#presidential-pardons

#presidential-pardons

Bill Maher pressed Lara Trump on her father-in-law's pardons for his pals and the weaponization of the DOJ in a tense interview moment. In the latest episode of his Club Random podcast that dropped Monday, Maher grilled Lara Trump, Eric Trump's wife, on many separate topics including controversial pardons and the president's use of the word piggy to describe a reporter.

The replacements came after online commenters seized on striking similarities in the president's signature across a series of pardons dated Nov. 7, including those granted to former New York Mets player Darryl Strawberry, former Tennessee House speaker Glen Casada and former New York police sergeant Michael McMahon. In fact, the signatures on several pardons initially uploaded to the Justice Department's website were identical, two forensic document experts confirmed to The Associated Press.

In mid-October, Trump commuted the prison sentence of Santos, the disgraced New York Republican who pleaded guilty to wire fraud and identity theft last year. Days later the president handed a full and unconditional pardon to Changpeng Zhao, the former CEO of Binance, who pleaded guilty to money laundering charges. Binance has ties to the Trump family's cryptocurrency business, but Trump said in an interview with 60 Minutes that he does not know who Zhao is.

Right Sara, so this is a presidential pardon, so it only impacts federal criminal cases. So, as you said, several of these people are currently being prosecuted at the state level relating to the fake electors scheme in Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Georgia, and Arizona. So the pardons have no impact on those state prosecutions. Now it's worth noting, those state prosecutions are largely in the process of collapsing or have collapsed in their own right, but the pardon has no impact.