Mercy for Sale: Inside Trump's Pardon Machine, with TrueAnon's Brace Belden

What do Darryl Strawberry, NBA YoungBoy and a plastic-surgery "slush fund" have in common? They're all beneficiaries of the president's cottage industry to sell access, buy freedom and redefine the meaning of crime. We explore an exclusive social network of dustbin characters, including a heavenly visit with Mel Gibson and Pete Rose. • Subscribe to "TrueAnon" https://pod.link/1474001390 with Brace Belden Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Pablo Torre?

  Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today, we're gonna find out what this sound is.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  I feel like after you die, you should be pardoned. You know, like after you-

• 0:12Pablo Torre?

  (laughing) Right after this ad.

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• 0:48Pablo Torre?

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• 1:32Pablo Torre?

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• 1:57Pablo Torre?

  In general, like what you do with your free time remains one of my favorite running subplots.

• 2:03Speaker 01

  I like to go to places.

• 2:05Pablo Torre?

  Well, okay, I think you were being here, by the way, Brace.

• 2:06Speaker 01

  Are we recording?

• 2:07Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 2:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, yeah, why not?

• 2:09Pablo Torre?

  On Instagram over the holidays, what were you doing?

• 2:13Speaker 01

  I was in España.

• 2:14Pablo Torre?

  You were?

• 2:14Speaker 01

  I was, yeah.

• 2:16Pablo Torre?

  At an ancient church?

• 2:18Speaker 01

  I went to a little midnight mass.

• 2:20Pablo Torre?

  Oh, man, you were doing what? You were drinking from the chalice of Catholicism.

• 2:24Speaker 01

  I was, except I'm assuming. No, I actually do have some experience with-

• 2:28Pablo Torre?

  You were Passion of the Christ thing.

• 2:29Speaker 01

  Well, I have some experience with religion in the Philippines.

• 2:32Pablo Torre?

  God, that's a whole other [bleep] episode we gotta do at some point.

• 2:35Speaker 01

  But I've told you this, I've said this a million times. My number one goal is to get into heaven. I don't care about being nice to people. I don't care about not stealing from people. I don't care about hurting people. I want to go to heaven. And I will figure out the best and easiest way to get there. So I'm looking into, I'm talking about Zoroastrians. I'm talking about, I'm flirting with Sufism a little bit. Obviously Catholicism, I understand that one seems like you can maybe buy it at some point.

• 2:58Pablo Torre?

  Uh huh.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  But I'm trying to figure out what some of these other ones, like Baptist is. What is that? We don't know. Or the snake ones. Or even what is going on, because what if it's the Amish? And we don't know that. I have to go spend time with them. Smoke a little [bleep] meth with those ones they let out out of the farm when they're 16. I would love to sell a 16-year-old Amish boy meth. Get him tweaked. Not anything more than that. But it was, because I'd sell it to him and I'd leave. I don't want to talk to him, because I don't want to hear about eggs or whatever for eight hours. And I'm saying like, so I'm saying, I'm exploring all the world's religion. It's just, and I don't mean any disrespect, Christianity is by far the easiest one. And so I'm starting there.

• 3:38Pablo Torre?

  So this is gonna be an episode about the closest thing our country offers to divine intervention. To an American afterlife of sorts. For anybody who has committed federal crimes and/or fraud of any size or shape. Which, by the way, this administration does lately say they are very concerned about. Which is to say that this is going to be an episode about the presidential pardon. A real life get out of jail free card for those desperate to go from hell to heaven, which has healthily been commodified more than ever before. The themes of mercy and salvation.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  Clemency.

• 4:18Pablo Torre?

  Clemency. I've been thinking about this stuff because last June, I had a fascinating in-person conversation with a source, an attorney I already knew through his work on various sports investigations. And this attorney told me very casually that he'd also been working with Trump World on pardon applications.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 4:39Pablo Torre?

  I should admit that you're not the first choice guest we had here today.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  That's interesting to admit.

• 4:43Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, I mean, I just, yeah, transparency is also a virtue.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  It's okay. That that Christmas Eve service changed me, you're forgiven.

