Pablo Torre Finds Out - Mercy for Sale: Inside Trump's Pardon Machine, with TrueAnon's Brace Belden

Episode Date: January 13, 2026

What do Darryl Strawberry, NBA YoungBoy and a plastic-surgery "slush fund" have in common? They're all beneficiaries of the president's cottage industry to sell access, buy freedom and redefine the meaning of crime. We explore an exclusive social network of dustbin characters, including a heavenly visit with Mel Gibson and Pete Rose.• Subscribe to "TrueAnon" with Brace Belden Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. I feel like after you die, you should be pardoned. You know? Like, after you... Right after this ad. In general, like, what you do with your free time remains one of my favorite running subplots.

I like to go to places. Well, okay, I think you were being here, by the way, Brace. Are we recording? Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, yeah, why not? On Instagram, over the high... holidays, what were you doing? I was in Espania. You were. I was. Yeah. At an ancient church. I went to a little midnight mass. Oh, man. You were doing what, you were, you were drinking from the chalice of

Catholicism. I was, except I'm assuming, no, I actually do have some experience with. You were passionate of the Christing. I what, well, I have some experience with, with religion in the Philippines. God, that's a whole other fucking episode. But, but, but, but I've told you this, I've said this a million times. My number one goal is to get into heaven. I don't care about being nice to people. I don't care about not stealing from people, I don't care about hurting people. I want to go to heaven. And I will figure out the best and easiest way to get there. So I'm looking into, I'm talking about Zoroastrians.

I'm talking about, I'm flirting with Sufism a little bit. Obviously, Catholicism, I understand that one seems like you can maybe buy it at some point. But I'm trying to figure out what some easy to the other ones like Baptist is. What is that? We don't know. Or the snake ones. Or even what is going on? Because what if it's the Amish?

And we don't know that. I have to go spend time with them. smoke a little f*** meth with those ones they let out out of the farm when they're 16. I would love to sell a 16-year-old Amish boy meth. Get them tweaked. Not anything more than that. But it was because I'd sell it to them and I'd leave. I don't want to talk to them because I don't want to hear about eggs or whatever for eight hours.

And I'm saying like I'm exploring all the world's religion. It's just, and I don't mean any disrespect, Christianity is by far the easiest one. And so I'm starting there. So this is going to be an episode about the closest thing our country offers to divine intervention. to an American afterlife of sorts for anybody who has committed federal crimes and or fraud of any size or shape, which, by the way, this administration does lately say

they are very concerned about. Which is to say that this is going to be an episode about the presidential pardon. Real life get out of jail free card for those desperate to go from hell to heaven, which has healthfully been commodified more than ever before. The themes of mercy and salvation.

Clemency. Clemency. I've been thinking about this stuff because last June, I had a fascinating in-person conversation with a source. An attorney I already knew through his work on various sports investigations, and this attorney told me very casually that he had also been working with Trump World on pardon applications. Interesting. I should admit that you're not the first choice guest we had here today.

That's interesting to admit. Yeah. I mean, I just, again, transparency is also a virtue. It's okay. That Christmas Eve service changed me. You're forgiven. But if you were wondering why our honored guest, Brace Belden, has returned to our studio without his true and on co-host,

Liz Franchak, his fellow Epstein expert, who also tends to make up for Brace's profound lack of sports knowledge. Liz is herself, much like a Christian miracle with child. Yes, yes. The angel came down to her and said, you will have John the Baptist, and she's pregnant with John the Baptist. Which means that Brace, who often journeys through Maga's social network, their rallies, their art shows in person himself,

will be called upon his own research and experience in this episode. Although we should pause to acknowledge here that a president, using the power of the pardon for personal reasons, as opposed to, you know, the public interest, did not start with Donald Trump. Yeah, no, that did not start. People have been doing that, listen, it's technically a monarchial thing, right? Like, or it comes from the monarchy.

I don't know if monarchical is the right word to use there, where you would sort of excuse your friends and family from getting in trouble, specifically your family. I wanted Hunter here. That's who the first choice was. Hunter Biden was, unfortunately, not available. Well, I'll say this. I have smoke cracked and enjoyed it. I wouldn't call myself a crackhead.

I would never, I would never, and that's valor I won't steal. I don't, I clearly didn't enjoy it as much as some people, you know. Not with that attitude. No, but I don't have any regrets, and he seems like he's a regretful guy, which I think is fake. If you've ever smoked crack, you'd realize you can look back on those times. He'd say you might do things differently now, but at the time, it was the right thing to do. But Donald Trump, the thing that makes him unique, I think, is that he is addicted to pardoning people. Yes.

I mean, the number is since March 2025 alone, approximately. He's granted roughly 1,600 presidential pardons. Interesting, the same address as the White House. Right? Yeah, that's right. Sounds right to me. See, I went like immediately to like, oh, it would be perfect SAT score. But it's interesting.

That's, yeah, that's because I don't mean it like this. Say it. It is due to you being Asian. That's right. We were all thinking about. But are Filipinos like that? This question is somehow more offensive than the previous question. I don't know.

Right, right, right, right. So I want to say that the difference that my source, my Trump world lawyer's source, impressed upon me is that, look, the economy, what he called the cottage industry around this in which a social network of people are selling access and successfully buying freedom. Yes. Yes. It's fucking wild. It is. I will say this. And I'm not going to pretend that like there hasn't been at times more blatant than other times, but corruption throughout the presidential system since the beginning of it, right? Of course. The second Trump term has been crazy to see because I think unlike any other point in human history, first of all, the president has a crypto firm.

