Most pro-criminal president of my lifetime
00:04:
(Chris Hayes)
Good evening from New York.
00:05:
(Chris Hayes)
I'm Chris Hayes.
00:05:
(Chris Hayes)
Donald Trump, the president of these United States, wants to be a dictator.
00:09:
(Chris Hayes)
He is trying to be a dictator.
00:11:
(Chris Hayes)
He said it multiple times this week.
00:13:
(Chris Hayes)
Today, he explained why a lot of people, I think in his own head, think he should be a dictator because he's stopping all the crimes.
00:22:
(Donald Trump)
So the line is that I'm a dictator, but I stop crime.
00:26:
(Donald Trump)
So a lot of people say, you know, if that's the case, I'd rather have a dictator.
00:29:
(Donald Trump)
But I'm not a dictator.
00:31:
(Donald Trump)
I just know how to stop crime.
00:32:
(Chris Hayes)
Ah, yes, Donald Trump, tough on crime.
00:35:
(Chris Hayes)
It just depends on who's doing the crime, doesn't it?
00:38:
(Chris Hayes)
Beyond all his administration's lies and the mobilization of federal law enforcement in Los Angeles and Washington and members of the U.S. military, Donald Trump is the most unabashedly pro-criminal, pro-crime president of my lifetime.
00:53:
(Chris Hayes)
In fact, I started compiling this list of all the people that Donald Trump has pardoned or come to the aid of just since taking office in January, and it is mind-boggling.
01:04:
(Chris Hayes)
On his first day in office, Donald Trump pardoned all, every last one of the January 6th insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol and attempted a coup against the U.S. government on his behalf.
01:15:
(Chris Hayes)
Roughly 1,500 convicted or suspected accused criminals.
01:20:
(Chris Hayes)
They included hundreds who were handed lengthy sentences for very serious felonies, such as assaulting police with deadly weapons.
01:28:
(Chris Hayes)
Many of those rioters have had, maybe you won't be shocked to hear this, serious brushes with the law since they were pardoned.
01:36:
(Chris Hayes)
Andrew Take is one example.
01:37:
(Chris Hayes)
He used a metal whip and bear spray to assault police officers at the Capitol.
01:42:
(Chris Hayes)
He was sentenced to six years after bragging about these crimes to a woman on a dating app.
01:48:
(Chris Hayes)
Two weeks after being pardoned by Trump and freed from prison, he was arrested in Texas for soliciting a minor for sex.
01:56:
(Chris Hayes)
Then on the second day of his president, Donald Trump pardoned Ross Ulbricht, founder of the Silk Road and online black market for drug dealing.
02:04:
(Chris Hayes)
The guy took hundreds of millions in commissions on sales of methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin, and other opioids.
02:11:
(Chris Hayes)
I mean, you could make a case he was the biggest drug dealer in American history.
02:16:
(Chris Hayes)
He was serving two life sentences without the possibility of parole when Donald Trump pardoned him unconditionally.
02:23:
(Chris Hayes)
On his third day in office, Trump pardoned Washington, D.C. police officer Tara Sutton and Lieutenant Andrew Zabowski.
02:30:
(Chris Hayes)
Sutton illegally chased a 20-year-old man on a moped for 10 blocks.
02:33:
(Chris Hayes)
He struck another car and died in the crash.
02:37:
(Chris Hayes)
The two officers then tried to cover up their role in his death.
02:40:
(Chris Hayes)
They were sentenced to hard time for obstructing justice.
02:43:
(Chris Hayes)
Trump pardoned them, falsely claiming the motorist they had killed was illegal.
02:47:
(Chris Hayes)
They have since been reinstated to the D.C. police force.
02:50:
(Chris Hayes)
Trump also pardoned former Illinois Governor Rob Bogoyevich, convicted on 17 counts of corruption, including an attempt that we all remember and all heard to sell off Barack Obama's former Senate seat.
03:01:
(Chris Hayes)
Trump pardoned him using the former Democrats' criminal case as a way to discount the myriad investigations, indictments, and convictions that he faced.
