cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/28668930
cross-posted from: https://metawire.eu/post/49083
President Donald Trump has issued a full pardon for loyalist Michele Fiore, who paid for her plastic surgery with funds that were meant for a statue honoring a slain police officer
That’s my point, unless he is aware of additional crimes Trump has nothing on this woman. She was convicted of a crime, it happened, that doesn’t go away. What goes away is the punishment.
Additionally the pardon power is absolute, even Trump knows that as he’s been bitching about being unable to do anything after Biden preemptively pardoned a handful of people.
Now if you could uncover some type of quid pro quo for this pardon that would be a new crime and you could get both of them on that (possibly). Although I’m think technically Trump could sell pardons and that would be legal. It would be abhorrent. It would be unethical. But it would legal. (Although hopefully he would be impeached, but that’s also a separate process.)
It is not that Trump has her directly under her control by some sort of blackmail. It is more like situational control. She has benefited from the Trump presidency to the point that her gross misconducts were pardoned. That now ties her sort of organically to Trump and if newcomers want to undo everything Trump has done and take some sort of revenge, they will pay extra attention to dig extra dirt that these people have (which this woman most definitely has).