Nor were Trump’s pardons confined to financial crime alone.

In the political realm,
he used them to dismantle the already-fragile idea of
public accountability,
🆘 turning American public squares into carnivals of bribery and fraud.

🔥He pardoned #Alexander #Sittenfeld,
a former member of the Cincinnati city council,
convicted by a jury on both bribery and extortion charges,

🔥#John #Rowland,
a former Connecticut governor,
caught out in multiple corruption cases

🔥and #Jeremy #Hutchinson,
a former Arkansas state legislator and scion of one of Arkansas’s most prominent political families.

In 2023, Hutchinson pleaded guilty to accepting over $150,000 worth of bribes,
receiving a four-year sentence as a result
– a sentence that Trump wiped away earlier this year.

🔥Just this month Trump announced the pardon of
#Henry #Cuellar,
a Texas representative and the first member of Congress in US history formally accused of acting as a foreign agent,
allegedly overseeing multiple bribery schemes from Mexico to Azerbaijan.

Cuellar had allegedly become an Azeri mole,
working for a regime known for its kleptocratic brutality,
routinely jailing dissidents, journalists and political opposition figures.

Cuellar allegedly served as an Azeri agent
while the regime was engaged in ethnic cleansing against Armenians,
constituting, as Freedom House detailed,
“war crimes and crimes against humanity”.

💥None of that mattered.

Cuellar was pardoned anyway,
permitted to remain in Congress
and transformed into a potential political ally.

The message to lawmakers was unmistakable:

👉 loyalty to Trump now offers protection from consequences.

The message to foreign strongmen was equally clear.

❌ The United States, once again, is open for business.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/dec/21/trump-white-collar-criminals?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other