Yes. Which figures into this story, too. Yeah, yeah, it does. And they just don't care. And it's like also the president has gone through years of sort of shockingly ineffective legal problems during the Biden years. And I guess the tail end of his own administration or his own first administration. And he's out for revenge. And he has not made any bones about it. He's like, I am getting revenge.

And there's a through line with almost all of the pardons, which he's like, this person was targeted by government. which is interesting because that's generally what happens when the Department of Justice comes after you because it is a part of the government. Yeah, when the thing that you're resentful of is the entire apparatus of justice. Yes. Plausibly, all of these things can speak to your personal plight.

Yeah, I will say, though, like something that was sort of shocking to me during the Biden interregnum between one and two is how bad the cases against Trump were. Like the 32, 34 counts he got here, like nobody cared. Too many counts. And it was like the events of the case.

Stormy Daniels stuff. It's the bed of nails theory for counts. Yes, exactly. It's too many counts. And I think part of like the poetry of this is that this guy who seems to be possessing antibodies to legal consequence is now spreading them handpicked to people that get the ultimate thing you can hope for in anything resembling a constitutional republic. Yeah.

Which is, hey, you did federal. crime, now you didn't. You're good. And even better, some of them don't have to pay back money. So the restitution part I want to get to as well. Yeah. But my first question to my Trump World Lawyer, Fred's source, what does it cost to legally undo a conviction and criminal record in the federal government? And he was like, oh, yeah, you know, seven figures, name of your lawyer, like sometimes eight,

you know, and of course there's a range. Yeah. There are some six figure ones. But he's like, yeah, if you average it all out, we're talking about, you know, a million bucks, let's say, depending on the case. That seems about right to me. But I should also say, as we now try to illustrate this with case studies, which is why we have a folder here, we got some stuff that I want to show you. As a non-ball knower.

Myself. Yes. I should also acknowledge that we did try to book someone else, not just Hunter Biden, but a man by the name of Daryl Strawberry. Really? Do you know who Daryl Strawberry? No, but he's got a delicious name. Daryl Strawberry, is he a basketball player? Daryl Strawberry, you're so...

Close. It's another ball. So Darry's son, DJ, is a basketball player, but Darrell, the original. He is one of the great young sluggers in Major League Baseball history. Oh, wow. He won a World Series with the Mets in 1986. His Hall of Fame, would-be trajectory was infamously derailed by, you guessed it, cocaine.

Oh. And alcohol addiction. Wait. He, how was it derailed? Did you do Coke with Daryl Strawberry and not realized? No, Coke with Daryl Strawberry. First of all, I got a lot to say about cocaine. Because being addicted to Coke, no disrespect, and drinking alcohol and being a great baseball player in New York in the 1980s after winning World Series.

Yeah. So what? They just didn't give him the Hall of Fame stuff because he's having too much fun? Well, over time, unfortunately, the combination you described seemed to undermine his performance in the end. Yeah, I can see that. So Darrell in 1995, the same year he was incidentally contestant on Celebrity Apprentice, was indicted on three towns of tax evasion. Okay. He pled guilty to one count of tax evasion.

It was a failure to report income from autographs and memorabilia sales. The next year, this is 96, he pleads guilty to no contest, the charges of possession of cocaine and soliciting a prostitute in Tampa. I think that those charges have probably often accompanied one another. Well, do you have a guess, this is 1996, who the assistant state attorney in Tampa was at the time? That is not, is that going to be? I feel like Pam Bondi is too young and beautiful for that. She is just young and beautiful enough.

Pamela Bonding? The one and only. Wow. Also, great name for a prosecutor, right? So she busted Mr. Strawberry. So she actually advocated for prison time for Daryl Strawberry. For Coke? Well, for his repeated violations, as described in various reports.

But the judge ultimately sentenced him in 2000 to a treatment program. And so, Godspeed to Daryl Strawberry. He's now a minister. He is remaking his life. Anyhow, November 7, 2025. President Donald Trump is pardoning baseball legend Darry Strawberry. Strawberry is a three-time World Series champ and eight-time MLB All-Star, who also pleaded guilty to felony tax evasion in the 90s

for failing to report $350,000 in incomes that he got from autographs, personal appearances, and sales of memorabilia. He served 11 months for that crime. Strawberry, thank the president in a post on social media. Thank you, President Real Donald Trump for my first. my full pardon and for finalizing this part of my life, allowing me to be truly free and clean from all my past. He goes on the post that this has nothing to do with politics.

It's about a man, President Trump caring deeply for a friend. Of course. He used him as a vessel to set me free forever. Pause. So what I did was I went on Instagram, the platform where I was watching you and also watching this. This is in November. And I DMed Darrell Strawberry, inviting him onto the show.

And he said... Maybe at some point. And he hits you with a strawberry. The strawberry emoji is his move. Wow. If only we could all have an equivalent move. I mean, my God, it's crazy to have your last name be strawberry. It's like being named Michael Pineapple or something.

It's crazy. Strawberry? But did you, there was no follow-up? Yeah, as I contemplate what it's like to be Jim Eggplant. No, I was waiting and waiting, and then I called you. So that's why you're here. But there is a part of Daryl Strawberry's IG post that has been largely overlooked.

This was big news in sports, of course. And this part actually comes after his signature strawberry emoji. I'm free. I'm free. I'm so humble and thankful, Strawberry, Anne's clasp in prayer. Thanks, in quotes, Larry Glick won.

Love you, brother. And then I love... That's my favorite emoji, the point one. Yeah, of course. The point. And then, of course, we have Johnny Damon with the double-hand... High five.

