Ramble On: The Most Corrupt POTUS of All Time is Abusing His Pardon Power—Again.

Morning thoughts on Marc Rich, Paul Walczak, Paul Walczak's mom, Rudy Giuliani, legacy media failure, and how it sure looks like Trump's peddling executive clemency for $1m (again).

TGIF TACO!

Here is today’s morning ramble:

And here is a transcript, edited for clarity:

Good morning. As you’re watching this it’s May 30th, but here it is still May 29th. It is 6:15 in the evening. It is supposedly the Golden Hour, so I’m outside—it’s very loud inside my house.

I wanted to talk today a little bit about pardons.

I’m sort of delighted that pardons are in the news as regards Trump because, you know, giving corrupt pardons is kind of his bag and has been for quite some time. The news involves a guy named Paul Walczak, who dropped out of college and was promptly hired by his mom to run this big business that she had in elder care. And what he did, as the executive there, is, over the course of years, he siphoned $10 million out of the paychecks of his employees—doctors, nurses, other service providers—and stopped paying the government taxes. He withheld the taxes and just…kept them—you know, like the Social Security tax, all that stuff, the employment tax— and used it to buy a yacht, as one does, and bought himself a bunch of luxury items.

(I always like when they say that: luxury items. I’d like to know what these items are. Something involving Bergdorf Goodman, another name that comes up in Trump land.)

So, Walczak was found guilty. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison and ordered to pay $4.4 million in restitution. And the sentence was going to begin soon—imminently. The judge at the sentencing said in demanding that he go to jail that “there is no get out of jail free card.” And the reason the judge said that is because they wanted to emphasize the point that, you know, there’s not two systems of justice in the United States, one for rich, one for poor.

But—spoiler alert—turns out there is, because his mom, her name is Elizabeth Fago, went to a dinner a couple of weeks ago at Mar-a-Lago. She paid $1 million to go to this very intimate candlelight dinner with Orange Hitler, and I guess lobbied on her son’s behalf for a pardon—and the pardon was granted.

So the way that this is being spun in the press, correctly, is that Paul’s mom paid a million dollars so that he would have a pardon. A million dollars is a lot of money, but when you owe four million dollars that you no longer have to fork over, it’s actually less than a quarter of what he was going to pay, right? And the million bucks doesn’t go to the United States government, it goes into Trump’s pocket.

Not so great—but finally the press is starting to pick up on all this stuff. And I am delighted that they’re doing that, but also sort of irritated. As people who read my book, Rough Beast—which came out one year ago—the entire third chapter is about Trump’s corrupt pardons.

Rough Beast: Slouching Towards Dictatorship

This is not the first time that Donald has issued corrupt pardons. He’s pardoned a lot of really awful people who have no business being pardoned. And it’s so hypocritical. I know, we point out the hypocrisy all the time, and it’s pointless. But when Bill Clinton pardoned Marc Rich, man, the GOP went wild.

Remember the financier Marc Rich? On September 19th, 1983, he was indicted on 65 counts relating to tax evasion, mail fraud, racketeering, defrauding the government and “trading with the enemy.” Whereupon he just fled, right? He got a lot of money. He just left. Now he’s from Belgium, came over here with his family during World War II, fleeing the Nazis. And as soon as it became inconvenient for him, he turned his back on the country.

So he was on the lam for two decades. His ex-wife—he’s divorced from Denise Rich—gave a lot of money to the Clinton campaign. So it was the same kind of thing. The optics were bad. It looked like pay-for-a-pardon. And you’re not going to believe this: the Republicans had a field day. There was a whole committee that the House formed to look into it. And what they found is that it was ridiculous, and the pardons were corrupt. You know, they found that. They didn’t like it. They didn’t like this pardon of Marc Rich—and nobody else did either.

None of the Democrats liked it. The Democrats had harsh words for it. You know, even at the time Chuck Schumer said, “There could be no justification in pardoning a fugitive from justice. Pardoning a fugitive stands our justice system on its head and makes a mockery of it.” We don’t pardon fugitives dating back to the Adams administration—the first Adams administration. Barney Frank had strong words about it, Elijah Cummings, Henry Waxman. And I’m sure if you ask Bill Clinton now, he would probably say that he would not do it again, if given the chance for a do-over.

And this committee, Dan Burton’s committee on the House, just absolutely trashed the move And they wrote in their report: “President Clinton is ultimately responsible for the pardons and must ultimately provide an explanation of why he granted them.”

