been charged with Middle Easter nand Russia negotiations (who by the ay has absolutely no diplomatic background, historical context or understanding of this situations and is deeply unqualified) and who notably has been entering into negotiations and discussion with foreign parties without any US State Dept personnel. Sometimes not even translators. Subsequent to those 'deals' with Qatar etc. which the Administration indicated there would be up to $1T invested in the US ... Qatar and other regimes have been flushing massive amounts of noney into WLF, hosted on Binance, overseen by Zhao. The potentiality fore corruption is hard to overstate.
- lloeki 1y ago
  > of all the things surrounding this administration, this is amongst the most harmless > this is possibly an extremely dangerous and corrupt action Sadly it appears we live in that insane timeline where both sentences can be true.
  - actionfromafar 1y ago
    I'm not sure we can differentiate like that. If WLF and Witkoff are corrupt, that means all the big "peace talks" are crypto shakedowns behind closed doors, and suddenly we are back at "Geopolitical Level Corrupt".
    - lloeki 1y ago
      I mean, on a made-up scale of: _ the "most harmless" thing this admin did / +---------------------------------------------+-----+ \_ 100% harmless \_ 100% horrible IOW that "most harmless" thing not being harmless at all is quite telling about _all the other things_ happening in that topmost bucket.
- mschuster91 1y ago
  > World Liberty Financial is receiving $100's of millions inbound, coincident with 'deals' made by US and Middle East actors etc.. The thing is, in the corruption surrounding the President, that's still small fish. $TRUMP alone was worth 13 billion dollars, $MELANIA was at 1.7 billion dollars. And that's just these two meme coins, not going into all the other shenanigans - he and his family are expected to have made 3 billion dollars since the election [1] in personal wealth gain. [1] https://qz.com/donald-trump-net-worth-presidency-business-corruption-laws https://qz.com/donald-trump-net-worth-presidency-business-co...
  - sholain 1y ago
    $TRUMP is managed by World Liberty. The money is coming into $TRUMP and WLF at the same time as Trump is announcing deals with those parties.
cbsmith 1y ago
There are lots of layers on pardons before they get to Presidents, but Presidents have traditionally taken a hard look at pardons before providing them. There's been a couple of "mass pardons" where maybe you wouldn't expect them to know each person; otherwise, you'd expect it, if for not other reason than that they don't get caught flat footed like this.
- mschuster91 1y ago
  > if for not other reason than that they don't get caught flat footed like this The Trump administration doesn't care any more if they get caught red handed. They don't need to. Most of the media has been bought off in Orban style and subsequently silenced (e.g. WaPo) or subjected to lawfare (see the recent broadcast TV scandals), and the hardcore voter base doesn't care about anything any more, as long as "their side" is perceived as "winning".
  - cbsmith 1y ago
    Yeah, I wasn't making any comment about the Trump administration; just repeating what the norms are, because it seems like we need reminding about them.

watwut 1y ago

Considering Trump getting rich of crypto grifting and Trump making sure crypto is as unregulated as possible, this particular pardon is perfectly consistent with Trump policies.

sholain 1y ago

To the contrary, this is possibly an extremely dangerous and corrupt action (I'm saying 'possible' here). Zhao manages Binance upon which Trump's nefarious crypto operation - World Liberty Financial is hosted. Zhao is guilty of wilfully ignoring a lot of very bad and illegal activity by all sorts of bad actors. World Liberty Financial is receiving $100's of millions inbound, coincident with 'deals' made by US and Middle East actors etc.. WLF is co-managed by Steve Witkoff, the 'real estate magnate' who has been charged with Middle Easter nand Russia negotiations (who by the ay has absolutely no diplomatic background, historical context or understanding of this situations and is deeply unqualified) and who notably has been entering into negotiations and discussion with foreign parties without any US State Dept personnel. Sometimes not even translators. Subsequent to those 'deals' with Qatar etc. which the Administration indicated there would be up to $1T invested in the US ... Qatar and other regimes have been flushing massive amounts of noney into WLF, hosted on Binance, overseen by Zhao. The potentiality fore corruption is hard to overstate.

lloeki 1y ago
> of all the things surrounding this administration, this is amongst the most harmless > this is possibly an extremely dangerous and corrupt action Sadly it appears we live in that insane timeline where both sentences can be true.
- actionfromafar 1y ago
  I'm not sure we can differentiate like that. If WLF and Witkoff are corrupt, that means all the big "peace talks" are crypto shakedowns behind closed doors, and suddenly we are back at "Geopolitical Level Corrupt".
  - lloeki 1y ago
    I mean, on a made-up scale of: _ the "most harmless" thing this admin did / +---------------------------------------------+-----+ \_ 100% harmless \_ 100% horrible IOW that "most harmless" thing not being harmless at all is quite telling about _all the other things_ happening in that topmost bucket.
mschuster91 1y ago
> World Liberty Financial is receiving $100's of millions inbound, coincident with 'deals' made by US and Middle East actors etc.. The thing is, in the corruption surrounding the President, that's still small fish. $TRUMP alone was worth 13 billion dollars, $MELANIA was at 1.7 billion dollars. And that's just these two meme coins, not going into all the other shenanigans - he and his family are expected to have made 3 billion dollars since the election [1] in personal wealth gain. [1] https://qz.com/donald-trump-net-worth-presidency-business-corruption-laws https://qz.com/donald-trump-net-worth-presidency-business-co...
- sholain 1y ago
  $TRUMP is managed by World Liberty. The money is coming into $TRUMP and WLF at the same time as Trump is announcing deals with those parties.

cbsmith 1y ago

There are lots of layers on pardons before they get to Presidents, but Presidents have traditionally taken a hard look at pardons before providing them. There's been a couple of "mass pardons" where maybe you wouldn't expect them to know each person; otherwise, you'd expect it, if for not other reason than that they don't get caught flat footed like this.

mschuster91 1y ago
> if for not other reason than that they don't get caught flat footed like this The Trump administration doesn't care any more if they get caught red handed. They don't need to. Most of the media has been bought off in Orban style and subsequently silenced (e.g. WaPo) or subjected to lawfare (see the recent broadcast TV scandals), and the hardcore voter base doesn't care about anything any more, as long as "their side" is perceived as "winning".
- cbsmith 1y ago
  Yeah, I wasn't making any comment about the Trump administration; just repeating what the norms are, because it seems like we need reminding about them.