• 4:51Pablo Torre?

  But if you were wondering why our honored guest, Brace Belden, has returned to our studio without his true anon co-host, Liz Franchak, his fellow Epstein expert, who also tends to make up for Brace's profound lack of sports knowledge. Liz is herself, much like a Christian miracle with child.

• 5:10Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, the angel came down to her and said, you will have John the Baptist. And and she's pregnant with John the Baptist.

• 5:19Pablo Torre?

  Which means that Brace, who often journeys through MAGA's social network, their rallies, their art shows, in person himself, will be calling upon his own research and experience in this episode. Although we should pause to acknowledge here that a president using the power of the pardon for personal reasons, as opposed to, you know, the public interest, did not start with Donald Trump.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, that did not start with Trump. People have been doing that, listen, it's a technically a monarchical thing, right? Like it comes from the monarchy. I don't know if monarchical is the right word to use there, where you would sort of excuse your friends and family from getting in trouble, specifically your family.

• 5:55Pablo Torre?

  I wanted Hunter here. That's who the first choice was.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:58Pablo Torre?

  Hunter Biden was unfortunately not available.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  Well, I'll say this, I have smoked crack and enjoyed it. I'm, I wouldn't call myself a crackhead. I would never, I would never, and that's valor I won't steal. I don't, I clearly didn't enjoy it as much as some people, you know?

• 6:13Pablo Torre?

  Not with that attitude.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  No, but I don't have any regrets and he seems like he's a regretful guy, which I think is fake. Because if you've ever smoked crack, you'd realize you can look back on those times, you'd say you might do things differently now. But at the time, it was the right thing to do.

• 6:26Pablo Torre?

  But Donald Trump, the thing that makes him unique, I think.

• 6:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 6:29Pablo Torre?

  Is that he is addicted to pardoning people.

• 6:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 6:33Pablo Torre?

  I mean, the numbers since March 2025 alone, approximately, he's granted roughly 1,600 presidential pardons.

• 6:39Speaker 01

  Interesting, the same address as the White House.

• 6:41Pablo Torre?

  Hmm.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  Right?

• 6:43Pablo Torre?

  That's right.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  Sounds right to me.

• 6:45Pablo Torre?

  See, I went like immediately to like, oh, the perfect SAT score.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  But it's interesting, that's, yeah, that's because, and I'm not, I don't mean it like this.

• 6:51Pablo Torre?

  Say it.

• 6:52Speaker 01

  It is due to you being Asian.

• 6:53Pablo Torre?

  That's right.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:54Pablo Torre?

  We were all thinking.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  But are Filipinos like that?

• 6:57Pablo Torre?

  This question is somehow more offensive than the previous question.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 7:00Pablo Torre?

  Right, right, right, right. So I want to say that the difference that my source, my Trump world lawyer source, impressed upon me is that, look, the economy, what he called the cottage industry around this, in which a social network of people are selling access and successfully buying freedom.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 7:20Pablo Torre?

  It's fucking wild.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  It is, I will say this, and I'm not going to pretend that like there hasn't been at times more blatant than other times, but corruption throughout the presidential system since the beginning of it, right?

• 7:32Pablo Torre?

  Of course.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  The second Trump term has been crazy to see because I think unlike any other point in human history, first of all, the president has a crypto firm.

• 7:43Pablo Torre?

  Yes, which figures into this story too.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it does. And they just don't care. And it's like also the president has gone through years of sort of shockingly ineffective legal problems during the Biden years. And I guess the tail end of his own administration, or his own first administration. And he's out for revenge and he has not made any bones about it. He's like, I am getting revenge. And there's a through line with almost all of the pardons, which he's like, this person was targeted by government, which is interesting because that's generally what happens when the Department of Justice comes after you because it is a part of the government.

• 8:15Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, when the thing that you're resentful of is the entire apparatus of justice.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:20Pablo Torre?

  Plausibly, all of these things can speak to your personal plight.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I will say though, like something that was sort of shocking to me during the Biden interregnum between one and two. Is how bad the cases against Trump were. Like the 32, 34 counts he got here, like, nobody cared.

