‘PAY TO PLAY’ TRUMP BALLROOM DONORS GET $50 BILLION IN FED CONTRACTS. Sen. Elizabeth Warren suggested President Donald Trump is running a “pay-to-play loyalty program for wealthy donors” after a report on June 4 revealed more than half the companies that contributed to Trump’is White House ballroom project have been awarded government contracts over the last six months, totaling over $50 billion, Stephen Prager noted at CommonDreams.org (6/6).
Examining 27 publicly known corporate donors to the president’s $400 million gold-plated vanity project, the watchdog group Public Citizen found 14 of them—more than half—had received either new or expanded contracts over the past six months after donating millions to the ballroom and appearing at a lavish White House banquet in October as Trump was preparing to demolish the building’s East Wing.
Over two-thirds, 19 of the 27 companies, received government contracts since fiscal year 2021, totaling over $338 billion. At least 16 out of 27 are also either facing federal enforcement actions and/or have had them suspended by the Trump administration.
“These giant corporations aren’t funding the Trump ballroom fiasco out of the goodness of their hearts. They have massive interests before the federal government, and they hope to curry favor with, and receive favorable treatment from, the Trump administration,” said Public Citizen democracy advocate Jon Golinger, an author of the report.
By far the biggest monetary beneficiary has been the military contractor Lockheed Martin, which received $43.8 billion in new or expanded contract funding over the past six months after it pledged $10 million to fund the dance hall last fall.
Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting company that serves military and intelligence agencies and pledged at least $5 million to the project, received $4 billion in contracts over the same period.
Meanwhile, Palantir—the data-mining surveillance giant with deep ties to the Trump administration—reaped over $1 billion in contracts after giving its own $5 million donation.
“Millions to fund Trump’s bizarre fever dreams are nothing compared to the billions they’re getting back in contracts and favorable government enforcement decisions,” Golinger said. “The American people are paying the price.”
Other ballroom benefactors that have brought in more than $100 million worth of contracts over the past six months include Microsoft, Amazon, HP, and Caterpillar, while T-Mobile, Google, NextEra Energy, and Comcast have all brought in more than $10 million.
Public Citizen noted that while the White House has publicized some of the ballroom donors and others have been revealed by news organizations, not all of the companies that have contributed to the project are publicly known, since the secret funding agreement obtained by the group through a Freedom of Information Act request allows their identities to remain private.
In a statement to the Washington Post, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle suggested that critics should be grateful that Trump was soliciting donations from the wealthy for this very important undertaking.
“The same critics who are alleging fake conflicts of interest would also complain if American taxpayers were footing the bill for these long-overdue renovations,” he said, ignoring the fact that Trump has previously pressured Republicans in Congress to appropriate hundreds of millions in taxpayer funding to secure the ballroom.
Ingle added that “the donors for the White House ballroom project represent a wide array of great American companies and generous individuals, all of whom are contributing to make the People’s House better for generations to come.”
But several Democratic members of Congress have pointed to it as evidence of Trump selling out the government “to the highest bidder.”
“Corporations wrote big checks to build Trump’s golden ballroom,” said Rep. Jason Crow (D-Col.). “Now they’re receiving billions of dollars in kickbacks—paid for by your tax dollars.”
“Wild coincidence or taxpayer-funded corruption?” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.). “You be the judge.”
Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) said that “the part that should make your blood boil” is the fact that many of the companies identified in the report “were facing federal enforcement actions, antitrust reviews, labor cases, [or] securities charges.”
“Many of those cases have been quietly dropped or scaled back since Trump took office. You write a check, your legal problems disappear,” Levin said. “That’s not a coincidence.”
“You cannot afford to donate to Trump’s ballroom, so he does nothing to improve the quality of your life,” said Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). “But for those who can, there are billions in government contracts.”
FED SHOWS WORKING FAMILIES FALL BEHIND AS TRUMP CHOOSES TO KEEP PRICES HIGH. The Beige Book, a monthly report on consumer spending, labor markets, and inflation from the Federal Reserve’s 12 districts across the country, showed a continuation of the trend that accelerated after President Donald Trump joined Israel in attacking Iran more than three months ago, Julia Conley noted at CommonDreams.org (6/5).
The report notes that regional contacts at the Federal Reserve’s districts described middle-income households as “squeezing more life out of every dollar before deciding to spend it,” while low-income families and individuals “showed greater financial strain.”
“Overall, there were reports of increased credit card usage, fewer retail visits, and stronger demand for necessities,” reads the Beige Book.
