The Free Press
Two dodgy Democrats had a great day on Monday—thanks to our new Republican president, Donald J. Trump.
The first, former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, was granted a full pardon. Back in 2009, after he’d been charged with corruption, Blagojevich got himself booked on Trump’s show, Celebrity Apprentice. (You can see his appearance in these YouTube clips. He was fired, of course.) I don’t know if Blagojevich had a premonition that Trump might someday be in a position to help him, but it sure has turned out that way. Transforming himself from a high-profile Democratic governor to a big-time Trump supporter was the single best move he could have made.
Blago (as everyone in Illinois used to call him) was indicted for a truly venal act: trying to sell Barack Obama’s vacant U.S. Senate seat, after he was elected president, to the highest bidder. The payoff never came because he got caught before a new senator was named. In 2012, Blagojevich was sentenced to 14 years.
Not that he spent that much time in prison. Trump commuted his sentence in 2020, after Blago served eight years of his sentence. Trump did so in part because he saw the ex-governor’s wife on Fox, appealing to him directly to let her husband out of prison.
This time around, the president said he was pardoning Blago because his prosecution had been “a terrible injustice.” It was anything but. The FBI had tapped Blago’s phone, and his profane insistence that Obama’s old Senate seat was “fucking golden” came through loud and clear.
The second Democrat who had a very good day on Monday was New York City mayor Eric Adams. Indicted for “bribery, fraud, and soliciting illegal foreign campaign contributions,” as The New York Times described his alleged crimes, Adams was supposed to go on trial in two months. He has consistently proclaimed his innocence, but like Blago, he knew he had a better chance with Trump than a jury of his peers.
Despite being the highest-profile Democratic mayor in the country, Adams has vowed not to criticize Trump publicly. He did an interview with Tucker Carlson in which he said he had been targeted by the Biden administration for criticizing its “failed border policy.” In January, he made the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago, and a few days later, attended Trump’s inauguration.
Adams’ charm offensive worked; Trump’s Department of Justice told its New York prosecutors to abandon the charges against the mayor. The letter to prosecutors from the acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove III did not claim the case against the mayor was weak. It said its decision was arrived at “without assessing the strength of the evidence.”
Instead, Bove offered two other rationales:
First, “it cannot be ignored that Mayor Adams criticized the prior Administration’s immigration policies before the charges were filed.”
Translation: The Trump administration was buying Adams’ line that he was subjected to lawfare for knocking Biden’s immigration policy.
And second, Bove said, the indictment hanging over Adams’ head was preventing him from “devot[ing] full attention and resources to the illegal immigration and violent crime that escalated under the policies of the prior Administration.”
Translation: Trump needs Adams in his fight to correct all the previous administration’s terrible wrongs.
Does anyone really believe any of this? I can’t imagine that Danielle Sassoon, the current acting U.S. attorney in Manhattan, does. She is now in a terrible spot. If she agrees to dismiss the charges, she will no longer be regarded as a credible prosecutor but as someone who does Trump’s bidding. And if she refuses to go along with the Justice Department, she will undoubtedly be replaced by someone more pliable.
Either way, Adams will get off because he played the Trump card. And that, apparently, is how justice works in America now.
In its coverage of Adams, the Times found a few people who expressed outrage, but it was mainly aimed at a mayor who “sold out New Yorkers to buy his own freedom,” as one assemblyman put it. I’m not suggesting that Adams doesn’t deserve New York’s scorn, but the real outrage should be directed at Trump and his Justice Department. By pardoning Blagojevich and insisting that the charges against Adams be dropped, his administration is chipping away at one of this country’s foundations: that we are a nation ruled by laws and not by men.
I know I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again. If you really want to understand what makes America great, the rule of law is at the top of the list.
Think about the countries where the rule of law doesn’t exist. Alexei Navalny, the brave Russian dissident, was imprisoned on bogus embezzlement charges because he dared to criticize Vladimir Putin. Last year, he died in prison. Russia sentenced Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich to 16 years in prison on the absurd grounds that he was a spy. He was freed when the U.S. agreed to hand over three Russians who had been convicted of conducting various illegal financial schemes. China also jails Westerners who have committed no crimes.
What the rule of laws brings is stability. It allows people to have faith that American officials—not just elected politicians, but judges, bureaucrats, administrators, and business people—will abide by a set of rules that won’t vary depending on who is in charge. Foreign companies can invest in the U.S. knowing their deal won’t be stripped from them for no reason. Judges make rules based on law and precedent. Bureaucrats don’t use the power of their agencies to reward an authoritarian’s friends and punish his enemies.
Over the course of American history, the richest, most influential people have had no fear of criticizing a president and his policies. After this election, though, the one percenters are all falling in line—even attending Trump’s inauguration. They don’t dare do otherwise, because they fear that Trump could go after their business, the same way any authoritarian would punish his critics.
After all, Trump tried to do it during his first term—pushing the U.S. Postal Service to raise postal rates in an effort to harm Amazon, and opposing the merger of Time Warner and AT&T because of the latter’s ownership of CNN, which Trump despises. The president has already shown that he feels no restraints as his second term begins. Businesspeople are right to be scared.
Yes, I know many Free Press readers believe Biden violated the rule of law when he was president. He pardoned his son, a convicted felon and, preemptively, the rest of his family. But he’s gone, and Trump has started swinging his wrecking ball in Washington, as he promised to do when he was running for president.
As Democrats race to court to stop some of the wreckage, Trump and his administration are now suggesting they might ignore judicial orders they don’t like. Kash Patel, Trump’s nominee to head the FBI, has been accused by Democrats of carrying out a purge at the agency while still a private citizen, before he’s been confirmed. Blagojevich’s pardon and Adams’s escape from justice come with a context.
Here’s the ultimate question: Will we still have a rule of law four years from now? I pray that we will, but I fear that we won’t.