03:08:
(Chris Hayes)
He pardoned Brian Kelsey, a Republican former Tennessee state senator, a guy that was two weeks into a 21-month sentence for a campaign finance fraud when Trump pardoned him.
03:18:
(Chris Hayes)
He illegally funneled nearly $100,000 into a failed congressional campaign.
03:25:
(Chris Hayes)
In May, Trump pardoned Todd and Julie Chrisley, TV reality stars who were serving federal prison sentences for wire and bank fraud.
03:33:
(Chris Hayes)
The lavish lifestyle they flaunted on air was apparently bankrolled by fraudulent bank loans the couple hid from tax authorities.
03:40:
(Chris Hayes)
There were two of nearly two dozen convicted fraudsters, thieves, and drug dealers Trump pardoned in May.
03:47:
(Chris Hayes)
Again, this is way beyond the pace of any president in my lifetime.
03:51:
(Chris Hayes)
He also pardoned Trevor Milton.
03:53:
(Chris Hayes)
He was the founder of an electric truck company.
03:55:
(Chris Hayes)
He was sentenced to federal prison for exaggerating the company's technology, up to and including a fake commercial in which they pushed an immobile model of the truck down a hill to make it look like it could really drive fast.
04:09:
(Soundbite)
With all the cameras in place, the director calls action and sends the truck.
04:15:
(Soundbite)
Powered by nothing but gravity, this shell of a truck gathers a big head of steam.
04:22:
(Soundbite)
By the time it passes the film crew, it's cruising at interstate speed.
04:28:
(Chris Hayes)
Beautiful.
04:30:
(Chris Hayes)
Cut.
04:31:
(Chris Hayes)
The truck didn't actually work.
04:33:
(Chris Hayes)
Milton went to jail for it because he defrauded people.
04:36:
(Chris Hayes)
Last year, he donated $1.8 million to Donald Trump's campaign, and Trump pardoned him in March.
04:42:
(Chris Hayes)
Thanks to that pardon, Milton will not need to compensate his shareholders who lost millions.
04:46:
(Chris Hayes)
Now, that is just a partial list of Trump's pardons and commutations since he took office seven months ago.
04:52:
(Chris Hayes)
It's a wild list.
04:53:
(Chris Hayes)
It's unlike any list I've ever seen or ever covered.
04:57:
(Chris Hayes)
But in that time, he has also gone out of his way to accommodate some of the worst accused and convicted criminals you can imagine.
05:04:
(Chris Hayes)
like the Manosphere influencers Andrew and Tristan Tate, who have been accused in multiple countries of rape, human trafficking, and sex with minors.
05:12:
(Chris Hayes)
In fact, they have been held for three years on charges in Romania when allies in the Trump administration worked to have them repatriated to the U.S. as within weeks of being at home, Andrew Tate, who denies the many, many horrible charges against him, faced new legal trouble.
05:29:
(Soundbite)
In a civil suit filed in Los Angeles this week, model Bree Stern accusing Tate of sexually assaulting and choking her at the Beverly Hills Hotel earlier this month.
05:39:
(Soundbite)
Stern sitting down with NBC News from Los Angeles in her first interview about that night.
05:44:
(Soundbite)
Talk to me about what was going through your mind in that moment.
05:50:
(Bree Stern)
I was scared to death.
05:52:
(Bree Stern)
I was terrified that I might die.
05:57:
(Chris Hayes)
Remember, the Trump administration went out of their way to get the Tates and bring them into the U.S. And it's also important to remember, even as Trump and his aides were falsely accusing hundreds of men from hairdressers to soccer enthusiasts of being hardcore MS-13 gang members and disappearing them from the country.
06:15:
(Chris Hayes)
that federal prosecutors under Trump are now quietly dropping charges against the actual bona fide leaders of that gang they spent years pursuing and charging.
06:25:
(Chris Hayes)
In fact, Trump is actually freeing those gang leaders and sending them to El Salvador's president, Nayib Bukele.
06:31:
(Chris Hayes)
And the Trump administration may be doing it to cover up corruption.
