THE PARDONER'S TALE

CNN reports that there is only one topic that can distract Donald Trump from his fantasies about a second term.  He’s fascinated by his pardon power, and is said to relish discussions about which of his henchmen have been loyal enough to warrant a pardon.  Or which ones know enough dirt to be dangerous, should they decide to cut a deal with a prosecutor. 

Marcy Wheeler, at Emptywheel, tags no fewer than 25 likely pardon recipients –  Allen Weisselberg, Bijan Kian, Brad Parscale, Corey Lewandowski, Don Jr., Eric Trump, Erik Prince, Felix Sater, George Papadopoulos, Igor Fruman, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Jason Miller, Jay Sekulow, Jerome Corsi, John Dowd, Keith Schiller, KT McFarland, Mike Flynn, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Robert Costello, Roger Stone, Rudy Giuliani, Sam Clovis, Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon. 

As a fairly obsessive tracker of Trump perfidy for the past four years, it pains me to admit that I didn’t recognize either Bijan Kian (Mike Flynn’s partner in criming) or Robert Costello (attorney for Bannon and Giuliani).  But birds of a feather flock together, or so they say.

I dare say any of our first 44 presidents would have been at least mildly embarrassed about the fact that so many members of his inner circle are criminals. But since this is Donald Trump we’re talking about, the guy who only hires the best, the real mystery is why the list isn’t longer.

As Sherlock Holmes advised, it’s important to pay attention to the dogs that don’t bark.  Where’s Mike Pence, whose account of his interactions with Mike Flynn during the transition didn’t entirely add up?  Did Bill Barr bail out early to avoid being tainted by Trump’s pardoning spree?  Or did he negotiate a pardon for himself on the way out the door?  What about other current/former Cabinet members?  No Elliott Broidy or other shady donors like the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre.  No governors or state officials, not even Texas’ hapless Ken Paxton, the Texas Attorney General who got laughed out of the Supreme Court for trying to help Trump steal the election.

That’s as scurvy a gang of failed coup plotters as this country has ever seen.  But wait – what about some of the foot soldiers of the MAGA movement– the St.  Louis gun couple, for instance, or Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenage kid who killed some people in Kenosha, WI, or the yellow-kilted Proud Boy flashers in Washington DC, or the drunk lady that Rudy G recruited for his bogus #StoptheSteal hearing in Michigan?  Surely Trump won’t leave these martyrs of the revolution behind.

Well, it’s early days yet.  But the two names I’m waiting to hear are Trump himself (will he try a self-pardon?) and Jeffrey Epstein’s pal Ghislaine Maxwell (whose testimony Trump probably fears more than anyone else’s).  Not that I want either one of them to evade justice; I assume their criminality extends to the state as well as federal level.  But I kinda hope Trump goes for it.  If he’s going down this road, I want him to go all the way, to thoroughly discredit himself in the eyes of every rational person.

And maybe even in the eyes of some irrational folks as well.  QAnon cultists are adept at cognitive dissonance, but as they’ve zigged and zagged to accommodate failed prophecies, they’ve held fast to one absurd premise:  All opposition to Donald Trump is grounded in pedophilia.  They even believe that Trump – Jeffrey Epstein’s pal – has a secret plan to round up thousands of prominent pedophiles and send them to Gitmo. 

Trump pardoning Ghislaine Maxwell would make their heads explode.  Someone, no doubt, will pick up the torch, and concoct a tortured story that “proves” that this is all part of the master plan.  Just like losing the election, and all those court cases.    

Of course this is all hypothetical.  Trump’s pardon tsunami hasn’t happened yet, and maybe it never will.  But it will.