“Higher-income households remained resilient and less sensitive to price increase,” the Federal Reserve reported, indicating a “K-shaped economy”—in which wealthy Americans are represented by the top angled line and middle- and lower-income households are represented by the line angled toward the lower right.
The report comes as peace talks with Iran are stalled and the Strait of Hormuz—a key waterway for trade, particularly for the world’s oil supply, remains effectively closed following the US-Israeli invasion. Iran’s retaliatory move has sent global oil prices soaring, with gas now costing $4.22 per gallon on average.
“Numerous contacts mentioned the conflict in the Middle East as a source of cost pressures and heightened business uncertainty,” reads the Beige Book. “Higher energy and fertilizer prices contributed to a moderate increase in food prices, especially for fresh produce.”
Manufacturers and retailers are also facing increased shipping costs, while auto repair rates and used-car financing rates “remained very high” in parts of the country.
The report was released days after the administration launched new strikes against Iran last weekend, and as Iran announced it was suspending peace talks with the US over Israel’s continued targeting of Lebanon.
Alex Jacquez, Groundwork’s chief of policy and advocacy, said “Trump is choosing to keep prices high for working families.”
“High prices for essentials like groceries and a tank of gas are busting household budgets and eliminating breathing room for middle- and low-income families,” said Jacquez. “Despite his own party’s opposition, the president is forging ahead with his reckless, costly war—and leaving working Americans in the dust.”
The Beige Book also describes a “low-hire, low-fire” job market, “with workers increasingly reluctant to change jobs because of economic uncertainty.”
“Widespread economic uncertainty from continued tariffs and persistent inflation means businesses are delaying expansion, leading cautious employees to remain in their current roles—even if it means staying in worse-paying jobs,” said Groundwork.
The Federal Reserve pointed to a contact in the construction industry in Cleveland, Ohio who said employees are “nervous and stressed, as well as a human resources firm in Richmond, Va., that reported ”that clients have explicitly slowed hiring for new roles due to uncertainty, while their existing employees seemed reluctant to leave ‘something stable’ for new opportunities.“
Jacquez said that based on the report, “Americans lucky enough to be employed full-time are losing faith in their ability to keep up with inflation as paychecks lag and the labor market stalls out.”
UNIONS CONDEMN EXEC ORDER ALLOWING TRUMP TO REPLACE FEDERAL WORKERS WITH LOYALISTS. Labor unions are warning that an executive order signed June 3 by President Donald Trump will allow his administration to replace thousands of career civil servants with “political loyalists,” Stephen Prager noted at CommonDreams.org (6/5)
The order converts around 8,000 federal workers—most of whom are at senior levels in the civil service with major influence over policy decisions—to Schedule Policy/Career (P/C) status, formerly known as Schedule F, effectively making them “at-will” employees whom the president can fire at his discretion.
While a small number, around 4,000 of the roughly 2 million federal workers, are considered political appointees, most federal employees cannot be removed purely for failing to serve the agenda of the president and can usually only be fired for issues like inadequate performance or misconduct, which involves an appeal process.
But as part of the Trump administration’s effort to dismantle what it’s described as a “deep state” of disloyal bureaucrats, a major objective of the Heritage Foundation’s right-wing manifesto Project 2025, those 8,000 employees may now be fired for “subversion of presidential directives.”
According to the US Office of Personnel Management, this could be just the beginning—with as many as 50,000 employees potentially in consideration to be rescheduled.
A fact sheet released by the White House said despite the reclassification, “these remain ‘career’ positions and the non-partisan hiring processes, competitive status, and other aspects of these roles will not change,” while “removal decisions will also be made without respect to political affiliation.”
But Trump-loyal department heads—everywhere from the Department of Justice to the Pentagon—have systematically purged employees across executive departments that are perceived as Trump’s political enemies.
AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler said on Thursday that “Schedule P/C is the next phase in Trump’s anti-worker agenda to replace government workers with political loyalists who answer only to him.”
“As we’ve seen from his first day in office, the president is determined to tear down the architecture of our federal government and replace it with a system of corruption to benefit powerful CEOs and billionaire union-busters,” she said.
It’s part of a broader attack on the federal workforce in Trump’s second term. Through a combination of firings, layoffs, and forced resignations, he has reduced the number of government employees by nearly 300,000, causing chaos and understaffing at many agencies. He’s also stripped more than 1 million unionized federal workers of their right to collective bargaining, though courts have blocked the implementation for some workers.