06:35:
(Chris Hayes)
According to a New York Times investigation, U.S. prosecutors have amassed substantial evidence of a corrupt pact between the Salvadoran government and some high-ranking MS-13 leaders who they say agreed to drive down violence and bolster Bukele politically in exchange for cash and perks in jail.
06:53:
(Chris Hayes)
Don't forget, Trump also intervened on the behalf of a man named Bahud Hanid Ortiz, a U.S.-Venezuelan dual citizen who returned here as part of that prisoner swap from Venezuela last month.
07:04:
(Chris Hayes)
This individual was convicted of bludgeoning three people to death in an office in Spain where he was looking for a man he suspected of sleeping with his ex-girlfriend.
07:14:
(Chris Hayes)
murdered three people, according to Venezuelan courts.
07:17:
(Chris Hayes)
He was charged in Madrid.
07:19:
(Chris Hayes)
He was brought back to the U.S. and freed by Donald Trump, according to the most recent reporting, whereabouts unknown, just out in the country.
07:30:
(Chris Hayes)
And then, of course, there's Ghislaine Maxwell, the Palm Beach socialite who recruited and groomed young women for child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
07:37:
(Chris Hayes)
Many of Epstein's accusers say Maxwell also abused them personally.
07:41:
(Chris Hayes)
She knows as much as anyone alive about Epstein's depraved crimes and his associates.
07:45:
(Chris Hayes)
And the Trump administration moved her to a minimum security prison against existing federal prison policy, giving her an extraordinary waiver to be in a prison she couldn't be in because she's a sex offender.
07:57:
(Chris Hayes)
after interviewing her for two days and getting her on tape saying she never saw Donald Trump be anything but a perfect gentleman.
08:06:
(Chris Hayes)
These are the criminal and unbelievable list of people who have done truly awful things, most of them convicted felons, some accused of doing truly awful things.
08:14:
(Chris Hayes)
Each one of these alone would be a scandal that wrecked another administration.
08:18:
(Chris Hayes)
Do you remember the single Willie Horton ad in 1988?
08:23:
(Chris Hayes)
And all that list of all these people, I mean, MS-13 kingpins, people convicted of a triple homicide, a woman who's the accomplice of the most notorious sex trafficker in American history, they all come from the man who claims he's undoing American carnage, fixing a rampant crime problem that largely exists only in his mind and serves, obviously, as a pretext for targeting his political enemies.
08:48:
(Chris Hayes)
Whoever they may be, targeting people like recently, and we'll get into this later, Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook claiming she committed mortgage fraud, needs to be fired, or raiding John Bolton's home and office saying he mishandled classified information, threatening to reopen the Bridgegate investigation because former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie criticized him on TV.
09:08:
(Chris Hayes)
Right?
09:08:
(Chris Hayes)
All these people that are his enemies are criminals or backing criminals.
09:13:
(Chris Hayes)
And he claims that so he can seek retribution.
09:16:
(Chris Hayes)
a rhetorical exercise that flies in the face of reality and the statistics.
09:21:
(Chris Hayes)
I mean, what's crazy about this right now, as opposed to, say, 2020, 2021, when we saw a big spike in crime around the country, is we are in the midst of, under the last few years of the Biden administration and the first eight, nine months of this year, having nothing to do with Donald Trump, historic and really genuinely encouraging huge drops in crime, both violent and nonviolent.
09:41:
(Chris Hayes)
But that doesn't matter.
09:42:
(Chris Hayes)
He spent the decade saying the opposite of what we know to be true.
09:48:
(Chris Hayes)
There has never been a president in recent American history who has gone out of his way, who has done more to free more criminals and accommodate more crimes than Donald Trump.
10:02:
(Chris Hayes)
Dan Frumkin is a veteran journalist and editor of Heads Up News and Press Watch, where he writes, We have become an authoritarian state.
10:08:
(Chris Hayes)
Our top newsrooms are in denial.
10:11:
(Chris Hayes)
Liz Oyer serves as a pardon attorney in the Trump's Department of Justice until she was fired in March of this year after she refused to reinstate actor Mel Gibson's gun rights.