• 8:37Pablo Torre?

  Too many counts.

• 8:38Speaker 01

  And it was like the events of Stormy Daniels stuff.

• 8:40Pablo Torre?

  It's the bed of nails theory for counts.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly.

• 8:44Pablo Torre?

  It's just like, we can't, we can't pay attention. And I think part of like the poetry of this is that this guy who seems to be possessing antibodies to legal consequence is now spreading them handpicked to people that get the ultimate thing you can hope for in anything resembling a constitutional republic.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:07Pablo Torre?

  Which is, hey, you did federal crime, now you didn't.

• 9:11Speaker 01

  You're good. And even better, some of them don't have to pay back money.

• 9:14Pablo Torre?

  So the restitution part I want to get to as well.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:17Pablo Torre?

  But my first question to my Trump World Lawyer Fred source, what does it cost to legally undo a conviction and criminal record in the federal government? And he was like, oh, yeah, you know, seven figures, maybe your lawyer, like sometimes eight, you know? And of course, there's a range.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:31Pablo Torre?

  There are some six-figure ones, but he's like, yeah, if you average it all out, we're talking about, you know, a million bucks, let's say, depending on, on the case.

• 9:38Speaker 01

  That seems about right to me.

• 9:39Pablo Torre?

  But I should also say, as we now try to illustrate this with case studies, which is why we have a folder here, we got some stuff that I want to show you. As a non-ball knower.

• 9:49Speaker 01

  Myself.

• 9:50Pablo Torre?

  Yes. I should also acknowledge that we did try to book someone else, not just Hunter Biden, but a man by the name of Darryl Strawberry.

• 9:58Speaker 01

  Really?

• 9:59Pablo Torre?

  Do you know who Darryl Strawberry is?

• 10:00Speaker 01

  No, but he's got a delicious name.

• 10:04Pablo Torre?

  So Daryl.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  Darryl Strawberry, is he a basketball player?

• 10:07Pablo Torre?

  Darryl Strawberry, you're so close.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  It's another ball.

• 10:11Pablo Torre?

  So Darryl Strawberry's son, DJ, is a basketball player, but Daryl, the original. He is one of the great young sluggers in Major League Baseball history.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 10:21Pablo Torre?

  He won a World Series with the Mets in 1986. His Hall of Fame would-be trajectory was infamously derailed by, you guessed it, cocaine.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 10:30Pablo Torre?

  And alcohol addiction.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  Wait, he, what, how was it derailed?

• 10:33Pablo Torre?

  Did you have to do coke with Darryl Strawberry and not realize?

• 10:36Speaker 01

  With Darryl Strawberry, first of all, I want, I've got a lot to say about cocaine. Because being addicted to coke, no disrespect, and drinking alcohol and being a great.

• 10:46Speaker 01

  Baseball player in New York in the 1980s after winning World Series?

• 10:50Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  So what, they just didn't give him the Hall of Fame stuff because he's having too much fun?

• 10:54Pablo Torre?

  Well, over time, unfortunately, the the combination you described seemed to undermine his performance in the end.

• 11:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I can see that.

• 11:01Pablo Torre?

  So Daryl in 1995, the same year he was, incidentally, a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice, was indicted on three counts of tax evasion.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 11:10Pablo Torre?

  He pled guilty to one count of tax evasion. It was a failure to report income from autographs and memorabilia sales. The next year, this is 96, he pleads guilty to no contest to charges of possession of cocaine and soliciting a prostitute in Tampa.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  I think that those charges have probably often accompanied one another.

• 11:29Pablo Torre?

  Well, do you have a guess, this is 1996, who the assistant state attorney in Tampa was at the time?

• 11:36Speaker 01

  That is not, ah, is that gonna be, I feel like Pam Bondi is too young and beautiful for that.

• 11:43Pablo Torre?

  She is just young and beautiful enough.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  Pamela Bondi?

• 11:46Pablo Torre?

  The one and only.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  Wow. Also, great name for a prosecutor, right? So she busted Mr. Strawberry?

• 11:53Pablo Torre?