Everett Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), which represents more than 800,000 federal workers, said Wednesday’s order was “a blatant attempt to corrupt the federal government by eliminating employees’ due process rights so they can be fired for political reasons.”
“The practical implications of this action are clear. Workers who once felt comfortable reporting waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement at their place of employment because they were protected from retaliation will now be afraid for their jobs if they speak out,” he said. “That is a disservice to them and to the millions of Americans who rely on the federal government every day.”
DEMOCRATS SHOULDN’T FOCUS ON ‘CLIMATE CHANGE.” This year has started as the hottest on record. In the United States, the average temperature for the first four months of 2026 was 44.8 degrees, a height unmatched in data that goes back to 1895. But as climate change wreaks havoc at home and abroad, why don’t Americans care that much?
Well, they do care—just maybe not that much about “climate change,” Andrew Mangan noted at DailyKos.com (6/7)
Nearly 9 in 10 Americans say protecting the environment is important, according to a YouGov poll from March. And 62% tell the Pew Research Center that the U.S. and other nations are not doing enough to avoid the worst effects of climate change. And yet, despite that near-universal concern, only 5% call “climate change and the environment” their most important issue, per the latest Economist/YouGov survey.
The economy and inflation are far and away Americans’ greatest concerns, though climate change heavily affects those issues. For instance, a warmer planet means greater use of air-conditioning, which, in turn, means higher electric bills. Droughts and intense storms, both exacerbated by global warming, are raising water bills. Climate change is a pocketbook issue, but Americans struggle to make the connection.
That struggle is highlighted by a February poll from Data for Progress and the Climate and Community Institute, a progressive think tank.
The survey included what’s called a “split sample test,” wherein a random half of respondents are shown one wording of a question and the other half are shown another. In that test, half of respondents—likely voters, in this case—were asked how much they thought “climate change” affected the rising cost of living. Sixty-one percent said it impacted it “greatly” or somewhat,” while 39% said it had little or no impact.
But the other half of the sample didn’t see the words “climate change.” Instead, they were asked how much “issues like natural disasters, heat waves, and prolonged droughts” affected rising cost of living. And opinions were quite different: 80% said those things had an impact, while just 20% said they didn’t.
In fact, the share who said those issues “greatly” affected cost of living (34%) was nearly double the amount who said the same about climate change (19%).
“Climate change” is an abstract issue for many people. But a heat wave isn’t. People fear tornados, hurricanes, and floods. Palpable experiences sway voters better than concepts.
Democrats often make those types of messaging mistakes.
For example, last year, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rallied thousands on a speaking tour. Their message of battling corruption and pushing for an economic revolution to benefit the working class has serious national appeal, even in red areas, where the tour sometimes ventured. However, that tour’s name was not “Fighting Corruption,” “Fighting for the Working Class,” or even “Fighting the 1%.”
It was “Fighting Oligarchy.”
Yes, the word may perfectly describe the Trump administration: “a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes.” But it’s also a word that begs a definition, and it’s coming from a party that has bled support among those without a college degree, a group that makes up a sizable majority of the presidential electorate.
The Democratic presidential candidate has lost support with non-college-educated voters in each election since 2012, according to left-leaning data firm Catalist. It’s dropped across every racial group, with Democratic support falling by more than 10 percentage points since 2012 among Black, Latino, and AAPI voters without a college diploma.
Clearly, the star power of Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez overcame that unwieldy word. But ideally, Democrats would not need to overcome their own messaging at all.
A good counterpoint comes from New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Like Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, he is a democratic socialist dead-set on taking on corporate interests and aiding the working class. But he isn’t tossing out many SAT words.
Instead, during last year’s mayoral campaign, he talked relentlessly about cost-of-living issues. His primary policy planks were two- or three-word phrases: freeze the rent, free buses, build affordable housing, no-cost childcare, and more. He messaged about the cost-of-living crisis with tangible, everyday examples, like the soaring prices found at the city’s ubiquitous halal food trucks—and how he’d fix it. Wittily, he termed that particular issue “halaflation.”
As a result, Mamdani built a young, multiracial, and multicultural coalition. In the general election, he blew out his opponent Andrew Cuomo, the Democrat-turned-independent, in majority-Black and -Hispanic precincts. Seventy-five percent of voters ages 18 to 29 backed him. And even after 100 days in office, which he hit in early April, his approval rating was still 18 points above water, according to a Marist poll.
