Pardons a bunch of white-collar crooks

[struggle4progress]

Mar 31, 2025 -
Business

President Trump on Friday granted clemency to startup founders convicted of investor fraud and three crypto exchange co-founders who had plead guilty to violating anti-money laundering laws.

Why it matters: There's never been a better time to be a white-collar crook ...

Trevor Milton, co-founder and CEO of bankrupt electric truckmaker Nikola Motors, received a pardon. His most egregious act may have been sharing a video that purported to show a fully functional prototype, whereas the truck actually was rolling down a small hill ...

Carlos Watson, co-founder and CEO of defunct Ozy Media, had his prison sentence commuted. You may remember Ozy Media for a phone call during which Watson's co-founder, who plead guilty and cooperated with prosecutors, pretended to be a YouTube executive while on a reference call with prospective investor Goldman Sachs ...

Co-founders and a former employee of BitMEX received pardons after pleading guilty to violating the Bank Secrecy Act by failing to implement AML and KYC procedures ...

https://www.axios.com/2025/03/31/trump-pardons-bitmex-crypto-fraud

[struggle4progress]

1. makes history by pardoning a corporation

by Kimberly Wehle, opinion contributor - 04/01/25 11:00 AM ET

In what may be a first in American history, President Trump just expanded the presidential pardon power to include corporations.

Corporations are artificial legal fictions designed to maximize shareholder wealth. Nonetheless, they can theoretically commit crimes and be indicted for them. According to a 1999 memorandum from the Justice Department, the “important public benefits” of prosecuting corporations include “deterrence on a massive scale,” particularly for “crimes that carry with them a substantial risk of public harm,” such as “financial frauds.”

Such public benefits now fall prey to the whims of the president with his pardon of a cryptocurrency company that smacks of political corruption.

On Friday, Trump issued full and unconditional pardons to four individuals and a related cryptocurrency exchange, BitMEX ...

https://thehill.com/opinion/criminal-justice/5224229-trump-makes-history-by-pardoning-a-corporation/

[eppur_se_muova]

2. Crimes committed in the pursuit of profit are not crimes. Turnip sincerely believes this. That's why ...

he is Hell-bent on "rescuing" all these crooks who were "unfairly" "harassed" and "oppressed" by, you know, laws. He constantly whines about how he has been treated so "unfairly" and "persecuted" "like no one else in history", for no other reason than an entire lifetime full of crimes.