Buying your freedom is as old as prisons.
E.g. I just saw someone post this book although the post disappeared (?):
Pardongate: How Bill & Hillary Clinton and Their Brothers Profited from Pardons
E.g. I just saw someone post this book although the post disappeared (?):
Pardongate: How Bill & Hillary Clinton and Their Brothers Profited from Pardons
"The brisk market for pardons reflects the access peddling that has defined Mr. Trump’s presidency as well as his unorthodox approach to exercising unchecked presidential clemency powers. Pardons and commutations are intended to show mercy to deserving recipients, but Mr. Trump has used many of them to reward personal or political allies."
We can say that A paid for access, made a voluntary contribution, lightened their walled, lent out money that didn't have to be repaid, etc. In practice, these are just ways of phrasing "bribe" differently.
The pardoner, Person C, does not get any money. That is an important distinction.
I'm not saying Trump isn't accepting payments for pardons, I'm saying the NYT article linked above isn't reporting that. They're reporting on lobbying efforts, which don't appear to be illegal.
People pay for the President's time quite frequently. What's interesting about this story is that the folks with access are trying directly to solicit from convicts. I think that's fairly new or at least newsworthy.
A gives B money, C offers A a parson, B does C a favor.
Etc etc etc.
This construction may obscure what's happening and may even make conviction impossible, which we may take to mean that it's no longer illegal. But legal or illegal, it is effectively paying for freedom.
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This has nothing to do with lobbying. Freedom is what people pay for.
Fair enough, lobbying has gotten weird and pay-to-play, though if you don't like what's happening here, I recommend you don't look at what folks are doing about every other major policy initiative throughout Congress.
It's far from perfect, but it's not as nefarious as it sounds. It's a compromise.
I don't know anything about the investigation, but no finding does not mean no criminality. Ignoring all the politics involved, there are plenty of more mundane examples. Someone attacks you. You call the police. It's your word against theirs and so the investigation is closed because they cannot show that a crime was committed, but you know it was.
The wiki article cited on HW suggests that bribes may have been constructed as either loans (that were not repaid) or as payment to Hugh Rodham for "representing their cases". Neither is criminal, but it's a simple and classic way of taking a bride and turning it legal by putting another sticker on it. Example:
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Almon Glenn Braswell was pardoned of his 1983 mail fraud and perjury convictions.[19] In 1998 he was under federal investigation for money laundering and tax evasion charges.[20] Braswell and Carlos Vignali each paid approximately $200,000 to Hillary Clinton's brother, Hugh Rodham, to represent their respective cases for clemency. Hugh Rodham returned the payments after they were disclosed to the public.[21][22] Braswell would later invoke the Fifth Amendment at a Senate Committee hearing in 2001, when questioned about allegations of his having systematically defrauded senior citizens of millions of dollars.[23]
ETA: The relevance to today is that the same standards will likely apply to any pardons made by Trump this morning. If people paid other parties to lobby for a Trump pardon then it may not be illegal (as much as it's terrible policy.) If direct payments to Trump or his businesses were made then it could be criminal behavior. There's also precedent for appointing a special prosecutor to investigate it.
The Wikipedia article is probably a better overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton_pardon_controvers...