Bulwark Takes - “No MAGA Left Behind”?! Trump’s Pardons Are a Corrupt Free-For-All

Episode Date: May 27, 2025

Sam Stein and Bill Kristol discuss Trump’s increasingly corrupt use of the pardon power, rewarding MAGA allies and big donors, while weaponizing government authority, from ousting DOJ lawyer Liz Oyer for refusing to restore Mel Gibson’s gun rights to withholding $100M in federal funding from Harvard. Watch Sam's conversation with Liz Oyer Read "Another Indefensible Trump Pardon"

Rural communities are being squeezed from every side. From rising health care costs to crumbling hospitals, from attacks on public schools to the fight for paid family and medical leave, farmers and small businesses are reeling from the trade war. And now, Project 2025 is back with a plan to finish what Elon Musk started. Trump and the Republicans won rural votes, then turned their backs on us. Join the One Country Project for the Rural Progress Summit, July 8th through the 10th.

This free virtual event brings together leaders like Senator Heidi Heitkamp, Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Governor Andy Beshear and others for real talk and real solutions. Together we'll tackle the most urgent issues facing rural America. Register today or learn more at ruralprogress.com. Ever notice your dog slowing down

and having health issues and wonder, what can I do to make them better? Well, my friend, add rough greens to your dog's food for 90 days, and I guarantee you'll see changes that will amaze you. Greetings, naturopathy Dr. Dennis Black, inventor of rough greens here, and I invite you to give your pup the rough greens 90 day challenge. In the first 30 days, you'll see shinier coats and increased energy. By day 60, your dog will have a stronger immune system, less shedding, improved joint function, all due to the live nutrients that you've added to

their diet. And at 90 days, better digestion, reduced inflammation, improved heart health, and you may even have reduced their cancer risk. Fetch your dog a free Jumpstart trial bag today. Go to tryroughgreens.com. Use promo code TRYROUGH, that's T-R-Y-R-U-F-F. Go to tryroughgreens.com. Use promo code TRYROUGH. You just cover the shipping. You don't have to change your dog's food

to improve your dog's health. Just add a scoop of rough greens. Hey guys, Sam Stein here again, managing editor at The Bullork. I'm joined by Bill Kristol, author of author of morning shots and also the sort of spiritual guide for everything that we do. Our Buddha. I think I want to call you.

I think I better. I want to disavow that now. You know, there's a lot that goes on on the board that I'm not fully not only not totally and I'm not even a, I'm not a guide for, I'm not even responsible for it. But anyway, it's great to be here. Great. Thanks for having. We're going to be talking about Trump's pardon, which was the subject of today's morning

shots. And then after that came out, an even arguably more grotesque pardon story was published by the New York Times. We're going to be talking about that too. All right, Bill, just walk through this morning's morning shots and why you decided to focus on the story, the sort of larger picture element of it. You know, so I saw this news yesterday that Trump had pardoned a sheriff, former sheriff in Culpepper, Virginia, about 40, 50 miles maybe south of here.

Basically, he had sold these auxiliary sheriff jobs, which are not real jobs, for 15,000 bucks each so people could get nice sheriff medallions. I guess they're useful also for, you know, if you have speeding tickets and maybe some other things. He'd gotten $75,000 in cash. There's a video of him with a, it was a shut, it was an open and shut case. The federal part of justice, public integrity division prosecuted it. He was convicted by a jury of his peers in Culpeper in December, sentenced to 10 years jail in March.

It turns out he was also a big MAGA sheriff, you know, very anti-immigration, super pro-gun rights, pro-Trump, very outspoken, been on Fox News a bunch of times. And so yesterday Trump pardoned him at the recommendation of his new pardoned attorney in the Department of Justice, our friend Ed Martin, who we covered quite a lot when he didn't make it as DC, the US US Attorney for the District of Columbia, but he is now at a senior position in the justice department and they used to proudly tweeted that, or asked or whatever, that this was his, he had recommended this pardon and the president had accepted the recommendation. And so that's, he doesn't deserve a pardon, you know, he overruled a-

Clearly not, yeah. A budget. But Ed said, no MAGA left behind when he did it. And I think that was the sort of crux of the newsletter, which is, you know, we're sort of used to part and part being abused. I'm everyone, every president recently has abused it to a certain degree, but we've never really seen it politicized like this. And it's not just the sheriff's Scott Jenkins.

