The Martin Pardons

Prison is not for those who show love for their Dear Leader--like his new Pardon Attorney does,

Ed Martin, the new U.S. Pardon Attorney, was quite excited Monday afternoon, when President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social his intention to pardon Scott Jenkins, the former Sheriff of Culpeper County, Virginia. Jenkins had been convicted on12 counts of conspiracy, fraud, and bribery, and was sentenced this March to 10 years in federal prison. He was due to begin serving Tuesday, but apparently Jenkins’ great hatred of all things Biden and equal love of Trump and the MAGA movement rendered that incarceration unnecessary.

“No MAGA left behind” Martin tweeted, followed by “Thank you, @potus Trump, for pardoning Sheriff Jenkins!” So, no subtlety about what went on there. The inside of federal prison cells is no place for supporters of Donald Trump and the movement, as evidenced previously by, among other things, pardons for almost all the January 6 rioters, with whom Martin has shown great affinity.

Martin, you’ll recall, was the ferociously MAGA-pilled Trump appointee for U.S. Attorney in Washington D.C., who failed to secure Senate confirmation for that position. When Trump gave up on that bid, he gave the fiercely loyal Martin a job at DOJ. Jenkins, according to another Martin tweet, was the first Trump pardon since he became Pardon Attorney.

But, that was just the first, quickly followed by three more. All three, like Jenkins, appear to have more to do with support for Trump than any miscarriage of justice or sense of fairness and compassion.

One, Paul Walczak, put right in his pardon application that his mother had raised millions of dollars for Trump and run a smear campaign about Biden’s daughter, the New York Times reported. That, and her subsequent attendance at a million-dollar-per person fundraising event at Mar-a-Lago apparently sealed the deal, overriding Walczak’s own guilty plea to egregious white collar crimes.

Martin, I should clarify, works on Presidential pardons at the Department of Justice, but is not Trump’s so-called “Pardon Czar.” That would be Alice Johnson, a woman whose sentence Trump commuted during his first Presidential term. You might recall that Johnson’s release was advocated by Kim Kardashian, like Trump a star of reality television. Both Kardashian and Johnson herself have said publicly that her release was due largely to support for Trump—support, that is, from Kardashian’s then-husband, Kanye West, who this month released a single and video praising Adolf Hitler.

Speaking of reality television stars, this provides a nice segue to the other two announced pardons this week.

Todd and Julie Chrisley, progenitors of the “Chrisley Knows Best” clan, have been the subject of Trump-fawning advocacy from daughter Savannah Chrisley. That tour, highlighted by a speech at Trump’s 2024 nominating convention, culminated with an appearance on Lara Trump’s Fox News Channel program, where she explicitly compared her parents’ ordeal to that of Lara’s own patriarch-in-law, the unfairly prosecuted Donald Trump, who now held the means to springing the Chrisleys from the federal pen. Savannah, interviewed by Lara Trump last week, savvily blamed Democrats for targeting her parents, notwithstanding the fact that they were indicted during Trump’s first term. Prosecutors “referred to us as the Trumps of the South,” she told Lara.

Savannah Chrisley, whose qualifications are usually summed up as “social media influencer,” is one of a long string of wealthy white people converted to the cause of criminal justice and prison reform by the conviction of themselves and/or their loved ones. She spoke at a CPAC conference earlier this year, arguing that the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) should be removed from the U.S. Department of Justice—or Department of Injustice as she cleverly derided it—and relocated within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). “I do not believe the DOJ should be able to charge you, sentence you, and house you too,” she said.

Technically, another branch of government, and not the Department of Justice, sentences the guilty, but for years the overwhelming prevalence of plea bargains has put that power largely in federal prosecutors’ hands. So she’s not wrong about that, really, although I’m not sure I see the urgent conflict of interest Chrisley suggests in having DOJ operate prisons. The BOP badly needs reform, and significantly more staffing, but it’s hard to imagine either happening under DHS’s current Secretary Kristi Noem, who we recently learned misunderstands habeas corpus—a very big deal in the federal prison system. Indeed, the reason to think Trump might try to get BOP moved to DHS is Noem’s obvious willingness to follow through with Trump’s ideas of sending federal prisoners to privately operated lockups, and even to gulags overseas run by any government willing to take criminals for cash.

So, I’m not sure why Savannah Chrisley imagined that putting the BOP under Noem’s control would work out well for her parents. That became moot Tuesday when Trump decided that the Chrisleys had served enough time for the various frauds of which they had been convicted.

I’m sure we all can’t wait to see which Trump-supporting criminals get freed next—and which criminals begin lavishing love (and gifts) upon the President in hopes of winning a brownnoser pardon. All eyes are currently on a group of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, granted commutations but not full pardons for their January 6 crimes. An attorney seeking pardons for them reportedly met with Martin a few days ago to discuss the recommendations. Martin, of course, enthusiastically tweeted the meeting..