From The New York Times:
President Trump announced on Friday afternoon that he would grant “a Full and Complete Pardon” to a former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who, as the center of a sweeping drug case, was found guilty by an American jury last year of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States.
The news came as a shock not only to Hondurans, but also to the authorities in the United States who had built a major case and won a conviction against Mr. Hernández. They had accused him of taking bribes during his campaign from Joaquín Guzmán, the notorious former leader of the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico known as “El Chapo,” and of running his Central American country like a narco state.
The judge in his case, P. Kevin Castel, had called Mr. Hernández “a two-faced politician hungry for power” who masqueraded as an antidrug crusader while partnering with traffickers. And prosecutors had asked the judge to make sure Mr. Hernández would die behind bars, citing his abuse of power, connections to violent traffickers and “the unfathomable destruction” caused by cocaine.
Yep, you can buy your own justice, as Mr. Hernández had presumably grown rich from his corrupting ways.
But it may be worth considering President Trump’s pardon as indicative of a belief system in which, if you can exhibit sufficient wealth, then you should be above the law. For Trump supporters, the question then is whether you want to live in such a world. Mankind without constraining laws is apt to corruption of one kind or another. See the Epstein Files controversy.