It's obviously the January 6 cases You know Devin Archer the pardon attorney who? Proceeded Ed Martin who we talked to had to resign because they want to give Mel Gibson his guns back I mean, there's just a whole litany of cases. I'll get to the one in the New York Times story But the point of the warning shots was you know, what's the actual end result here? Well, take it to the degree that they're taking it. Yeah, so I mean, right I think the the further going forward point so the going, looking at it point is amazing degree of politicization and also potential corruption, obviously. We saw some of that in the first term with the pardons of Roger Stone and Michael Flynn

and others, but now it's on steroids and it's right at the beginning. It literally began at the first day of the second term with January 20th, the January 6th insurrectionists and it's now chugging right along. The point I made, which is sort of obvious, but still worth thinking about, there's not much you can do about the pardon power. The courts have decided probably mostly correctly that it's almost an illimitable presidential power and he can just pardon people for the next three and a half years on whatever grounds

he wants. He can pardon people who are engaged, who are maga types who are just stealing money or taking money. That's one thing. He can also pardon maga types who are engaged more like the January 6th insurrectionists in political activities designed to help Trump and intimidate opponents of Trump. And when you think that through, you've got a pretty unlimited presidential power to give all of his friends a pass, to get out of jail free card, and also to then, as Trump does in the tweet, harass his opponents.

So he names the federal judge who he asserts with no evidence, didn't conduct a fair trial. So we want to find out who the jurors were. And of course, the acting US attorney down there and the people who worked with him in securing this conviction. So the degree of, it's not just politicization, but actual intimidation, vigilantism, you might call it, that's being encouraged here, both by Trump-friendly law enforcement officers, but also by outsiders who might work with or with or not with law enforcement officers and do things that Trump could then pardon. It's a very dangerous

path we're on. And then the sad news is there's no, you can't sort of go to court and get some federal district judge to stop it, right? Well, okay. So yes, there's three things I want to talk about here. One is the limiting principle here, which I think you touched on, which is it's essentially political pressure, like literally it right if he does something so humiliating or limiting principle here, which I think you touched on, which is it's essentially political pressure. Like, that's literally it, right?

If he does something so humiliating or embarrassing or corrupt that people turn against him, maybe that is like how you limit the pardoning power. But there's nothing else there. So we can dispense that. That's one. Two is, and you raise this, it's not just sort of retrospective here because what it essentially does is it invites people to do corrupt acts or even dangerous acts, frankly, in the name of MAGA, knowing full well that a pardon could be on the other side.

Now, I'm not saying this is going to happen necessarily, but it's not hard to envision a situation in which someone does something thinking that they're doing it at Trump's behest or at Martin's behest and that they'll get rewarded for it or at least pardoned literally for it. Yeah. I think that's really not, not only not hard to imagine. I mean, it is more the January 6th insurrectionist precedent, but one can imagine in a million different cases, some of them, you know, kind of well

meaning, you know, I was saying, or inadvertent, a bunch of Trumpies getting a brawl with some non-Trump people adjacent to an election place where there's a dispute about ballots. But they can also be much more sinister, of course, in terms of mobilizing vigilantes, basically, on Trump's behalf and against political opponents. And again, he's got the whole Justice Department on board. At one point, I didn't make, I had it in the earlier little draft, but Sam always cuts my things down

to make them more readable, you know? So I knew you would take this out. In fevious justice departments, at times the presidents overruled the pardon attorneys, like the person you spoke with a little while ago, Biden clearly did to pardon his son at the end and so forth. But on the whole, there were these internal checks, since there really aren't external checks on the pardon whole, there were these internal checks, since there really

aren't external checks on the pardon power, there was a sense that you can't just kind of run rough shot over it. And there were people in the White House counsel's office, people in the justice department, obviously with Pam Bondi and Martin, that's all, that's all just totally gone. Yeah. Well, the person I'm talking to, Liz Oyer, and people can read her substack lawyer, Oyer, very clever.