  So she actually advocated for prison time for Darryl Strawberry.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  For coke?

• 11:56Pablo Torre?

  Well, for his repeated violations, as described in various reports. But the judge ultimately sentenced him in 2000 to a treatment program. And so, Godspeed to Darryl Strawberry. He's now a minister. He is remaking his life. Anyhow, November 7th, 2025.

• 12:13Speaker 03

  President Donald Trump is pardoning baseball legend Darryl Strawberry. Strawberry is a three-time World Series champ and eight-time MLB All-Star, who also pleaded guilty to felony tax evasion in the 90s for failing to report $350,000 in incomes that he got from autographs, personal appearances, and sales of memorabilia. He served 11 months for that crime. Strawberry thanked the president in a post on social media.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  Thank you, President Real Donald Trump, for my full pardon and for finalizing this part of my life, allowing me to be truly free and clean from all my past.

• 12:46Pablo Torre?

  He goes on to post that this has nothing to do with politics. It's about a man, President Trump, caring deeply for a friend. God used him as a vessel to set me free forever.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  Pause.

• 12:57Pablo Torre?

  So what I did was I went on Instagram, the platform where I was watching you and also watching this. This is in November and I DM'd Darryl Strawberry inviting him onto the show. And he said-

• 13:08Speaker 01

  Maybe at some point. And he hits you with a strawberry.

• 13:11Pablo Torre?

  The strawberry emoji is his move.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 13:15Pablo Torre?

  If only we could all have an equivalent move.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  I mean, my God, it's crazy to have your last name be Strawberry. It's like being named Michael Pineapple or something. It's crazy, Strawberry. But did you, there was no follow-up?

• 13:30Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, no, as I contemplated what it's like to be Jim Eggplant. No, I was, I was, I was waiting and waiting and then I called you. So that's why you're here, but there is a part of Darryl Strawberry's IG post that has been largely overlooked. This was big news in sports, of course. And this part actually comes after his signature strawberry emoji.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  I'm free. I'm free. I'm so humble and thankful, Strawberry, hands clasp in prayer. Thanks, in quotes, Larry Glick, one. Love you, brother. And then I love, that's my favorite emoji, the pointing one. Yeah, of course.

• 14:05Pablo Torre?

  The point.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  And then, of course, we have Johnny Damon with the double-handed, my five.

• 14:10Pablo Torre?

  Just a resplendent Johnny Damon with both hands in here.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  Who's Larry Glick?

• 14:15Pablo Torre?

  So this is the question. At Larry underscore Glick one. It's a guy I hadn't heard about, which is why I'm so excited to bring him up to you. Because we went and looked up who Larry Glick is. And the account belongs to the Executive Vice President of Strategic Development at the Trump Organization.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 14:32Pablo Torre?

  Larry Glick, also the head of Trump Golf.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 14:36Pablo Torre?

  So he's responsible for acquiring land, developing golf courses and hotels, managing the marketing for all of Trump's golf properties. His Instagram account, the most recent thing we saw was him like wishing happy birthday to Eric Trump. He's like hanging out. And so Darryl Strawberry didn't provide any other detail on the dynamic between him and Larry outside of that thanks in quotes in all caps. And so we had to dig through the internet and we found exactly one interview where he happened to touch on any of this. And so Brace, I would like you to do me the honor of now reading as you continue to play the role of Darryl Strawberry.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  I would love to. It's the role of a lifetime.

• 15:13Pablo Torre?

  As asked by MLBbro.com.

• 15:17Speaker 01

  Obviously, I've known President Trump for a long time, dating back to my days playing in New York. He's always been gracious and kind to me since that time. I have a dear friend, Larry Glick, who worked for his company and I was telling him about my story at a friend's house about being locked up. Pam Bondi was the prosecutor who had me locked up. I never said anything bad about her, and I never will. Glick said, "No kidding. Why didn't you say anything?" I said, "I don't need to say anything. My life is good." He said, "Oh, no. I'm going to talk to the president and I'm going to tell him that he needs to pardon Darryl Strawberry. You don't have to do that." And he said, "Yeah, I'm going to tell him that because he loves you." I never thought anything else about it. I guess it came about, he told me, and here I am. President Trump did it.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  If you had a friend who could pardon somebody, wouldn't you like wanna like, kind of impress one of your famous criminal friends by getting them pardoned? My question is, though, if he's been free for 20 years, and it doesn't sound like he did much time in the first place, seems like he got basically diversion. It seems like, what the [bleep] is the point of the pardon?