10:20:
(Chris Hayes)
That's a real thing that happened.
10:22:
(Chris Hayes)
They joined me now.
10:24:
(Chris Hayes)
Liz, I wanted to start with you because...
10:26:
(Chris Hayes)
There's two categories here.
10:27:
(Chris Hayes)
So there's the pardons, and then there's also just using federal muscle on behalf of people that have done either been accused of doing really awful things or have been convicted of doing really awful things.
10:38:
(Chris Hayes)
You know, you worked in that office of pardon attorney.
10:40:
(Chris Hayes)
Like, I've covered this.
10:42:
(Chris Hayes)
Usually, executives, presidents give way too little clemency, way too few pardons.
10:47:
(Chris Hayes)
And there are thousands of people in the country who deserve it, right, who really deserve mercy, who got busted on a bad case.
10:54:
(Chris Hayes)
This spree of people who committed genuinely violent offenses, like, has there ever been something like this in recent presidential history?
11:04:
(Liz Oyer)
There has not ever been anything like this, Chris.
11:06:
(Liz Oyer)
The common thread running through what Donald Trump is doing in all those cases you talked about is that he is manipulating the justice system for the purpose of controlling people and institutions.
11:18:
(Liz Oyer)
He is trying to control his critics and
11:21:
(Liz Oyer)
By threatening to bring charges against them or bringing charges against them, he is trying to build loyalty and amass wealth among his supporters and among wealthy constituents by offering things like pardons to people.
11:37:
(Liz Oyer)
as favors, as political favors for allies.
11:40:
(Liz Oyer)
And he's really done some unprecedented things beyond the pardon scope.
11:45:
(Liz Oyer)
For example, he initiated a criminal investigation, it seems, against Lisa Cook of the Federal Reserve Board for a pretext.
11:54:
(Liz Oyer)
as a pretext to be able to fire her.
11:57:
(Liz Oyer)
So he's really just using the criminal justice system for his own convenience, for his own accumulation of power in a way that is chillingly authoritarian and that we have not seen before at any time in history.
12:10:
(Chris Hayes)
Dan, I was reading your column, and I think it puts your finger on something that I think is very clear here to most of us.
12:18:
(Chris Hayes)
I want to read from it, just because it's really felt in the last few days.
12:21:
(Chris Hayes)
I mean, I thought we passed a tipping point a long time ago, or at least past the point where you couldn't deny what was happening.
12:26:
(Chris Hayes)
I don't think it's a tipping point, because I still think the outcome is not determined.
12:29:
(Chris Hayes)
But you couldn't deny what was happening, right?
12:32:
(Chris Hayes)
But really, in the last few days, I mean, you write, armed soldiers patrol the streets of the nation's capital with more cities apparently to come.
12:37:
(Chris Hayes)
Immigrants who've done nobody any harm are abducted, disappeared by masked agents.
12:41:
(Chris Hayes)
The state is seizing stakes of national companies.
12:43:
(Chris Hayes)
Election integrity is under attack.
12:44:
(Chris Hayes)
Political opponents are targeted with criminal probes.
12:47:
(Chris Hayes)
Federal judges' orders are ignored.
12:48:
(Chris Hayes)
Educational institutions are extorted into obedience.
12:51:
(Chris Hayes)
Key functions of the government are politicized and degraded.
12:54:
(Chris Hayes)
Expertise and science are devalued.
12:56:
(Chris Hayes)
Trump speaks of serving an unconstitutional third term.
12:59:
(Chris Hayes)
Media organizations are paying tribute to the ruler.
13:01:
(Chris Hayes)
More significantly, there are no guardrails anymore, and our dominant media institutions will call him out.
13:06:
(Chris Hayes)
It felt like the troops in D.C. and the threat of more crosses yet some new line in terms of how open this has been.
13:16:
(Chris Hayes)
And then Trump's lines about the musing about being a dictator today.
13:23:
(Dan Frumkin)
Yeah, the musing about being a dictator is terrifying.
13:26:
(Dan Frumkin)
And oddly enough, the media is not taking this very seriously.