Just a resplendid Johnny Damon with both hands in here. Who's Larry Glick? So this is the question. At Larry underscore Glick 1. It's a guy I hadn't heard about, which is why I'm so excited to bring him up to you. Because we went and looked up who Larry Glick is, and the account belongs to the executive vice president

of strategic development at the Trump Organization. Wow. Larry Glick. Also the head of Trump Golf. Okay. So he's responsible for acquiring land, developing golf course. and hotels, managing the marketing for all of Trump's golf properties.

His Instagram account, the most recent thing we saw was him, like, wishing happy birthday to Eric, Trump. It's like hanging out. And so Daryl Strawberry didn't provide any other detail on the dynamic between him and Larry outside of that thanks in quotes in all caps. And so we had to dig through the internet and we found exactly one interview where he happened to touch on any of this. And so, Brace, I would like you to do me the honor. of now reading as you continue to play the role of Daryl Strawberry.

I would love to. It's the role of lifetime. As asked by MLBBro.com. Obviously, I've known President Trump for a long time, dating back to my days playing in New York. He's always been gracious and kind to me since that time. I have a dear friend, Larry Glick, who worked for his company and I was telling him about my story to friend's house about being locked up.

Pam Bondi was the prosecutor who had me locked up. I never said anything bad about her, and I never will. Glick said, No kidding. Why didn't you say anything? I said, I don't need to say anything. My life is good. He said, oh no, I'm going to talk to the president

and I'm going to tell him that he needs to pardon Daryl Strawberry. You don't have to do that. And he said, yeah, I'm going to tell him that because he loves you. I never thought anything else about it. I guess it came about he told me and here I am. President Trump did it. If you had a friend who could pardon somebody, wouldn't you like want to like kind of impress one of your

your famous criminal friends by getting them pardoned. My question is, though, if he's been free for 20 years, and it doesn't sound like he did much time in the first place, seems like he got basically diversion. It seems like what the fuck is the point of the pardon? That's kind of the point, I think, is that Daryl Strawberry wasn't really petitioning for one. Yeah. He didn't seem to insist on getting it.

Yeah. And he had this guy Larry Glick who was like, you know what? This is a cool thing that I, as guy close to Trump, can flex about. And it happened. I don't blame Mr. Strawberry for thinking that it was, I mean, because perhaps it was, for God's will for this to happen. Because if you're just going through your life and all of a sudden this guy Larry Glick you've been hanging out with is like, hey, why don't I get you pardon for any past crimes you've done even if it doesn't really affect you anymore? You're just like, okay, thank you. And thank you God for putting Larry Glick in my life.

I'm just thinking of like Johnny Damon putting his hands up. Like, yes, this is testimony. I'm picturing Jiminy Glick this entire. time as I'm saying this. But the whole thing is it's a social network. Yes. And that's sort of the recurring theme, both in our show, it turns out this year, and in this story,

which is that, yes, there are people who have jobs who are supposed to oversee the process of how you dispense the most valuable pieces of constitutional forgiveness. And in the meantime, there's a bunch of guys who are like, you know what, I know a guy.

I can get you that. It's interesting. It does feel like it's probably worth your money more. to hire a cheap lawyer that has access to Mara Lago than an expensive lawyer who just hangs out in D.C. There is a person, by the way, whose job is, of course, U.S. pardon attorney. Oh, yes. And I want to get to who has that job now, but I first need to establish the person who had that job until last March when all of these pardons kind of started happening. And for your sake, she's also named Liz.

Oh, easy then. Thank God. So in the absence of your co-host, Liz, we found another Liz. and this Liz has a particular perspective that'll help us understand the story. I'm Liz Oyer. I spent much of my career as a public defender, and I spent the last three years until March, serving as the pardon attorney for the Department of Justice. Unfortunately, though, Brace,

despite that very long distinguished career with the DOJ, Liz Oyer is probably most known for something else. Actually, one of the worst parts of this whole ordeal is that I now feel like, to the extent anyone knows who I am, am, it's in connection with Mel Gibson. Like, my name is somehow tied to his for all of time. To the extent that I have any legacy, it's going to be a legacy that is associated with Mel Gibson.

Like, oh, you're the woman who got fired over Mel Gibson's guns. And I just really hate that. But I also remember Mel Gibson's domestic violence thing was way crazier. Yes. Than regular, even domestic violence. It was like the phone calls. The phone calls. And so, okay.

2011, Mel Gibson gets convicted of battery and sentenced to probation and community service after this infamous domestic violence investigation involving his ex-girlfriend and a website, radaronline.com. Yes, which Jeffrey Epstein once tried to purchase. Huh. Yeah.

Well, on radaronline.com, there is a series, like this endless series seemingly, of leaked recordings in which a man alleged to be Mel Gibson, said, I think, you know, just some pretty standard stuff. ... My people, of course, have significant influence upon the industry that I don't know what Mel is short for. Melium Gibson works in.