And then it goes on to say, “Regardless of the motivations for the pardons, the nation must live with the consequences of them. The pardons have sent two equally destructive messages. First, by granting the pardons, President Clinton undermined the efforts of U.S. law enforcement to apprehend fugitives abroad. By pardoning a man who evaded capture by the U.S. Marshals Service for almost two decades, President Clinton sent the message that indeed crime can pay and that it may be worthwhile to remain a fugitive rather than face charges. The pardon could also undermine US efforts to obtain extradition of fugitives from foreign countries.”

So it’s not great. Now, Marc Rich was a terrible piece of shit human being, for sure. Did not deserve the pardon. I think most people would agree he did not deserve the pardon.

But here’s what Marc Rich did not do. He didn’t work with the Kremlin to help his preferred candidate win a presidential election. He didn’t share voting data with a Russian intelligence officer who was his business partner. He didn’t send Twitter DMs to Russian hackers. He didn’t cozy up to Chinese fraudsters to fund his attempts to take down the government. He didn’t monetize and politicize a pandemic that got a million Americans killed. He didn’t disseminate known lies about stolen elections. He didn’t champion insurrection. He wasn’t a co-conspirator in one of the worst crimes ever perpetuated in this country. He didn’t auction off pardons to the highest bidder.

Put it this way: I don’t think Bill Clinton would have pardoned the guys that were trying to kidnap Governor Whitmer, which Donald is reportedly considering. I mean, these are terrible, terrible people, who Trump has pardoned.

What’s really interesting to me is the one person who should have been infuriated by the Marc Rich pardon, and who should therefore fundamentally detest the quid pro quo pardon prospect, and all that work of law enforcement going poof at the stroke of a corrupt president’s pen, is Rudolph W. Giuliani. After all, he was the federal prosecutor who indicted Rich in 1983!

Justice Undone: Clemency Decisions in the Trump White House

And it’s interesting that we bring up Giuliani because when Noelle Dunphy, his former assistant, sued him in a case that’s still ongoing—in her lawsuit, which I encourage everybody to read, there’s two relevant paragraphs that I want to point out here. One of them is paragraph 132:

Giuliani also asked Ms. Dunphy if she knew anyone in need of a pardon, telling her that he was selling pardons for $2 million, which he and President Trump would split. He told Ms. Dunphy that she could refer individuals seeking pardons to him, so long as they did not go through the normal channels of the office of the pardon attorney because correspondents going to that office would be subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

That was one of the things. And the other one is:

To bolster his claims about the need to keep Ms. Dunphy’s employment secret, Giuliani told Ms. Dunphy about other schemes he undertook to reduce the amounts he owed to his ex-wife. For example, Giuliani told Ms. Dunphy that someone owed him $1 million. But Giuliani hinted that instead of having the money paid to him, he had his friend Robert Stryk hold it for him. He said, “Robert Stryk just got me a million dollar payment.” This statement was recorded.

So again, Rudy’s statements were recorded; Noelle Dunphy has receipts.

Giuliani was talking like this during the first Trump administration, right? That’s when this was happening. Obviously when Trump could give pardons the first time around it was six or seven years ago, right? And the amount is the same. It’s a million bucks. Giuliani’s (allegedly) selling them for two, keeping a million for himself and giving a million to President Trump. How much did Elizabeth Fago give Trump? To get a pardon for her son Paul Walczak? One million dollars! I mean, it’s so Austin Powers that one million dollars is the price for the pardon.

So this is all really gross and disgusting. And I don’t want to read the whole chapter now, but in chapter three of my book, I go into all of the scummy people that he’s pardoned. One of them, just one, because this should really make you infuriated, is this guy named Ken Kurson, who was a writer, editor, political consultant, and a former punk musician.

Now I’ll read from the book:

As pardon material, Kurson was an unusual choice. Typically, individuals who receive pardons distinguish themselves by putting their life of crime behind them, by expressing remorse, by giving back to the community, by visibly changing their lives for the better. These are supposed to be redemption stories. There’s usually some well-placed senator, governor, or House representative lobbying for the pardon. Sometimes they’ve already served a big chunk of their prison term; sometimes they’ve already been out of jail for years.

Kurson was none of those things. He was under indictment for cyberstalking and harassment. The arrest warrant summarizes the nasty, vindictive behavior:

FBI Special Agents obtained information indicating that KURSON had used the mail, interactive computer services, electronic communication services, electronic communication systems of interstate commerce and other facilities of interstate commerce to stalk and harass Individual No. 1, Individual No. 2 and Individual No. 3 (collectively, the “Victims”) between approximately November 2015 and December 2015. . . . [D]uring this time period, KURSON was engaged in divorce proceedings and blamed Individual No. 1, among others, for the dissolution of his marriage. As a result, beginning in or about November 2015, KURSON threatened to ruin Individual No. 1’s reputation and engaged in a pattern of stalking and harassment against Individual No. 1.

