A few things to know about Trump's Trevor Milton pardon:
- he was convicted of crimes related to defrauding investors
- he was represented Pam Bondi's brother
- he started generously donating to Republicans late last year
- Trump seems to know very little about his case

Earlier this month, he pardoned a Tennessee Republican who was just two weeks into a 21-month sentence for his role in a campaign finance fraud scheme. This week, as CNBC reported, the list grew a little longer.

President Donald Trump pardoned Nikola Corp. founder Trevor Milton for his October 2022 conviction of federal crimes related to defrauding investors with false claims about the success of the electric and hydrogen-powered truck maker. Milton, 42, was sentenced in December 2023 to four years in prison, but he has been free since then pending an appeal of the former CEO’s criminal conviction on securities and wire fraud charges in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

The report added that the pardon came just two weeks after federal prosecutors urged U.S. District Court Judge Edgardo Ramos to order Milton to pay restitution of $680 million to Nikola shareholders as well as $15.2 million to Peter Hicks, a victim of his wire fraud......

As for why Trump took this step, a reporter asked the president to explain his reasoning, and it didn’t go especially well.
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:4llrhdclvdlmmynkwsmg5tdc/post/3llhdmux2eh2o
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1905673563086225723

......Of course, the larger story isn’t just about Milton. On the contrary, it has become apparent to others that the president has created an entirely new legal/political dynamic, without precedent in the American tradition, in which pardons are available to perceived political allies with whom Trump sympathizes.

Sam Bankman-Fried is reportedly angling for a pardon. So is former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy. The New York Times reported a few weeks ago that there’s a White House team in place focusing on “clemency grants that underscore the president’s own grievances,” and well-connected lawyers and lobbyists “have scrambled to take advantage.”

They have collected large fees from clemency seekers who would not be eligible for second chances under apolitical criteria that are intended to guide a Justice Department system for recommending mercy for those who have served their time or demonstrated remorse and a lower likelihood of recidivism. Instead, clemency petitioners are mostly circumventing that system, tailoring their pitches to the president by emphasizing their loyalty to him and echoing his claims of political persecution.

The Times’ report, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, added that among the many eager to take advantage of the new pardon landscape are “a rapper convicted in connection with a Malaysian embezzlement scheme, a reality-television-star couple found guilty of defrauding banks and evading taxes, and two Washington, D.C., police officers convicted after a chase that killed a young man.”

The Times quoted Rachel Barkow, a professor at the New York University School of Law who has studied the use of presidential clemency. She said that while Trump’s first-term pardons were all about “cronyism and partisanship,” the potential for corruption is higher now “because they’re starting early, they have figured out how they want to set it up so that people have a pipeline to get to them.”

If you're just catching up on news from the weekend, Trump said he's "not joking" about possibly trying to pursue a third term.

The Constitution says, "No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice." Trump apparently doesn't accept that.

This strategy came to mind anew upon hearing the Republican talk about possibly pursuing a third term in the White House. NBC News reported:

President Donald Trump did not rule out the possibility of seeking a third term in the White House, which is prohibited by the Constitution under the 22nd Amendment, saying in an exclusive interview with NBC News that there were methods for doing so and clarifying that he was “not joking.” ... “A lot of people want me to do it,” Trump said in a Sunday-morning phone call with NBC News, referring to his allies.

.....In fact, in his interview with NBC News, Trump was hardly subtle. “I’m not joking,” he said, adding that there are “methods” in which he could pursue such a goal.

NBC News asked about a possible scenario in which Vice President JD Vance would run for office and then pass the role to Trump. Trump responded that “that’s one” method. “But there are others, too,” Trump added. Asked to share another method, Trump simply responded “no.”

Hours after the NBC News report reached the public, the president chatted with reporters aboard Air Force One and dodged a series of questions on the topic, though he claimed that “people” have asked him to run for a third term — which he said would be a fourth term “in a way” because his 2020 race was “totally rigged.” (It was not rigged; he lost fair and square, and he’s been lying uncontrollably about this for more than four years.).....

I won’t pretend to know where this is headed or the degree to which the president is prepared to defy constitutional law. But Scott Cummings, a professor of legal ethics at the UCLA School of Law, made a comment on "The Rachel Maddow Show" on Friday that stood out for me.

Commenting on autocracies around the world that have consolidated power, Cummings noted that in none of these countries “do leaders do all the things that Trump is doing, take aim at all of these independent institutions, and then just walk away.” Rather, the professor added, authoritarians take these steps because they intend “to stay in power permanently.”

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Support is growing for the notion of Donald J. Trump serving a third term in prison, a new poll released on Sunday indicates.

The poll, conducted by the Opinion Research Institute at the University of Minnesota, reveals that many Americans would like to see Trump serve such a third term even before his second term in the White House is over.

Davis Logsdon, who supervised the survey, said that poll respondents favor exploring “any way to make this happen,” including “a constitutional amendment permitting him to serve several such terms.”

As I told the Associated Press:

Derek Muller, a professor of election law at Notre Dame, noted that the 12th Amendment, which was ratified in 1804, says “no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.”

Muller said that indicates that if Trump is not eligible to run for president again because of the 22nd Amendment, he is not eligible to run for vice president, either.

“I don’t think there’s any ‘one weird trick’ to getting around presidential term limits,” Muller said.

In addition, pursuing a third term would require extraordinary acquiescence by federal and state officials, not to mention the courts and voters themselves.

He suggested that Trump is talking about a third term for political reasons to “show as much strength as possible.”

Now, there’s no question there is potential constitutional ambiguity here, as Professor Brian Kalt has discussed. But scholars like Professor Michael Dorf a quarter century ago were bolstering the idea of a Gore-Clinton ticket in 2000:

Thus, if Clinton were to be elected Vice President, and ascend to the Presidency based on, for example, Mr. Gore’s resignation, then nothing unconstitutional would have occurred. Clinton would have been elected to the Presidency only twice — though he would serve as President thrice. Under the Twenty-Second Amendment, that is perfectly permissible.

. . . But in seeking the Vice-Presidency — a job, in John Nance Garner’s unforgettable phrase, “not worth a bucket of warm spit” — Clinton would hardly be bidding for dictatorial powers.

Similar claims were made by Professor Brian Gray and elsewhere. But in my earlier scholarship, I found this interpretation weaker than the one advanced by Matthew Franck:

It follows from the 22nd Amendment that Bill Clinton, being “constitutionally ineligible” to be elected president, is ineligible to become president by another route. He is, in short, ineligible to be president, and therefore ineligible to become vice president under the 12th amendment.

I agree. But it’s worth noting that if–and I think it’s still a big if–such a gambit arose, there are tremendous complexities in its implementation. Not the least of which is the fact that after Trump v. Anderson, I believe the Court expressly left open the opportunity for states to review qualifications of presidential (and vice-presidential) candidates outside of the 14th Amendment and exclude candidates on that basis. Vice presidential nominations and ballot access deadlines for them occur in late summer, giving an exceedingly truncated window for review–and, frankly, one that may leave a major party without a vice presidential candidate on the ballot in several states with the approval of the United States Supreme Court. (Setting aside, of course, the will power of someone like J.D. Vance relinquishing the presidency.)