And of course, he broke free of our grasp with the passion of the Christ with the amazing Jim Caviziel as Jesus Christ. Not sure if you're familiar with his work, but he is really truly something. Oh, Jim Cavizal? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But Mel, at least he didn't mention us in that one. You need medication. I don't need a medical that's like a guy you'd imitate

doing that. Like if you were pretending to be an insane guy calling a lady to threaten her, you would be doing that and it would be seen as over the top if it was performed on like a television show. And so Liz Oyer, a U.S. pardon attorney, is getting this request from Pam Bondi being like, hey, can this guy have his guns back? And he wrote a letter to the attorney general

through his lawyers asking that she reinstate his gun rights. And I was told, you know, well, Mel Gibson's a personal friend of the president. The president made him an ambassador to Hollywood, which is not a real ambassadorship, by the way. But there is a lot of data out there that shows that it is very dangerous for people with domestic violence history to own guns. It makes it much more likely that domestic violence incidents will turn fatal. So I was not able to make that recommendation. It's interesting because he does actually threaten her.

not just a hitter. He says that you need to be hit with a bad. Yeah. Which I would say that line alone would probably make me be hesitant to return gun rights to him. I was invited several times to reconsider my refusal to make that recommendation. I was actually in a meeting on a Friday afternoon, and my deputy came into the room and sort of frantically pulled me out of this meeting with about 25 people and told me that there were security officers back in my office waiting to fire me and walk me out of the building. And that was the end of my career at the Department of Justice. So, spoiler alert, the kicker in all of this,

as Lizoya gets fired and her career ends over her refusal to give the Christ-like werewolf we were just listening to his guns back, is that Pam Bondi just went ahead and did it anyway? Yes. The reason that I was asked, I believe, is because as a career official, it was would give some sort of legitimacy or the appearance of legitimacy to what was really a political favor for a friend of the president. So that's why they wanted me to do it. But at the end of the day, they didn't need me to do it. And in fact, Pam Bonnie went ahead and did it on our own.

And they just said, fuck it. And they went and found a person who would do such things in replacement of Liz Oyer. And this brings us to a man that I need you to help explain to America. Eagle Ed Martin. Eagle Ed Martin. Now, Ed Martin is a relative newcomer on the scene. You know, Trump won, I think had some pretty prominent guys around him that dressed in strange ways. Obviously, Steve Bannon with his many collars, Roger Stone, who is, once you find out he's a swinger who lives in Florida, everything sort of gets into place.

But he's sort of a steampunk swinger. Yeah, like a dark wing duck style polyamorous kind of gentleman. Yes, like he would be involved in a for some style thing, but in like a hot air balloon that is like, also maybe a jet attached to it. Is it strange, certainly he's a strange individual. With Ed Martin, Ed Martin kind of came up in the Interregnum. He was a just like a GOP, a state level, sort of GOP lackey. He ran for office a couple times and failed.

And then after January 6, which we just passed the anniversary of it. How did you celebrate? Well, you know, I made it January 6 board game. several years ago with some friends. How do you win? You win by getting away. You win by getting off the helicopter. What are the pieces you could be?

You can be the shaman. You can be just like a proud boy. You can be the little old lady with the flag, even though she wasn't actually there. That was from a different incident. But you can be the Capitol Police. AKA you could be anyone in the constituency of one eagle Ed Martin.

Exactly. And so Ed Martin kind of came to prominence by coming out. You know, Trump was a banded. Right? Everybody left him. Everybody left him. Kind of like Jesus Christ. Actually, that didn't really happen in Jesus Christ, did it? Well, he wasn't betrayed. Yeah, but like one guy. Everyone else was like, that's our fucking guy still. You know what I mean? But imagine if Jesus Christ, instead of having one Judas had basically a million Judas. Yes, the Judas Department. Every guy was like, you fucking Sean Han. It's just Sean Hanney. He was thinking up. All these people after January 6 were like, we don't even know Trump. He's not our guy.

I, fuck him. Yes, everyone decided, surely this is the moment to finally cut loose. Exactly. But Ed Martin said no. Thank you for standing with all of the patriots next to you.

And thank you for standing for our president. But remember, what they're stealing is not just an election. He said, I'm going to start acting crazy in defense of Donald Trump. And he actually came, he's a lawyer. And he was sort of the heir to Phyllis Schlafly.

What a character in her own right. Yes, yes. And which is how he gets the name from her group. I think it's like the Eagle Forum. Right. And so he's Eagle Ed Martin, even though he was only the president for one year before a terrible split

in the Schlafly Flamley, let him to see. The Schlafly. It's a tough name to say. It's a tough name to say. But it is a prominent, conservative, like, coaching tree. Yes.

Activists. Yes. So he starts getting CNN. He's fired for being racist, unfortunately, because of woke. But I think he was pretty directly, fairly racist. And he started representing a couple of January 6 political prisoners in their trials.

I think one guy was a proud boy, and then another guy named Joseph Padilla, who was a somewhat porcine prison guard, who was also present on that day, and who himself did not want to be subject to the same mercies that I'm sure he subjected others to. So I should point out that because of his fidelity, to Donald Trump,

as everyone else abandoned him. He was, very importantly, nominated for the job of U.S. attorney. Like, so Trump nominates him to be the chief prosecutor in Washington, D.C.,

but he is the kind of character that is so important to understand in this story because he is so extreme that Trump actually couldn't ram him through. I think he's acting U.S. attorney for D.C. for a little bit,

and he spends most of his time writing open letters to Elon Musk supporting Elon and being like, if your doge guys need backup, I'll send my guys over. It's unclear if he had guys to send over. And then writing letters to Wikipedia threatening to sue them. Wikipedia every couple months becomes like a big thing on the right that they want to sue them or it's unfair or whatever. He would wake up every day, look at what trending topics were going on in like right-wing podcast, Twitter, and then write an official looking but poorly written letter in support

of sort of the topic de jour of the day. Right. He was, unfortunately, unable to be rammed through and through. Well, one of the guys that came up in the vetting of Eagle Ed was this guy, Timothy Hale Cousanelli, who was a convicted January 6th rioter, who, according to court records, quote, held longstanding white supremacist and Nazi beliefs. And by that, they mean, he wore a Hitler mustache, apparently allegedly told his coworkers that, quote, Hitler should have finished the job. And then was hugged by Ed Martin at some sort of. a ceremony, and Ed Martin, Eagle Ed, told the audience that one of his goals was, quote,

to make sure that the world, and especially America, hears more from Tim Hale, because he's extraordinary. I hope you'll join me in welcoming Tim Hale. Tim, welcome to the program. How are you, sir? I'm doing very well, Ed. Thank you for having me on. It's an honor.

