Never before had a president used his constitutional clemency powers to free or forgive so many people who could be useful to his future political efforts. A Washington Post review of Trump’s 238 clemency orders found that dozens of recipients, including Arpaio, have gone on to plug his 2024 candidacy through social media and national interviews, contribute money to his front-running bid for the Republican nomination or disseminate his false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election.
Ghost archive link: https://ghostarchive.org/archive/IHZj1
I’m genuinely surprised he didn’t try to pardon all the Jan 6 insurrectionists.
For free? Not a chance. I doubt he would have even given them a discount on the price of a pardon.
Probably too much effort. he’s lazy, as well as stupid.