• 16:20Pablo Torre?

  That's kind of the point, I think, is that Darryl Strawberry wasn't really petitioning for one.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:25Pablo Torre?

  He didn't seem to insist on getting it.

• 16:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:28Pablo Torre?

  And he had this guy Larry Glick who was like, "You know what? This is a cool thing that I, as guy close to Trump, can flex about." And it happened.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  I don't blame, uh, Mr. Strawberry for thinking that it was, I mean, because perhaps it was, for God's will for this to happen, because if you're just going through your life and all of a sudden this guy Larry Glick you've been hanging out with is like, "Hey, why don't I get you pardoned for any past crimes you've done, even if it doesn't really affect you anymore?" You're just like, "Okay, thank you." And thank you, God, for putting Larry Glick in my life.

• 17:00Pablo Torre?

  I'm just thinking of like Johnny Damon putting his hands up, like, yes, this is testimony.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  I'm picturing Jiminy Glick this entire time as I'm saying this.

• 17:09Pablo Torre?

  But the whole thing is, it's a social network.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 17:13Pablo Torre?

  And that's sort of the recurring theme, both in our show, it turns out, this year, and in this story, which is that, yes, there are people who have jobs, who are supposed to oversee the process of how you dispense the most valuable pieces of constitutional forgiveness. And in the meantime, there's a bunch of guys who are like, you know what, I know a guy. I can get you that.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  It's interesting. It does feel like it's probably worth your money more to hire a cheap lawyer that has access to Mar-a-Lago than an expensive lawyer who just hangs out in DC.

• 17:42Pablo Torre?

  There is a person, by the way, whose job is, of course, US Pardon Attorney.

• 17:46Speaker 01

  Oh, yes.

• 17:47Pablo Torre?

  And I want to get to who has that job now, but I first need to establish the person who had that job until last March, when all of these pardons kind of started happening. And for your sake, she's also named Liz.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  Oh, easy then. Thank God.

• 18:19Pablo Torre?

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• 18:53Speaker 04

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• 19:57Pablo Torre?

  So in the absence of your co-host Liz, we found another Liz, and this Liz has a particular perspective that'll help us understand the story.

• 20:05Speaker 05

  I'm Liz Oyer. I spent much of my career as a public defender, and I spent the last three years until March, serving as the pardon attorney for the Department of Justice.

• 20:14Pablo Torre?

  Unfortunately, though, Grace, despite that very long distinguished career with the DOJ, Liz Oyer is probably most known for something else.

• 20:23Speaker 05

  Actually, one of the worst parts of this whole ordeal is that I now feel like, to the extent anyone knows who I am, it's in connection with Mel Gibson. Like, my name is somehow tied to his for all of time. To the extent that I have any legacy, it's going to be a legacy that is associated with Mel Gibson. Like, oh, you're the woman who got fired over Mel Gibson's guns. And I just really hate that.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  But I also remember Mel Gibson's domestic violence thing was way crazier

• 20:51Pablo Torre?

  Yes!

• 20:52Speaker 01

  than regular even domestic violence. It was like the phone calls.

• 20:57Pablo Torre?

  The phone calls? And so, okay, 2011, Mel Gibson gets convicted of battery and sentenced to probation and community service after this infamous domestic violence investigation involving his ex-girlfriend and a website, radaronline.com.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  Yes, which Jeffrey Epstein once tried to purchase.

• 21:15Pablo Torre?

  Huh.

• 21:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:16Pablo Torre?

  Well, on radaronline.com, there is a series, like this endless series seemingly, of leaked recordings in which a man alleged to be Mel Gibson said, I think, you know, just some pretty standard stuff.