Yeah, thanks, Tim. But first, let me ask the question. I'm down here in the swamp. You're home in New Jersey. But there's a lot of talk of the D.C. Gulag, the prison. And I think you get something resembling the gist. It's interesting. I think Ed Martin is stupid.

I read his, I'm a subscriber to his substack. I just subscribed. It's something else. They're very short posts. He's stupid. It's why. I think he's stupid. You know, sometimes I think maybe I'm stupid because I think guys like this are stupid,

but he's a lawyer, he's in office. But then I'm like, no, I think he's actually like a stupid guy that you would, like, meet on the street who's too stupid, like, move out of the way or, like, can't do something. You know, I can't open a door. Like, I would say I would pay money for someone to follow Ed Martin around with a video camera, and every time he opens a door to turn it on and see how he struggles with it. And I'm saying this to somebody who struggled to get into this too much. You did struggle to open the door.

Well, it was a difficult door. Now, the door that Ed Martin ended up walking through. Yes. Because he couldn't be U.S. attorney was Liz Oyer's office door. Yes. So he has replaced that woman, Liz Oyer. Yes. And he is now the U.S. pardon attorney.

And so he's the guy, by the way, who relatedly in all of this, tweeted when Daryl Strawberry was pardoned in November, quote, good morning America, how are you with a photo of Daryl Strawberry playing for the Yankees on a baseball card? Amazing. He is also, and maybe we can get into this a little later, but he came to Brooklyn not too long ago. What was he here to do? He was dressed like Colombo for some reason, even though he doesn't always dress like that, but he was wearing, I believe, a little bit of a tan trench coat. maybe I filled this into my mind. And he was taking selfies outside of Letitia James' house. And Ed Martin was sort of sent after, even though he's the partner attorney,

he apparently was in some sort of maybe legal group chat with one of our favorite guys. Sponsor of this show, Bill Pulte, looking into mortgage fraud, because that's how they were going after, Letitia James, I think James Comey, everybody. I think a lot of failures on that front. I don't think they've gotten very far. Well, this whole, like, slogan is no MAGA left. behind. Yes. He referred to January 6th as, I believe, Mardi Gras, an American Mardi Gras. And he does love sifting through documents, it seems, but he's not sifting through what Liz Oyer called the stacks

of thousands of pieces of mail that she used to go through, like pardon application. Yeah. Martin appears to have been involved in the pardon of this sheriff in Virginia named Scott Jenkins, who was selling badges for cash. He appears to have been involved in the pardon of an elected official in Nevada named Michelle Fiori. She was raising money to build a memorial to a fallen police officer killed in the line of duty, and she spent the money on plastic surgery. She got a full pardon from Donald Trump without spending a day in prison. She's off the hook because she's a big vocal MAGA booster. So that has been Martin's contribution to the pardon power. He literally sits in my old chair, which blows my mind every time I think about it. Ed Martin... I hadn't

heard before of a fallen police officer memorial turning into your personal plastic surgery slush fund. Yeah. Well, you know, obviously what I'm looking up right now is Michelle Fiore before and after. And she is a, she is, it's, how'd that go? Was it worth it? Well, you know, I assumed it was going to be a sort of Mar-a-Lago face transformation. I'm going to be honest here. It does appear that it was maybe targeted on other parts of her body. Like Barry Bonds, she had various performance enhancements. Exactly. But, you know, I actually hadn't heard of this either. But there is an incredible trend of MAGA people just ripping other MAGA people off. I don't know. It's heartwarming. They just don't give a fuck. And they're really forgiving. Like Steve Bannon was accused of ripping a ton of people off of this build the wall thing. Remember this like the ball never got built? They just like give each other money for things that don't happen. And then they get in legal trouble and then they get forgiven. Right. And so in this case, the forgiveness, the stuff that he is sort of the big vector for is, is,

under the label of, let's say, politically motivated persecutions. Yes. That's like his deal. What my Trump board lawyer source guy also pointed out is that, of course, there's also Alice Johnson, who's the pardon czar. That's her job that Trump invented. She herself was granted clemency by Trump. And in that category, I mean, I guess NBA Youngboy is one of them.

And Rouge rapper NBA Youngboy was also pardoned by President Trump. He took to social media about his pardon saying, quote, This moment means a lot. It opens the door to a future I've worked hard for, and I am fully prepared to step into this. The rapper's legal troubles multiplied when he was implicated in unrelated charges in Utah, including a prescription drug fraud ring.

