President did not follow the usual review process, experts say, making it more likely they would commit other crimes
Among the beneficiaries of Donald Trump’s pardons and commutations, there is a group that legal experts and political scientists see as some of the clearest evidence of how such actions undermine the rule of law: those who were released from prison and again arrested for different alleged crimes.
During his first term, Trump issued 237 acts of clemency – including to someone who was a predatory lender and drug smuggler and to another who ran a Ponzi scheme. Since taking office again, Trump has issued more than 1,600, most for people involved in the January 6 attack on Congress.
At least a dozen of the people Trump has granted clemency to since 2016 were arrested for separate crimes after January 6.
That should come as no surprise, experts say, because Trump did not follow the usual review process for considering such pardons, making it more likely that those people had already committed other crimes or took the clemency as an indication that they did not do anything wrong.