I mean, her point was that the pardon attorney is there sort of as a check, but she sort of recognizes that, you know, if a president wants it, it's more likely than not to happen, but they can be like, no, that doesn't make sense or at least work through the trappings. But really what the pardon attorney is there to do is to make sure that legitimate cases get hurt as well. And to ensure that it's not just a grift. And that's the third thing I want to talk to you about, which is this New York

Times story, because essentially what's happened here is that the power of pardon has turned into yet another tool for Trump to essentially get money put into either pockets of his political action committees or anything related to what he wants to do politically. I guess you could make the case. Maybe there's a future for Bitcoin and meme coin investors to do it too. But in this case, the guy, Paul Walsack, uh, who, and this, this story is crazy. So bear with me for a little bit, but this guy pleaded guilty, uh, to

incredible amounts of corruption and fraud. He, um, was guilty of tax crimes. Uh, basically he was withholding employer taxes on his employees and he was doing so that he could fund sort of a lavish lifestyle. This is what the Times that he was held within $10 million from paychecks of the nurses, doctors and others who worked at his facilities under the pretext of using it for their social security, Medicare and federal income taxes. Instead, he used some of the money to buy a $2 million yacht to pay for travel and purchases at high end retailers, including Bergdorf Goodman and Cartier.

Again, he pleaded guilty. What ended up happening is that his mother, who was sort of a well-to-do muckety muck in Florida, Republican politics, spent a lot of money on Trump. Did a lot of fundraisers and then was invited to attend a one million dollar per person fundraiser last month and Mar a Lago and she according times they'd attend We don't know if she gave how much she gave But three weeks later her son gets a pardon and this is what? The Trump pardon power has become not just a license for people to commit bad

Acts or to give them a pre for committing back acts, but to shake people down or at least take some bribes. That's an amazing story. And as you say, it came out right after warning shots, but I feel, I feel like it vindicates the theme. And this is less, this is more just for money, not a little less for political power though. There's a political power too, right? Because now if you're a wealthy person who has a relative, a friend,

someone you care about in legal trouble, you go to you need to be nice to Trump but also literally give money to one of Trump's organizations. And so it does increase his political power the the degree you know, the it's not just a grift, I guess is the way I put it. Yeah, terrible. I mean, really, terrible. And kind of one last thing, Tim Miller, I talked about this yesterday on the on his podcast. I mean, really, terrible. And one last thing, Tim Miller and I talked about this yesterday on his podcast. I mean, the degree to which people just are going along with this. I mean, okay, fine, maybe the Republicans in Congress can't do anything about it. Could someone say something about it?

What about people in the White House? I mean, so let's assume that Martin and Bondi know what they're doing. They're not literally writing these pardons personally. They're not literally making sure the paperwork gets done. Other people are working on it. And so all down the ranks of White House counsel, somewhat down the ranks of DOJ, there are some decent people there who are swallowing hard and doing it because they think if I stay, I could stop even worse things. But I don't know. I do feel like an awful lot of people at this point in the various things

Trump is doing that really challenged, to say the least, the rule of law. There are an awful lot of people who are complicit in it and who are just getting away. What Tim and I talked about was, I'll tell you, one quick story which is kind of funny, is the reach of the board. So one thing, Tim and I, I said, you know that guy who's in all the Oval Office photos,

he's giving Trump the executive orders to sign? It's always the same guy. I have no idea. So I said to Tim, I have no idea who this guy is, but does he feel a little embarrassed that he's giving Trump all these really terrible and illegal or demagogic or, you know, things that are persecuting immigrants and stuff to sign? Tim said, actually people have reported on who he is since obviously he's in all these

photos and he is whoever he is. And I don't know, but then I, so this morning I got an email, someone got hold of my address, which was fine, from someone who does know who that person is, actually knows that person. And I won't reveal this is a little bit private, but I mean, it's sort of those some family connections and so forth of how this guy probably got his job. And it was just kind of funny to hear that. Yes, everyone knows, you know, the person who wrote me is a bullwork reader. And he's not the guy that he's not happy. He's not happy that everyone has just decided that this I don't know anything about this young man, but I'm just going to say he's someone who on his way up, get a good white house job. Great. I'm the, I could probably be in the photos giving president Trump.

But that's the story of this white house. So really it's like, and same, I know people who had, who are gone, I'm not going to name names, but I know people who have attended law school with Trump lawyers, including pretty high up lawyers, uh, in, in the current Trump administration who insist back in the day in the school, these were normal people. I mean, they did, there's nothing remarkable about them. And maybe they had some sort of, you know, more aggressive politics or conservative than my friends were, but it wasn't like, you know, a huge, they didn't scream Maggot Republican, but they hitched themselves along for the ride and then some along the way became actual believers. And I think that's sort of the

disconnect here is that some people think of it as pure opportunism and maybe some of it is. But in fact, I think a lot of people do become converts to the cause. I think that's easier psychologically. It's hard to, I found this with friends over the years since 2015, 2016. People who started off as, look, I think I can help, I'm gonna stick in the game here, and I don't agree with all this, I don't believe in this, I even dislike a lot of it.