Yeah, yeah. I saw that boozy badass is trying to get a pardon as well. So that's another vector here. But I think the point that I want to establish is that's not even how you really do this if you really want a part of. Unfortunately, there are now about 19,000 people whose applications are piled up at the Office of the Pardon Attorney, where I used to work. And it seems like they're just being ignored while people

with political connections or wealth are going straight to the White House, straight to the president to seek pardons. And they are getting pardons generally not based on merit, but based on political donations or connections that they're able to leverage with people in the president's inner circle. I had read that, if the most part, pardons come through the pardon attorney. However, in the second Trump administration,

yes. I think only like 10 applications have gone through, 10 of the pardons have gone through the pardon attorney. So, ProPublica reported this. Only 10 of roughly 1,600 people granted pardons had even filed petitions to Ed Martin's office,

which is fucking crazy. Well, he might not be able to read. You know what I mean? So by Trump World Source, as well as various other people now in these articles, are pointing out, like, yeah, if we want pardons, we're not filing these applications. What we're doing is we're trying to go directly as closely as we can to the office of the White House Council, to Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. We're climbing inside of Roger Stone's, you know, 16 buttoned double-breasted suit trying to like get really close personally to the president. And so, yeah, as Liz Oyer points out, the whole profile of who's in the pipeline takes on a very different. flavor. Unfortunately, the clevency process, as it has worked for over 100 years, has really been

turned upside down. It's been turned on its head. All of the traditional standards for getting a pardon have fallen by the wayside, and the traditional vetting process is no longer being used. Right now, under Donald Trump, people are hiring lawyers and lobbyists and paying them hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars to seek pardons on their behalf. That is not normal. In ordinary times, the overwhelming majority of people seeking clemency do not even have lawyers representing them. That has totally changed under Donald Trump. There has cropped up this sort of pardon economy where lawyers and lobbyists with connections to his circle are profiting immensely. And as a result, the pardon process has really closed off to ordinary people who can't afford this special.

special access and it's become a free... The class of person who is a lobbyist, to your point, about like, the scammers. Yes. It's pretty amazing. It's incredible. So the document that's next in your folder, if you can open that, please. It takes us to April 2025. This is the month after Liz Orra gets fired.

And a guy by the name of Joseph Schwartz gets sentenced to three years in prison for defrauding the government of $38 million. And Joseph Schwartz is alleged to have overseen, quote, a collapsed nursing home empire and has allegedly willfully failed to pay employment taxes. And so around this time, there arrives a lobbying filing, which is the thing in front of you. And so our focus here isn't even on Joseph Schwartz, despite all of that stuff. It's on his lobbyists. Yeah. And so the tag team that he hires to lobby on his behalf, Brace, are who? Jacob Wohl and Jack Berkman. And it is, like, the price, by the way. The price is $960,000.

And I will say this, in a just world, it will be illegal to give them money. So there is in this filing also, if you flip through it, to the section called convictions disclosure. It is worth pointing out that, like, they do have to cop to the fact that they are seeking a federal pardon and have themselves on November 30th, 2020, been found notably guilty of. Illegal campaign robocalls telecommunications fraud in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. Could you catch us up on who these guys are? Jacob Wall is a character that was very prominent,

front and center during the first Trump administration. And I think of him, he was, God, we had so many amazing rookies, and few of them have stayed in the leagues. And I remember most prominently Jacob Wohl from a number of things. One, he did a sort of rapid-fire series of fake me-toos against Pete Buttigieg, against Elizabeth Warren, which I notably remember because he called her a cougar, and said she was engaged in BDSM cheating on her husband. A Hall of Fame trajectory for Jacob Woll so far. And then also on Mueller.

And then also... He me-toed Robert Mueller? He did Me Too Robert. I don't remember if that was a gay one or not. I know one, he gave Me Too to someone, too. He Me Tooed like five different people. And what he would do is he would actually trick real people into thinking they were doing some like, he would like pay them to be like, oh yeah, you're going to mean a commercial or it's

like you're acting for us or something. But he wouldn't actually tell them what was going on. This is the whole, like, if you go through the timeline of when and how we executed other robocall frauds, it's all along the lines of just like, outright scamming trying to convince normal would-be citizens trying to do good to engage in, in 2023, something that resulted in a $5.1 million fine against these two guys. This was in Ohio. They said if you vote by mail, your personal information would be made available to debt collectors.

That was 2023. Next year, Letitia James. She announced fines against Wolin-Berkman, whom she called, quote, two conspiracy theorists who launched a robocall campaign designed to prevent black New Yorkers from voting by mail ahead of the 2020 election. After that, Michigan, there's a plea deal. They plead no contest to charges of suppressing black voters in Detroit in 2020. And in that matter, the Michigan Attorney General in a press release said,

these two guys claimed to be founders of a civil rights organization. Interesting. And urge predominantly black voters to not be, quote, finessed into giving your private information to the man. Stay safe and beware of vote by mail. This was called, of course, an egregious example of voter suppression. and they were sentenced to probation, apparently, in December last month. In 2020 at one point, they staged, I guess because they weren't getting enough negative attention,

they staged a fake FBI raid with actors they hired on their house that they actually portrayed as real without telling the actors they were going to portray it as real. They stolen Valor did a swatting? It wasn't a swatting. It was like a raid. It was like the FBI was doing lawfare on them. Actually, surprisingly, there's been way less legal repercussions. for these guys than you'd think they would be. Right.

Because they are real. Like they are, and I guarantee they are like, like, I know that a lot of people, even people who like Trump are, are, and of course, like, obviously people know I'm a lifelong conservative, right? I came up in the conservative movement. I was groomed in the conservative movement. I've groomed others in the conservative movement. And so I'm obviously like I'm in Trump world and the fact that, you know, I'm dating one of his sons.

And, and, and, but like, Laura Lumer is kind of the way. one of these people that's really stuck around in game prominence. But Jacob Wohl is like a less successful Laura Lumer. Although now that I see this $960,000, I'm like, I think he might be a more successful Laura Lumer. And that's the thing with this story is that these guys, you'd forgot it. Yes. Dustbin level characters have emerged as incredibly successful part in lobbyists.