13:29:
(Dan Frumkin)
By the media, I mean places like The New York Times and The Washington Post.
13:34:
(Dan Frumkin)
I think that, I mean, what he said today, he said, if he stops crime, he can be whatever he wants.
13:40:
(Dan Frumkin)
I think, and ironically, so you've got the fact that on one hand, Trump is using the criminal justice system to attack his opponents.
13:48:
(Dan Frumkin)
And at the same time, I think he plans to ride crime to a third term.
13:53:
(Dan Frumkin)
He talked today about how crime is going to be the central issue for the midterms and for the general election.
14:01:
(Dan Frumkin)
And he said it's a better issue even than trans athletes.
14:05:
(Dan Frumkin)
So I think...
14:07:
(Dan Frumkin)
I think he's really going after this crime issue.
14:10:
(Dan Frumkin)
I think it's perfect that you point out how his standing doesn't exist there.
14:14:
(Chris Hayes)
Yeah, and I think, Liz, I mean, part of this, too, is that, again, for all of the things that have been so awful about the way American justice has functioned in its inequities, in different populations that have been on the wrong side of the law, often unfairly and unjustly, like,
14:35:
(Chris Hayes)
There's a core attack at the last vestiges, the vestiges of the system that really does feel like it's happening before our eyes right now in a way that I think is even more aggressive than even some of the people most worried thought it would be.
14:49:
(Liz Oyer)
What we're seeing, Chris, is a straight up pay for play system.
14:52:
(Liz Oyer)
The justice system is being operated as a business right now.
14:56:
(Liz Oyer)
So if you are wealthy and you have political access, you can secure preferential treatment through the use of your wealth and resources.
15:05:
(Liz Oyer)
That's not only damaging because it allows rich people to get away with crimes.
15:10:
(Liz Oyer)
It's damaging because it is.
15:13:
(Liz Oyer)
negatively affects those people who truly are are impacted unfairly by the justice system you mentioned the people who are waiting for pardons there are over 10 000 people who have applied through a legitimate long-standing process for pardons and many of them are very deserving but they can't be considered because they don't have political access or wealth there are also people who are um
15:37:
(Liz Oyer)
In Washington, D.C., who are suffering at the hands of this over enforcement of our criminal laws by federal law enforcement agencies who are roaming the streets wearing masks, pulling people over willy nilly.
15:49:
(Liz Oyer)
There is just a lot going on that damages regular people and rewards people who are wealthy or loyal to Trump.
15:56:
(Chris Hayes)
Yeah, on that last part, Dan, I mean, one thing that has been sort of encouraging me, we've seen three different grand juries refuse to grant an indictment that Jeanine Pirro wanted of assault of an ICE agent because it was a ridiculous case.
16:09:
(Chris Hayes)
I mean, that essentially never happens.
16:11:
(Chris Hayes)
A federal magistrate judge telling Department of Justice lawyers, this is the most illegal search I've ever seen in my life about a search that was being conducted.
16:19:
(Chris Hayes)
The assaults haven't been met with nothing, at least from the legal system.
16:24:
(Chris Hayes)
Does that give you any hope?
16:27:
(Dan Frumkin)
Well, it gives me hope in the short run.
16:30:
(Dan Frumkin)
The problem is that when these cases get higher and higher in the court system, eventually they end up in the Supreme Court.
16:36:
(Dan Frumkin)
And the Supreme Court, just like Congress, is not telling Donald Trump no about anything.
16:41:
(Dan Frumkin)
So far, all they've done has been a rubber stamp.
16:44:
(Dan Frumkin)
So, yes, I'm incredibly optimistic about the lower court cases.
16:49:
(Dan Frumkin)
I think they've been overwhelming.
16:50:
(Dan Frumkin)
I think they've been a succor to the resistance.
16:55:
(Dan Frumkin)
But I certainly do worry that there's nobody out there willing to tell him to stop.
17:00:
(Chris Hayes)
Yeah, it will be left to the We the People, I think.
17:02:
(Chris Hayes)
Dan Frumkin and Liz Oyer, thank you both.
17:04:
(Chris Hayes)
Appreciate it.