February 18, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" - Authoritarianism is
usually associated with a punitive spirit—a leader
who prosecutes and incarcerates his enemies. But
there is another side to this leadership style.
Authoritarians also dispense largesse, but they do
it by their own whims, rather than pursuant to any
system or legal rule. The point of authoritarianism
is to concentrate power in the ruler, so the world
knows that all actions, good and bad, harsh and
generous, come from a single source. That’s the real
lesson—a story of creeping authoritarianism—of
today’s commutations and pardons by
President Trump.
Trump
commuted the sentence of
Rod Blagojevich, the former governor of
Illinois, who was eight years into a sentence of
fourteen years, for various forms of corruption in
office. The President pardoned several other
white-collar criminals: Michael Milken, the
junk-bond king, who pleaded guilty, in 1990, to
securities violations; Bernard Kerik, the former New
York City police commissioner, who, in 2009, pleaded
guilty to charges of tax fraud and lying to the
government; and Edward J. DeBartolo, Jr., a former
owner of the San Francisco 49ers, who, in
1998, pleaded guilty to concealing an extortion
attempt.(Milken and Kerik served time in prison;
DeBartolo was fined a million dollars and suspended
for a year by the N.F.L.)
Are You Tired Of
The Lies And
Non-Stop Propaganda?
|
The common link among this group is
that all have some personal connection
to the President. Blagojevich was a
contestant on “Celebrity Apprentice,”
and he was prosecuted by Patrick
Fitzgerald, a close friend of and lawyer
for
James Comey, the former F.B.I.
director who is a Trump enemy.
Explaining his action today, Trump said
of the case against Blagojevich, “It was
a prosecution by the same people—Comey,
Fitzpatrick—the same group.” Milken’s
annual financial conferences are a
favorite meeting place for, among
others, Trump’s moneyed friends. (Ivanka
Trump and
Jared Kushner spoke at last year’s
gathering.) Milken is also an active
philanthropist, as Trump observed: “We
have Mike Milken, who’s gone around and
done an incredible job for the world,
with all of his research on cancer, and
he’s done this and he suffered
greatly. He paid a big price, paid a
very tough price.” Trump’s explanation
for the Kerik pardon is probably the
most revealing. The President said that
Kerik is “a man who had many
recommendations from a lot of good
people. You know, oftentimes—pretty much
all the time—I really rely on the
recommendations of people that know
them.” Kerik was appointed police
commissioner by
Rudolph Giuliani, who was then the
mayor of New York and is now Trump’s
personal lawyer. It’s safe to assume
that Giuliani played a role in Trump’s
decision to pardon him. And DeBartolo’s
cause was championed by a large group of
former professional football players,
whose favor Trump has often sought.
In short, then, the pardons were entirely
personal in origin, and so the granting of them was
exclusively an exercise of Trump’s own power. That
was their point. A benevolent leader dispensed
favors. The world will not change much because of
these actions; of the four, only Blagojevich was
still incarcerated. Some of the others may receive a
few minor benefits, such as a restored right to
purchase guns legally. The only cost is the further
degradation of the government, moving our system
closer to a cult of personality. In this era of mass
incarceration, many people deserve pardons and
commutations, but this is not the way to go about
it. All Trump has done is to prove that he can
reward his friends and his friends’ friends. The
chilling corollary is that he knows he can punish
his enemies, too.