Mamdani’s simple, relentless, and tangible messaging should be the blueprint for how Democrats, moderates and lefties alike, talk about every issue—including climate change.
DOGE WANTED TO FALSELY LIST MILLIONS OF PEOPLE AS DEAD IN SOCIAL SECURITY DATABASE: WHISTLEBLOWER. A federal whistleblower has revealed plans by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency to falsely list millions of people in the Social Security database as dead in a scheme to pressure them to leave the US.
In an interview published June 5 by the Washington Post, former Social Security Administration (SSA) executive Jeremiah Schofield outlined a DOGE-concocted scheme that would have potentially cut people off from wages, banking, and government benefits by falsely listing them as dead, https://www.commondreams.org/news/social-security-doge-whistleblower(6/5).
Schofield said a DOGE employee told him in a phone call that they wanted to add 2.7 million living people to SSA’s “Death Master File,” cutting them off from essential financial services so they would either leave the country voluntarily or show up to local SSA offices to complain, where they would be promptly arrested.
“That call was one of the most disappointing calls I’ve been in in my 25-year career,” Schofield, who left the SSA in October, told the Post. “I was shocked. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.”
While immigrants were the primary target of the scheme, Schofield said that the list of people created by DOGE included some US citizens and lawful permanent residents.
One anonymous former SSA employee who spoke with the Post outlined the serious ramifications for the 2.7 million people had they been added to the Death Master File.
“If you’re on the [Death Master File] you can’t have a bank account,” they explained, “you can’t get credit, so no apartment, no way to save money, no way to get paid, no way to get on insurance or carry health insurance. It has a ton of devastating effects.”
Schofield said he refused to carry out the DOGE employee’s request after consulting with SSA lawyers who said falsely marking living people as dead would likely be illegal.
The plan was ultimately shelved, and the Trump administration claimed in recent court filings that it has revoked DOGE employees’ access to SSA data.
Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, said that Schofield’s whistleblower report was yet another example of President Donald Trump’s administration abusing its power and weaponizing the federal government.
“Trump ran on a promise to protect Social Security,” Altman said, “but this whistleblower report is the latest evidence of how he really views it: As nothing more than a weapon to wield against his enemies.”
Altman added that removing living people from the database is essentially “financial murder.”
“It means losing access to your bank account, your health insurance, and your credit cards,” Altman explained. “It means getting kicked out of your home. It means that your life is destroyed.”
Whistleblower Aid, the nonprofit legal assistance organization representing Schofield, said their client’s claims show “no one is safe from this type of weaponization of our Social Security data.”
HOUSE GOP, PLUS 4 DEMS, VOTE TO TAKE FOOD AID FROM MILLIONS OF MOMS & KIDS. House Republicans, with the help of four Democrats, voted Thursday to approve legislation that would slash nutrition assistance for millions of young children and pregnant and postpartum women, even as food prices continue to rise nationwide and earlier GOP cuts to federal aid take hold, Jake Johnson noted at CommonDreams.org (6/5).
In a 213-210 vote, largely along party lines, House lawmakers passed an appropriations bill that would fund the US Department of Agriculture and other agencies for the coming fiscal year. The four Dems who voted with most Republicans to approve the measure were Reps. Vicente Gonzalez (Texas), Adam Gray (Calif.), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Wash.), and Don Davis (NC).
The bill, if also passed by the Senate and signed by President Donald Trump, would cut fruit and vegetable benefits that young kids and pregnant and postpartum women receive under the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC).
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) has estimated that the cut would strip modest fruit and vegetable benefits from “nearly 5.4 million toddlers, preschoolers, and pregnant and postpartum WIC participants.” Under current law, CBPP observed, “children receive $26 monthly for fruits and vegetables, pregnant and postpartum participants receive $48, and breastfeeding participants receive $52.”
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said following Thursday’s vote that “while working families struggle to feed their families, Republicans are cutting funding for fruit and vegetable vouchers for women, infants, and children.”
“Working moms are already stretched thin, and Republicans are making it even harder to put dinner on the table,” said DeLauro. “The president’s tariffs have hurt American farmers, and now the Republican plan is to cut off crucial assistance that they have come to rely on even more.”
The House-passed appropriations bill would cut WIC by a total of $200 million compared to current levels, slashing $141 million in funding for fruit and vegetable benefits. The USDA’s website says that WIC “saves lives and improves the health of nutritionally at-risk women, infants, and children,” describing the program as “one of the most successful federally funded nutrition programs in the United States.”