And so on November 14th, 2025, seven months after the judge, celebrated Schwartz's conviction, this being the guy, you know, with the nursing home stuff, Donald Trump grants Schwartz, a full and unconditional pardon. Yes. We could spend the rest of this episode

just like talking about stories like this, like the Trevor Milton guy. Nicola, yeah, which is fake, his fake semi-truck. Yes, the fake hydrogen-powered truck company. Amazing idea, though, to, like, take a video of your... I mean, this is the most famous thing about it, having the truck, like, taking a video, like, look, our product is working in.

It's a truck, but you just rolled the truck downhill without any actually working parts in it. She was found guilty in 2022 of securities and wire fraud. Federal prosecutors charged him in 2021 with the frauding investors. Some had lost their retirement savings. Others had never invested in the stock market before. Again, just like classic predatory, like caricature of a scammer, scammer stuff. And I mean, we're talking about this giant deception, this fake video. And on March 27.

2025, Donald Trump pardons Trevor Milton. Yes. And how he got pardoned, in this case, a $1.8 million donation to a Trump re-election campaign fund, less than a month before the 2024 election, him and his wife donate. And also, he hires two lawyers with Trump connections. One is Mark McKaysey, who's represented the Trump organization before. The other, to bring us back to a certain woman once in Tampa, her brother Brad Bondi.

Brad Bondi. B.B. Much like Barry Bonds. Much like Brace Beldon, who also juices, to be clear. And is corrupt. But Brad Bondi and Mark McCasey,

combined with the millions, result in a victory lap on Twitter as, yeah, this dude, uh, posts this. What's up, guys? Oh my gosh. Oh,

You won't believe just what happened. Sorry, it's pretty hard for me to talk about, but probably the best day I've had in five years. I am now officially pardoned by the president of the United States, 4547, an amazing man that cared enough to call me personally to tell me how much of an injustice this all was, done by the same offices that harassed and prosecuted him. And I'm now officially 100% pardoned.

The fact that he's driving and doing that is also just perfect. Let's see the car. Are you driving in Nicola? So the pardon, notably, comes two weeks after federal prosecutors urged a district court judge to order Trevor Milton to pay a total of $660 million in restitution. Okay. Well, that's, you can't do that. What a deal, though.

I know. Well, it's interesting because if I'm not saying this happened, but if I did owe a lot of money in restitution, I would put forth somebody to maybe talk to somebody in Trump world and be like maybe a percent goes to a certain something and I don't actually have to pay the full amount due to a party. It is fundamentally changing the concept of what crime even means anymore, like what the law even is anymore.

Yes. I mean, that's something that's so shocking about all of this, right? Trump's second term, Trump's first term, but like Trump's second term has been like this law and order. I'm restoring order to America. And since then, he has openly encouraged corruption, not only in his own orbit, but in these like various industries that he has like heard a lot of support from like the crypto industry. So the CZ thing. Amazing. So my Trump board lawyer source was like, listen, this was last week.

He was like, listen, you've been talking about this part and stuff for a while. You should know that the block's hotter than it's been before because of the CZ thing. The founder of the crypto exchange Binance, a man named Changpeng Xiao, also known simply as CZ, is one of the latest recipients of a controversial presidential pardon. President Trump told CNN's Caitlin Collins last month that the pardon quote was recommended by a lot of people, unquote. And in an interview with 60 Minutes that aired last night, he reiterated a striking admission about the pardon. Why did you pardon him? Okay, are you ready? I don't know who he is. I know he got a four-month sentence or something like that, and I heard it was a Biden witch hunt. I can only tell you this.

My sons are into it. I'm glad they are because it's probably a great industry crypto. The CZ thing I think was tough. If you're trying to get a pardon during, because the CZ thing, I think was the most obvious. So Chang Peng Zhao, founder of Binance, he hires a hunting buddy of Donald Trump, year. This guy, Chaz McDowell. His lobbying firm is called Checkmate Government Relations. One of the highest earning shops in Washington during this second administration, by the way. They made $7.1 million in revenue in the last three months alone, at least at the time of the publishing of this article. They didn't have a Washington office until this year. Now it's like boom times, millions of millions of dollars. For one month's work,

Binance and CZ paycheck made $450,000 for one month. And then three weeks after the inauguration, in Binance and CZ in his individual capacity, they both hire Teresa Goody Guillen. Yes. This is a crypto lawyer. Trump had considered her to lead the SEC. Instead, she is, again, part in lobbying, basically. And in the process, in addition to this,

finance happened to establish business ties with a certain highly profitable Trump family crypto venture called World Liberty Financial. But don't say that, like, it's, It's such a bad thing because, okay, yes, there's some shady characters involved in this. But there's also the UAE. Changping Zhao applied for a presidential pardon, and shortly after the application,

he was at the center of a blockbuster deal that put world liberty on the map. Zhao is a citizen of the United Arab Emirates in the Persian Gulf, and in May, an Emirati fund put $2 billion in Zhao's Binance. of all the currencies in the world, the deal was done in World Liberty Crypto. They basically did something they didn't need to do that gave World Liberty Financial a bunch of money, and it was like clearly a way to put Trump on the take.

At this point in the episode, you might be listening and being like, surely, surely there is some mechanism in which someone in government has raised their hand and said, this seems like it shouldn't happen anymore. And the reality is that constitutionally, this broad unlimited power to grant pardons is super clear. Yeah.

As Donald Trump's right. Yes, he can absolutely do all of this. There's no legal question. He can totally do it. And as my Trump world source put it, the only mechanism that prevented Joe Biden from doing it throughout his second term as well like this was fundamentally shame. In sleep. And sleep. he was too sleepy to do much of it.

