Pre-Pardon Panic
U.S. Senators introduce a resolution to discourage Trump from freeing FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried
This Week In Blunders – June 14-20
“Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.” - Adam Smith
President Donald Trump has granted clemency to so many white-collar criminals that a bipartisan pair of U.S. senators fear he’ll free the most notorious crypto-klepto of all: Sam Bankman-Fried.
On Wednesday, Sens. Ruben Gallego, D-AZ, and Cynthia Lummis, R-WY, took the rare step of introducing a resolution expressing that the FTX founder should not receive any form of clemency.
Bankman-Fried, 34, is serving a 25-year prison sentence after building one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges and basically looting it into bankruptcy. Last week, he lost his latest appeal and now seems down to his last hope.
The furry-headed fraudster has been sucking up to Trump for more than a year, framing his case in familiar Trump themes of victimhood.
“Sam Bankm. an-Fried is a criminal,” Gallego said. “He took advantage of millions of Americans and stole their savings. Perhaps worst of all, he has shown no remorse for his crimes and has instead tried to laughably claim he is a victim of ‘lawfare.’ What a joke. Keep him locked up.”
In normal times, this would all go without saying. But Trump has granted scores of pardons and commutations to people found guilty of everything from tax evasion to Ponzi schemes, and Bankman-Fried has a pending application for clemency.
Most notably, relative to the crypto world, Trump pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, 49, who pleaded guilty to violating U.S. anti-money-laundering requirements and was sentenced to four months in prison.
In November 2023, his crypto exchange pleaded guilty to criminal charges and agreed to pay more than $4 billion in penalties for allowing transactions involving sanctioned nations, including Iran.
Let me repeat that: Binance basically admitted to allowing crypto transactions with Iran, our sworn enemy. But Trump called Zhao the victim of a Biden “witch hunt.”
Not surprisingly, Binance then backed a nascent crypto venture tied to Trump’s family, World Liberty Financial, helping push its valuation from millions into the billions, according to the Wall Street Journal.
So nice that Binance could help.
Bankman-Fried, on the other hand, has been ordered to forfeit $11 billion in assets and his FTX empire is history. This raises the question: If Bankman-Fried gets a pardon, what’s in it for Trump?
The screwworm economy
The screwworm isn’t just a flesh-eating larva, it eats taxpayer dollars, too.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is preparing to spend more than $1 billion on eradicating the pest, which had been contained beyond U.S. borders for the past six decades.
Suddenly, we now have about a dozen cases in cattle herds in Texas and New Mexico, which industry leaders fear could spread.
Could it be because the Trump administration cut more than 2,100 employees from the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, or about 25% of its workforce?
Nah, Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins this week placed the blame squarely on the Biden administration’s loose immigration policies.
You know, illegal immigrants and their infected cattle creeping through the uncompleted wall that Mexico was supposed to pay for.
This, of course, makes no sense when you consider the lifecycle of the screwworm is less than 54 days and Trump has been in office for 500 days, notes Democratic U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu of California.
Beef prices are already near record highs and a massive spread of this pest could turn an ordinary cheeseburger into a major household budget item.
Rollings can crow all she wants, but Democrats are determined to stick Republicans with the blame. Here’s what the party’s Kendall Witmer had to say:
“From Trump’s unhinged trade war that locked farmers out of their markets to his war with Iran that has made fuel and fertilizer unaffordable, Americans are fed up, and Trump doesn’t give a damn.”
To be sure, beyond assigning political blame, we don’t have conclusive evidence for how the screwworm got into the U.S.
But perhaps there is no better metaphor than the screwworm to define our times.
Slash employees to cut costs, only to incur exponentially higher expenses when no one is doing their jobs. Republicans blaming Democrats. Democrats blaming Republicans. And all of us getting screwed by a worm.
Whose ‘unconditional surrender’ is this?
Did Trump just lose the Iran war that he unilaterally started?
Let’s leave that answer up to the editorial board at that liberal, fake-news rag known as The Wall Street Journal. Here’s what they opined on Thursday:
“The memorandum of understanding was reached from a position of U.S. weakness, not strength.
“The U.S. had options but Mr. Trump blinked at the risk. Instead, after two months of cease-fire weakness while the public soured and oil reserves declined, the President acknowledges he gave in to Iran’s economic pressure.”
Trump so much admitted as much on Wednesday when he said, “the alternative would be a world-wide depression.”
Negotiations are slated to continue on Sunday, but they are going no where. Just as oil prices were heading lower, Iran claims the Strait of Hormuz is closed for business.
Maybe things will improve, Trump fans, but so far this is going down as the biggest foreign policy blunder in U.S. history.
Your thoughts?
Ride scaring
Waymo on Thursday announced it was recalling nearly 3,900 robotaxis this week after reports they were driving into closed construction zones.
Then this morning, I spotted this billboard while trolling around Los Angeles:
It’s old data, and these are isolated cases relative the number of rides the ride-sharing company provides each day, but Uber is still dealing with the lawsuits.
And I have a question:
What’s scarier? Uber with a driver? Or Waymo without one?
Like the sign says, ‘Pay as you like’
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