• 21:32Speaker 06

  And if you get raped by a pack your fault, alright? Because you provoked it. You are provocatively dressed all the time with your fake boobs. You feel you have to show off in tight outfits and tight pants and stuff. You see your from behind and that green thing today was enough. That's provocative, okay?

• 21:55Speaker 01

  My people, of course, have significant influence upon the industry that I don't know what Mel is short for. Melium Gibson works it. And of course, he broke free of our grasp with the Passion of the Christ, with the amazing Jim Caviezel as as Jesus Christ. Not sure if you're familiar with his work, but he is really truly something.

• 22:16Pablo Torre?

  Oh, Jim Caviezel? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 22:19Speaker 01

  But Mel, Mel has, at least he didn't mention us in that one.

• 22:23Speaker 07

  You need medication.

• 22:25Speaker 06

  I need a woman, not a little girl with a dysfunctional.

• 22:33Speaker 06

  I need a woman.

• 22:37Speaker 06

  I don't need medication. You need a fat side of the head.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  I, that's like a guy you'd imitate doing that. Like if you were pretending to be an insane guy calling a lady to threaten her, you would be doing that and it would be seen as over the top if it was performed on like a television show.

• 22:53Pablo Torre?

  And so Liz Oyer, US Pardon Attorney, is getting this request from Pam Bondi being like, hey, can this guy have his guns back?

• 23:01Speaker 05

  And he wrote a letter to the Attorney General through his lawyers asking that she reinstate his gun rights. And I was told, you know, well, Mel Gibson's a personal friend of the president. The president made him an ambassador to Hollywood, which is not a real ambassadorship, by the way. But there is a lot of data out there that shows that it is very dangerous for people with domestic violence history to own guns. It makes it much more likely that domestic violence incidents will turn fatal. So I was not able to make that recommendation.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  It's interesting because he does actually threaten her, not just to hit her. He says that you need to be hit with a bat.

• 23:36Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  Which I would say that line alone would probably make me be hesitant to return gun rights to him.

• 23:45Speaker 05

  I was invited several times to reconsider my refusal to make that recommendation. I was actually in a meeting on a Friday afternoon and my deputy came into the room and sort of frantically pulled me out of this meeting with about 25 people and told me that there were security officers back in my office waiting to fire me and walk me out of the building. And that was the end of my career at the Department of Justice.

• 24:10Pablo Torre?

  So spoiler alert, the kicker in all of this, as Liz Oyer gets fired and her career ends over her refusal to give the Christ-like werewolf we were just listening to his guns back, is that Pam Bondi just went ahead and did it anyway?

• 24:25Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 24:26Speaker 05

  The reason that I was asked, I believe, is because as a career official, it would give some sort of legitimacy or the appearance of legitimacy to what was really a political favor for a friend of the president. So that's why they wanted me to do it. But at the end of the day, they didn't need me to do it. And in fact, Pam Bondi went ahead and did it on her own.

• 24:44Pablo Torre?

  And they just said, [BLEEP] it. And they went and found a person who would do such things in replacement of Liz Oyer. And this brings us to a man that I need you to help explain to America.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  Eagle Ed Martin.

• 24:59Pablo Torre?

  Eagle Ed Martin.

• 25:01Speaker 01

  Now, Ed Martin is a relative newcomer on the scene. You know, Trump won, I think, had some pretty prominent guys around him that dressed in strange ways. Obviously, Steve Bannon with his many collars, Roger Stone, who is, once you find out he's a swinger who lives in Florida, everything sort of gets into place. But he's sort of the steampunk swinger.

• 25:24Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, like a dark wing duck style, polyamorous kind of gentleman.

• 25:30Speaker 01

  Yes, like he would be involved in a foursome style thing, but in like a hot air balloon that is like also maybe a jet attached to it. He's strange, certainly, he's a strange individual. With Ed Martin, Ed Martin kind of came up in the interregnum. He was a, just like a GOP, a state-level sort of GOP lackey. He ran for office a couple of times and failed. And then after January 6th, which we just passed the anniversary of.

• 25:56Pablo Torre?