(You can read more about the unpleasant details of the case here.)

There was no respected elder statesman sponsoring the push to Free Kurson. His case hadn’t even gone to trial when he scored the pardon, so his victims were denied their day in court. And he was unlikely to get off. The FBI had him dead to rights.

But Kurson had an ace in the hole: he was close friends with Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law. Kushner had hired Kurson to head the New York Observer, the venerable and beloved Gotham periodical he bought and ruined.

Kurson was also tight with Rudy Giuliani, with whom he’d co-authored a book, and whose ill-fated 2008 presidential campaign he worked on. And he’d authored a speech for FPOTUS. In fact, it was Trump’s decision to nominate him for a seat on the board of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the subsequent FBI investigation that followed, that dredged all this up—kind of like what happened to Bernie Kerik, another beneficiary of a Trump pardon, after Bush II sought to nominate him to head Homeland Security.¹

This means that Kurson was 1) in with Trump, the ultimate arbiter of who got a pardon; 2) BFFs with Kushner, the West Winger in charge of “trying to get as many pardons done” as possible before the end of Trump’s term; and 3) close to Giuliani, who, if the allegations in the lawsuit filed by his former employee Noelle Dunphy are to be believed, was, at the time, acting as a shadow broker for presidential pardons.

Revisiting Trump's Pardons

So, again: Kurson got a pardon and his case hadn’t even gone to trial yet. He was under indictment for cyberstalking and harassment. And you can go read the indictment against him and it’s not pretty. They had evidence enough to put before a grand jury to indict him, which strongly suggests, you know, that maybe he done it. And the victims never had the day in court—we never know what happened because he got pardoned before the case even went to trial. So justice was completely denied.

And what was so special about this guy? This Ken Kurson? He’s close friends with Jared Kushner. Jared Kushner, who as January 6th was going on, we found out in the J6 committee hearings, was busy doing pardon stuff. That’s what Jared was working on. Kurson was also tight with Rudy Giuliani. Rudy’s name goes through this whole thing, both for good and for ill, right?

So this is like George leaning on his friendship with Paul and his close working relationship with Ringo to score a pardon from John. Of course Kurson’s gonna get his pardon, just like Kerik did. Bernie Kerik also got pardoned, and Charles Kushner, Jared’s felon old man—he got one too. Now he’s the ambassador to France. Good gig if you can get it.

There’s a lot more in the book on the people that Trump pardoned and how awful it is, including all of the people that helped him in the 2016 election. All of the Mueller Report people that Mueller got convictions on. He pardoned all of them, and they immediately came back to do bad things.

The point here in this already too-long ramble is that Trump is corrupt, and he’s been corruptly pardoning people for a long time.

This guy is transactional with every single thing that he does. I mean, everything that he does is a transaction. He will sell anything. When Ivanka was like, what, 14, he sent her to the guy he knew was a creep to model. So if you’ll sell the services of your 14-year-old daughter and give her to a guy you know is creepy—I mean, what’s selling a pardon? Who cares?

It’s not expressly prohibited in the Constitution to do this, by the way, which is one of the things that Dan Burton and the Republicans were complaining about in 2001, when Clinton pardoned Marc Rich. So, you know, yes, Clinton pardoned Marc Rich. Yes, that was a bad move. This is way beyond anything like that. Everybody should be appalled not just at the Paul Walczak pardon, but at all of these corrupt pardons.

And I really wish that the media had spent a little more time reporting on this in the lead-up to the election instead of now. Better late than never, I guess. But I really wish they had spent more time with this, because this is something that I think most people can really understand. And anybody that has an inherent sense of fairness doesn’t want this to ever happen. It’s disgusting. And it just makes a mockery of the rule of law and basic fairness. It’s just gross. But, you know, they’re too busy talking about Biden being old, I suppose. “Biden is old. Film at 11!”

And that’s that’s my ramble. I wish everybody a fantastic weekend. Please be sure and watch The Five 8 tonight. We’ve got a lot to talk about in addition to this pardon business.

And until next time, we shall prevail!

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I had a nice chat with the great Brian Karem:

Greg Olear on Jake Tapper, The Crypto Dinner, and Stephen Miller

1. I recorded the ramble before I knew Kerik died yesterday, and of course I was reading a passage from my book, published a year ago. Condolences to his family. Doesn’t change the fact that he was a garbage human.