Trump’s USDA chief, Brooke Rollins, has openly celebrated the large-scale loss of federal nutrition aid stemming from the Republican budget package that Trump signed into law last summer. That legislation included unprecedented cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), another highly effective food aid program.
The House vote to cut WIC broadly aligns with the Trump White House’s proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2027—but doesn’t go as far as the president envisioned. The National WIC Association noted that the House bill “cuts WIC’s fruit and vegetable benefits by about 10%, a first step toward an up to 75% cut sought by the White House.”
“The House proposal fails WIC families when they need help most,” said Georgia Machell, president and CEO of the National WIC Association. “It would force WIC to turn away eligible families for the first time in 30 years, breaking Congress’ 30-year bipartisan commitment to full WIC funding. For the families who receive WIC, it chips away at their ability to buy the very fruits and vegetables that federal dietary guidelines say all Americans should eat more of.”
SPINELESS SENATE R’S REFUSE TO BLOCK TRUMP SLUSH FUND. In the wee hours of June 5 Senate Republicans passed a $70 billion immigration enforcement funding bill on a strictly party line vote, handing President Donald Trump’s masked goons billions to continue his violent, inhumane, politically and economically damaging deportation agenda, Emily Singer noted at DailyKos.com (6/5).
What wasn’t included in the funding, however, was any language to limit the nearly $1.8 billion slush fund Trump had previously announced—which sought to dole out taxpayer dollars to people Trump said were victims of former President Joe Biden’s “weaponized” Department of Justice, including the traitors who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
While Senate Republicans had slammed the fund a few weeks ago, railing on acting Attorney General Todd Blanche in a closed-door luncheon about how they thought giving money to Jan. 6 traitors was wrong, they ultimately refused to adopt any amendments that would have officially killed the idea.
Instead, they apparently accepted Trump’s DOJ’s mealymouthed assertion that they will follow a court order that temporarily blocked them from giving out money from the fund.
However, even Trump has been wishy-washy about whether he is actually giving up on the reparations, telling reporters on Wednesday when asked if the fund is dead or just on hold, “I’d have to ask the lawyers. I don’t know.”
“The weaponization fund, as far as I’m concerned, was a beautiful thing,” Trump added. “I love it. I think it’s so important.”
What’s more, the DOJ has since said that they will merely use regular channels to give reparations to insurrectionists and others who helped Trump try to steal the 2020 election.
Yet Republicans folded anyway, refusing to anger their Dear Leader—likely out of fear of being on the receiving end of Trump’s retributive actions.
Ultimately, just three Republicans voted to put limits on the slush fund—GOP Sens. Jon Husted of Ohio, Dan Sullivan of Alaska, and Susan Collins of Maine. That’s far less than the 25 Senate Republicans who spoke out against the corrupt reparations fund at the closed-door luncheon with Blanche.
Notably, all three of the Republicans who voted to limit the fund are up for reelection this fall and facing more competitive races than expected, thanks to Trump’s immense unpopularity. The fact that they voted to block the fund shows they are acting like they know they are vulnerable this fall, confirming recent polling that shows Husted, Sullivan, and Collins trailing their Democratic opponents.
OVER 80% OF US VOTERS SUPPORT ENDING DARK MONEY GRIP ON DEMOCRACY. The Brennan Center for Justice on June 2 published a poll showing that American voters believe the country faces a serious corruption problem, and supermajorities support taking major action to end the role of dark money in US politics, Brad Reed noted at CommonDreams.org (6/4).
The poll, which surveyed 2,000 registered voters across the country, found 79% support “a constitutional amendment to restore limits on money in elections.” The proposal would essentially overturn the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court ruling, which opened the door to unlimited corporate spending in US elections.
The poll further found that 85% of Americans support “mandatory disclosure for all federal campaign contributions and spending”; 81% support “the creation of a new federal ethics enforcer”; and 69% support “a constitutional amendment limiting the president’s pardon power.”
Support for these anti-corruption measures was widespread across both political parties, with 84% of Democrats and 75% of Republicans backing the amendment granting government the power to regulate and limit campaign spending. The proposed mandatory disclosure law drew even more widespread support, with 88% of Democrats and 85% Republicans registering approval.
The poll found Republican voters far less inclined to support proposals that would specifically limit presidential powers, but even in those instances, a majority of Republicans favored a law limiting presidential pardon powers and a law that would let the US Congress and state governments sue the president for alleged violations of the Constitution’s emoluments clause that bars presidents from receiving foreign gifts.
