About 1,500 commutations. 39 pardons your reaction to that. You know, it’s a power that’s given uniquely and exclusively to the president. He doesn’t have to explain it. He doesn’t need anybody’s permission. You really don’t even know what goes through people’s heads. I’ll tell you a story about Donald Trump who, in the last two weeks of his presidency, were now after January 6th but before January 20th when Joe Biden’s going to be sworn in, consulted me on a number of his pardons. I’ve explained this publicly already because I knew a number of these people.

Should I pardon this person? Should I commute the sentence? Should I do this? Should I do that? And we actually went through it. Pardoning comes from the heart. It’s a grant of mercy. It’s not necessarily justice, although sometimes it undoes an injustice depending upon what the person was in jail for. Donald Trump wanted to pardon people who were in prison, in federal prison, for victimless crimes because they were caught with a tremendous amount of drugs that were prosecuted for selling it even though there was no evidence that they sold it. And I’m happy to say I advised him to do it and he did it.

Now some of the other people that he pardoned were controversial people and he pardoned them already. It’s a little odd hearing advice from Bill Clinton on pardoning people. Can you say Mark Rich? Do we remember that pardon? And do we know how much money Mr. Rich caused to be deposited into the Clinton Foundation at or about the time of his pardon? Okay, it’s an old story. The other thing I have to say about Hillary is, and people are forgetting this, statute of limitations is five years. Whatever she did with those emails, I happen to think that the statistics James Rosen just put up there are absolutely correct.

She committed espionage by what she did with those emails. It’s too late to prosecute her because it all happened more than five years ago. Water under the bridge, legally speaking. So these offenses, as I understand it, they’re all non-violent. And in some cases, it’s my understanding, and you can tell us a little bit more about this, I hope, that these punishments wouldn’t be the same if these crimes were to be committed today. Is that accurate? Yes, that is accurate because the Congress, under Donald Trump, he pushed aggressively for this. A little out of character for a law and order tough guy, but he pushed aggressively for this.

First time offender, non-violent crime, barely a victim. Sometimes the government says it’s the victim. The sliding scale of maximum penalty shrinks. So these people all would have been sentenced differently if they were to have been sentenced today. So that’s not terribly uncommon, then, that you would do this for a population like that? Well, I’ll tell you what’s uncommon is the large number. The DOJ doesn’t like this. The DOJ, the part of the DOJ that’s always there, no matter who’s the president and who’s the attorney general and who’s the director of the FBI, they like to examine each individual case, and they take years to do it.

They don’t like when the president says, those 1,500 people, they’re scot-free. Yeah, 1,500 commutations, 39 part is that from President Biden. Shifting to president-elect Trump, he’s vowed to pardon some J6ers. Those were convicted of federal crimes related to January 6. Let me play this really quickly, and we’ll get your reaction. I’m going to look at everything. We’re going to look at individual cases, yeah, but I’m going to be acting very quickly. Within your first 100 days, first day? First day. First day? Yeah, I’m looking for these pardons. These people have been there, how long is it, three or four years? You know, by the way, they’ve been in there for years, and they’re in a filthy, disgusting place that shouldn’t even be allowed to be open.

And I want to say, and I could be wrong, but the Time Magazine article reading through that, I believe he mentioned it. Yeah, okay, he did mention it in there, and he said within the hour that he gets an office that he would make good on. Do you think he’s going to make good on it? I am not privy to any of this, but knowing him, he probably has these executive orders already prepared, and as soon as the inauguration ceremony and speech is over, he’s going to go back to the Capitol and start signing these pardons and executive orders.

And as for what he said about January 6th, it’s absolutely true. Many of them normally would have gotten bail. Many have been kept in conditions that you’d be shocked that these are American jails in the capital of the United States of America, but they are. Again, he’s going by his heart. He’s going by a concept of mercy that these people have suffered enough. [tr:trw].

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