A year or two later, there was a lot of, you know he's much better than the alternative bill, the Democrats, unbelievable, the woke stuff that's destroying America. And then two years later, it was, and Trump's accomplishing great things and maybe, you know, the foreign policy, he knows what he's doing, what he makes the Europeans pay up. And so people, it's hard psychologically to maintain that in between. You're in it and you're, yeah, you're stewing in it. You're in it. You're surrounded by

it. And you have a bunch of people who are telling you, in fact, it's great. And then you become part of the enterprise. Then you win. Then you win the presidency for a second time after January 6th I mean that is we people like me I would say Austin maybe you you you were very good on this very early I think after after January after November 5th after Election Day the degree to which that victory has just that was such an obvious point so it was stupid to make it but that electoral victory has supercharged everything you know for people like, okay, one by a point and a half,

that happens, you lose by a point and a half, you win by a point and a half, there's very little movement of seats. I mean, it was a victory, but it was bad. But the degree to which it just gives you that kind of unbelievable rush of power and influence, both personally, but also institutionally and organizationally, and obviously

that everyone capitulating after the election, big tech, big business and the law firms. I think people like, like me who are critical of all that, probably just underestimate the, just the, the kind of, I don't know what the momentum of it, so to speak, it's tied down a little, but they've been obstacles, of course they've made mistakes, but it's still, it's still there. I don't know if it's tied down that much. I mean, just this morning, taking $100 million from Harvard, you know, we have a new story

that they're going to start screening and vetting the social media feeds of every single foreign student visa applicant. I mean, these are not small matters. Let me just circle back to the pardon issue because you raised the point that I talked about with Liz Oyer on this because she spoke up. I mean, you said, well, I don't want me she spoke up She said I'm not gonna give Mel Gibson back his guns. There's no pretext for this. This doesn't make any sense And of course she was fired in the most unceremonious fashion. You could possibly fired. She said two things one is

it's very lonely and scary to speak up in the way she's doing and she's sort of like Looking for more people to do what she's doing because, uh, there are strengths in numbers. I know that sounds cliche, but it's true. And the second thing is the, which is, uh, on the, on the substance, she's like, we don't really actually know how bad it actually is. I mean, what we're getting our dribs and drabs in certain cases are coming public, but you know, he could be pardoning a lot more people than we actually

know of and he's just not publicizing it. And so all the stuff we're talking about now really could just be a small portion of the problem that's actually happening in real time. Well, and it's literally a small portion in the sense that he's going to be president for four years. Right. We're one third of the way through one year. I mean, that really is a site where people just let's assume he slows down some let's

assume there's a bit of a reversion to the mean there's some more obstacles thrown. We got a lot of time. He has a lot of time to do a lot more of this, right? And it could accelerate, you know, I mean these things. Oh yeah. So he's operating in a good climate. When things are okay and the problems are of his own creation. Imagine if it gets bad. All right. I'm not happy. No, it's still a difficult upbeat, upbeat full work podcast here. Imagine if it gets bad. All right. I'm not happy Peaceful work podcast here

Right off of Memorial Day we're hitting it hard, okay bill Thank you so much I appreciate it discover the life-changing benefits of meow greens for your cat ever see your cat Slowing down or having health issues and wonder what can I do to make them better? Well, my friend add meow greens to your cat's food for 90 days, and I guarantee you'll see changes that will amaze you. Greetings, I'm naturopathic Dr. Dennis Black, inventor of Meow Greens, and I invite you to take the Meow Greens 90 Day Challenge. In the first 30 days, you'll see shinier coats and increased energy.

By day 60, your cat will have a stronger immune system, less shedding, improved joint function, all due to the live nutrients that you've added to their diet. And at 90 days, they're going to have better digestion, reduced inflammation, improved heart health, and you may even have reduced their cancer risk. Fetch a free Jumpstart trial bag for your cat today. Go to trymeowgreens.com. Use promo code TRYMEOW. That's TRY-ME-O-W. You just cover the shipping. You don't have to change your cat's food to improve your cat's health. Just add a packet of Meow Greens.