Michael Waldman, president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice, wrote that he was struck by Americans’ widespread support for the poll’s proposed reforms, noting that “it’s hard to find a set of proposals with a wider bipartisan appeal.”
Waldman also noted that voters see corruption as why the government has become unresponsive to key voter concerns about housing and affordability.
“Policymakers should understand that the public’s conception of what has gone wrong goes far deeper than super PACs or White House ballrooms or even slush funds,” he wrote. “To them, it is a system that is fundamentally misfiring. A government that is not performing. And there is a willingness to name names and assign blame.”
‘BLOCK BLANCHE’ CAMPAIGN LAUNCHED AFTER TRUMP SAY’S HE’LL NOMINATE ACTING A.G. TO LEAD DOJ. In a letter to US senators Thursday, more than two dozen legal and advocacy groups expressed their commitment to “the rule of law and the independence of federal law enforcement” as they urged the Senate to reject President Donald Trump’s impending nomination of acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche to officially take the helm of the Department of Justice, Julia Conley noted at CommonDreams.org (6/4).
Considering that Blanche previously directly represented Trump as his defense attorney in three separate criminal cases, said the groups, which form the Not Above the Law Coalition, “Blanche as attorney general would represent a new low, and an unprecedented corruption of the institution itself.”
“In 2023, Blanche left his law firm to become Trump’s personal criminal defense attorney across three concurrent cases: the hush money trial, the federal classified documents case, and matters related to January 6th,” wrote the coalition, which includes Democracy Defenders Fund, End Citizens United, and Public Citizen. “For two years, he had one job: Keep local, state, and federal investigators away from his client Donald Trump, and in particular, to shield Trump from the Justice Department.
“Now he controls that very federal agency,” said the organizations, noting that he still operates as “Trump’s lawyer.”
Since joining the administration—first as deputy attorney general serving alongside former Attorney General Pam Bondi, and then taking over for her in an acting capacity after she was fired—Blanche has refused to recuse himself from all matters pertaining to Trump, considering his former work representing the president; boasted that the FBI “cleaned house” after firing career prosecutors who had been involved in investigating Trump; filed motions to vacate seditious conspiracy convictions of several people who attacked the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021; and created a since-blocked $1.8 billion “slush fund” meant to disburse money to Trump’s allies due to what the president views as unfair prosecutions.
Blanche has also played a major role in weaponizing the DOJ against Trump’s “perceived enemies,” including the Southern Poverty Law Center and former FBI Director James Comey, both of whom he obtained indictments for.
AT LEAST 97 PARDONED INSURRECTIONISTS HAVE BEEN CHARGED WITH OTHER CRIMES: ANALYSIS. On the first day of his second term last year, President Donald Trump delivered a mass pardon to more than 1,500 people who were charged with crimes related to the violent riot at the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Brad Reed noted at CommonDreams.org (6/4).
An analysis published Thursday by Lawfare associate editor Katherine Pompilio finds that at least 97 of these pardoned Trump supporters have been charged with other crimes, including serious alleged offenses such as grand larceny, fraud, and plots to assassinate law enforcement officials and politicians.
The analysis also documents 14 instances of pardoned Capitol rioters being “charged with sex crimes or crimes related to child sexual abuse material (CSAM),” while “at least six” have been charged with domestic violence.
Some of the pardoned rioters have been charged with more minor offenses, including public intoxication, possession of drug paraphernalia, and property damage.
The most notable finding is that at least five of the repeat offenders committed crimes after being freed from prison as a result of Trump’s actions, suggesting that his pardon “may have actively facilitated criminal conduct.”
The most infamous case involves Andrew Paul Johnson, a Capitol rioter who was freed from prison after receiving the Trump pardon and has since been sentenced to life in prison on charges related to child molestation.
“The criminal conduct for which he was convicted took place both before and after his pardon,” the analysis notes.
Other repeat offenders who committed crimes after being freed by Trump were Zachary Alam, who was convicted of felony and grand larceny months after being pardoned, and Ryan Nichols, who was arrest last month for allegedly “threatening a person with a gun in a church parking lot,” the analysis finds.
According to a June 4 report from The New York Times, the Lawfare analysis more than doubles the number of documented instances of pardoned rioters who have been charged with crimes beyond January 6-related offenses.
“A previous study of January 6 recidivism found that at least 40 defendants faced other criminal charges, with 12 taking place after Trump’s clemency order,” reported the Times. “The Lawfare study found 19 criminal cases that occurred after the clemency.”
