Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
Support Trump politically, get a pardon.
“Wanda Vázquez Garced, who endorsed Trump in 2020, faced campaign bribery charges and pleaded guilty last year.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/16/trump-pardon-former-puerto-rico-governor-00734044?utm_medium=bluesky&utm_source=dlvr.it
“Trump may have pardoned Cole last year as part of the sweeping clemency that he gave to Jan. 6 offenders on his first day back in office.
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Trump’s proclamation commuted the sentences of 14 individuals and also granted “a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.” This immediately covered roughly 1,500 people, including hundreds of defendants who were charged with assaulting or resisting law enforcement officers.
Lawyers for Cole did not respond to a question about whether they intend to argue that Cole is entitled to a pardon if convicted. But there are several legal and factual points that are worth zeroing in on if they pursue that strategy.
For starters, it does not matter whether Trump specifically intended to pardon the person who planted the pipe bombs. Under the law, it is the text of the pardon that matters — not the subjective intention of the president or the DOJ’s interpretation of it.
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Cheerleaders of the sweeping Jan. 6 pardon did not bat an eye when Trump knowingly freed people like Stewart Rhodes and Enrique Tarrio — leaders of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, respectively, who were convicted at trial of a seditious conspiracy to prevent the transfer of power to Joe Biden. And they have remained silent as some of the people that Trump pardoned have gone on to commit more alleged crimes — a predictable development given the empirical evidence on recidivism rates among convicted felons. Some of these crimes have been explicitly political in nature, including threatening to kill House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
For all that’s happened in the last year, Trump’s Jan. 6 pardon remains one of his most stunning acts since he returned to office.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2026/01/06/jan-6-pipe-bomber-trump-pardon-column-00712039
“A man pardoned by President Donald Trump for storming the Capitol on Jan. 6 was arrested last week for allegedly threatening to kill House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/21/jan-6-rioter-charged-hakeem-jeffries-00616481
Trump has used the pardon power to unjustly save his political allies. The founders said the control on the pardon power was impeachment, but that clearly isn’t going to happen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1kRAdQbQGA
“Trump’s Justice Department is trying to jail a guy for trespassing on federal property in order to mount an illegal protest — a nonviolent version of what the president pardoned 1,500 people for doing.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/05/08/ed-martin-jan-6-trump-pardon-protester-00334168
“Trump signed pardons for 23 anti-abortion protesters who were convicted of illegally blockading a reproductive health clinic in Washington, D.C.”
https://www.axios.com/2025/01/24/trump-pardons-anti-abortion-activists
““No. 1, he had the legal authority to do it,” Graham pointed out. “But I fear that you will get more violence. Pardoning the people who went into the Capitol and beat up a police officer, violently, I think, was a mistake because it seems to suggest that’s an OK thing to do.” Graham made similar comments to CNN’s Dana Bash, saying the pardons “sent the wrong signal.”
Members of Trump’s loyal base flipped out over Graham’s mild chiding of the returned POTUS. They slammed the senator as a “snake” and a “RINO,” or Republican In Name Only.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/lindsey-graham-donald-trump-mistake_n_6797340de4b01edab1f9223a
“”If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned,” J.D. Vance, now the vice president, said last week. But that “obvious” caveat was notably missing from the indiscriminate pardons Trump actually issued, which he claimed were necessary to remedy “a grave national injustice” and start “a process of national reconciliation.”
Such a reconciliation is impossible when the president is willing to excuse political violence as long as it is perpetrated by his supporters.”
https://reason.com/2025/01/22/biden-and-trump-show-presidents-how-to-abuse-clemency/
“as a historical matter, the critics are dead wrong when they insist that the Hunter Biden pardon is a unique and uniquely polarizing use of the pardon power. Presidents since George Washington have wielded that power, often in extraordinarily controversial ways.
The question isn’t whether Biden’s action was somehow singular in its offensiveness — history shows us that it is not. It’s whether the pardon power, a constitutional holdover from the divine rights of kings, is a power worth removing altogether from the Constitution.
Here are four earlier examples of controversial uses of the pardon power, from Washington to Bill Clinton. Together, they make Biden’s pardon look almost quaint.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/12/04/biden-presidential-pardon-controversy-00192404
“rather than merely pardoning his son for the gun crimes for which he was convicted and the tax crimes for which he pleaded guilty, the president’s pardon covers all “offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in” from Jan. 1, 2014, through Dec. 1, 2024. That language mirrors the language in Ford’s pardon of Nixon, which did not merely cover the Watergate scandal but extended to “all offenses against the United States” that Nixon “has committed or may have committed” between Jan. 20, 1969, and Aug. 9, 1974 — the exact span of Nixon’s presidency.
The starting date of Jan. 1, 2014, in the Biden pardon was surely not chosen randomly: Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian gas company, in April 2014, while his father was vice president. Republicans have accused the younger Biden of illegally profiting off his position on that board.
The pardon came the day after Trump announced he would nominate Kash Patel, a Trump loyalist, as FBI director. Last year, when it appeared that Hunter Biden was on the verge of a plea deal to resolve his legal troubles, Patel criticized the deal as unusually lenient. (The deal later collapsed.)”
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“its sweeping nature means the Trump Justice Department will not be able to reopen the long-running criminal probe of the president’s son, according to Samuel Morison, a lawyer focused on clemency who spent 13 years in the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/12/02/hunter-biden-pardon-nixon-00192101