He was sundowning. Well, they're trying to, you see, they're trying to overturn the Biden pardon because claiming that they were going on an auto pen. Right, right, right. But this whole thing, I mean, as Liz Oyer put it, like, I suppose Congress could do something. Another thing that we're not seeing

is rigorous requirements around reporting of lobbying and legal services in connection with these pardons. So it's sort of a very opaque, murky area. We know there's this booming pardon economy that has cropped up, but we don't know all the payments that have changed hands and all of the players. And Congress could certainly do a great deal more to require disclosures in that area so that we can at least trace where the money is going. And unfortunately, they're not even bothering to announce when the pardons are being made. They're just like happening and you find out about them later and you're like, oh, yeah, that just happened. It boggles my mind how even like a Trump partisan would be okay with this.

a little bit. And that's the thing. It's like we're testing the outer limits on what even matters anymore. And the answer truly is nothing. The answer is that nothing matters. From Daryl's strawberry to the highest levels of geopolitics, these things are being granted with a logic that is not even being defended. No. Not even pretending to defend it. They don't try to defend these in like really legal or moral, ethical terms or political terms even. They're like, we're doing this because we can. Obviously, the U.S. government has to be. has done a lot of things because the U.S. government can. A lot of them have been very bad.

But to even, this is, it feels like a leap in terms of even the way that it thinks of itself, or at least openly thinks of itself, and to have somebody so self-consciously governed in the way of like a barbarian warlord like this. But somebody who's in charge of the most powerful country in the world, I think it should give people pause

because if the government says explicitly in many of these cases that there is one law that you have to follow, and if you don't follow it, We can do anything to you that we want. We can drum you up on terror charges. We can do this. But our friends, anybody that is either willing to pay us or in league with us, they don't have to follow the law. All of which is to say that the question now is who will Trump pardon next?

Because there are some good candidates on the board. Well, we got to get the Kalshi sponsorship up, right? Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Polymarket. But this is where I do need a note that we have, as of just last week, finally found something resembling a bridge too far. Because Donald Trump told the New York Times in a big interview Wednesday that Diddy, Sean Combs, wrote a letter to him seeking a pardon. But Trump is not considering granting their request.

The betting line on Glenn Maxwell, meanwhile, did not come up. But speaking of gambling on everything, there is one more candidate, one more potential pardon client for this administration that I needed to talk to Brace about in order to bring us back. to where we started. This might be insulting. Do you know who Pete Rose is? It sounds as if that's the name of a famous lover, like Don Juan. He is like Daryl Strawberry, a guy who, if he was alive, could text an emoji as his signature. And that would be what an emoji to text.

At the time of his death, in September 2024 at age 83, Pete Rose was not only Major League Base, baseball's all-time hit king. Pete Rose, of course, was the guy who got banned by the sport for betting on baseball while managing the Cincinnati Rets, although he's always maintained that he never bet against his team. But he's also, notably, here, the guy who spent five months in prison after pleading guilty to tax evasion in 1990. Well, how much was the evasion? He admitted he failed to report $354,968.

Dude, that's not that much. In income from autograph appearances and memorabilia, much like Mr. Strawberry emoji. Fellas, you gotta stir paying taxes on these autographs. I'm telling you. I'm telling you. But last March, with Cooperstown in mind, Donald Trump had vowed to give Pete Rose a very special

and even more spiritual distinction. The posthumous presidential pardon. Interesting. For me, I'm like, unless you, like, killed multiple people or, like, raped or something, I feel like after you die, you should be pardoned, you know? Like, after you... It's like, you know, it's like not, like, because it's, it's, what do you, you can't, like, there's no recidivism there.

Brace, that is the least Catholic thing you've ever said. What are you talking about? Catholics have this thing. I found out about this at a party a couple of years ago. Catholics have a, like, a waiting room for heaven that you have to go to. It's purgatory or it's a little bit hell, too. Yeah, a bit of a narthex, a narthex in the... What the f***ic in a medical church? Oh, God, you don't know about narthex?

No, is that like Pete Rose? Is it like an anti-chamber? So there's a heavenly antechamber. The question is, how do you get moved on up from the anti-chamber of baseball heaven and beyond the pearly gates of Cooperstown, New York, where, of course, the Baseball Hall of Fame resides. Which is better than having, yeah. What this is now, though, because it was said in March, is a question.

Why hasn't it happened yet? Which means that Pete Rose posthumously also needs, I think, a pardoned lobbyist. He needs someone to agitate on his behalf here on our mortal coil. I'll say this. Obviously, it goes surreal. Pete, if you're watching this from your little iPad in heaven. If you're watching this, Hire Mel Gives. Higher Mel Gibson.

Oh my God, that's the perfect guy. Well, actually, you know what? Now that I think about Mel Gibson Cinematic Uvra, he has once famously said that you may take our lives, but you will never take our freedom. Yes. In Brave Heart. Is there a ghost in that movie?

I'm filing to follow here. I think I was, no, I was thinking of Passion of the Christ. Passion of the Christ, got you. But he's making a second one that does feature. your Christ coming back. And so this is what I'm saying. This is what I'm saying. When that happens, Pete Rose, you need to possess Jim Cavizio when you do this.

Because if goes real, obviously, possession is real. And you need to accompany Mel Gibson drive drunk to Mar-a-Lago. Every single minority you see just, be like, don't say anything. Don't say anything. And then get there and be like, you know what? Pete needs a pardon. The hit king must rain again. He must rain again.

because if he does get pardoned, he might come back. We don't know that. This has been Pablo Torre finds out, a Metal Arc Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.