  How did you celebrate?

• 25:57Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I made a January 6th board game several years ago with some friends.

• 26:02Pablo Torre?

  How do you win?

• 26:04Speaker 01

  You win by getting away. You win by getting off on a helicopter.

• 26:09Pablo Torre?

  What are the pieces you could be?

• 26:11Speaker 01

  You can be the shaman, you can be just like a Proud Boy, you can be the little old lady with the flag, even though she wasn't actually there, that was from a different incident. Or you can be the Capitol Police.

• 26:20Pablo Torre?

  AKA, you could be anyone in the constituency of one Eagle Ed Martin.

• 26:25Speaker 01

  Exactly. And so Ed Martin kind of came to prominence by coming out, you know, Trump was a bandit, right? Everybody left him. Everybody left him. Kind of like Jesus Christ. Actually, that didn't really happen to Jesus Christ, did it?

• 26:39Pablo Torre?

  Well, he wasn't betrayed.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, but like one guy. Everyone else was like, "That's our [bleep] guy still." You know what I mean? But imagine if Jesus Christ, instead of having one Judas, had basically a million Judases.

• 26:50Pablo Torre?

  Yes, the Judas Department.

• 26:51Speaker 01

  Judas Department. Every guy was like, "You [bleep] Sean Hannity." It's just Sean Hannity, so I'm thinking of, like, all these people after January 6th were like, "We don't even know Trump. He's not our guy. [bleep] him."

• 27:00Pablo Torre?

  Yes, everyone decided surely this is the moment to finally cut loose.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  Exactly. But Ed Martin said no.

• 27:08Speaker 08

  Thank you for standing with all of the patriots next to you. And thank you for standing for our president. But remember, what they're stealing is not just an election.

• 27:22Speaker 01

  He said, "I'm gonna start acting crazy in defense of Donald Trump." And he actually came, he's a lawyer. And, and he was sort of the heir to Phyllis Schlafly.

• 27:31Pablo Torre?

  What a, what a character in her own right.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. And, uh, which is how he gets the name. From, from her group, I think it's like the Eagle Forum.

• 27:39Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  And, uh, so he's Eagle Ed Martin, even though he was only the president for one year before a terrible split in the Schlafly-Flemly, uh, led him to seek.

• 27:46Pablo Torre?

  The Schlafly-

• 27:47Speaker 01

  It's a tough name to say.

• 27:48Pablo Torre?

  Flemly.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  It's a tough name to say.

• 27:50Pablo Torre?

  But it is, it is a prominent conservative, like, coaching tree.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 27:56Pablo Torre?

  Activists.

• 27:56Speaker 01

  Yes. Uh, so he, he starts getting on CNN. He's fired for being racist, unfortunately, because of woke. But I think he was pretty directly, fairly racist. And he started representing a couple of January 6th- Political prisoners in their trials. I think one guy was a Proud Boy and then another guy named Joseph Padilla, who was a somewhat poor scene prison guard who was also present on that day and who himself did not want to be subject to the same mercies that I'm sure he's objected others to.

• 28:27Pablo Torre?

  So I should point out that because of his fidelity to Donald Trump, everyone else abandoned him. He was, very importantly, nominated for the job of US Attorney. Like, so Trump nominates him to be the chief prosecutor in Washington DC.

• 28:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 28:42Pablo Torre?

  But he is the kind of character that is so important to understand in this story because he is so extreme that Trump actually couldn't ram him through.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  I think he's acting US Attorney for DC for a little bit and he spends most of his time writing open letters to Elon Musk, supporting Elon and being like, if your Doge guys need, you know, backup, I'll send my guys over. It's unclear if he had guys to send over. And then writing letters to Wikipedia threatening to sue them. Wikipedia every couple of months becomes like a big thing on the right that they want to sue them or it's unfair or whatever. He would wake up every day, look at what trending topics were going on in like right-wing podcast Twitter and then write an official-looking but poorly-written letter in support of sort of the topic du jour of the day.

• 29:29Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 29:30Speaker 01

  He was unfortunately unable to be rammed through.

• 29:34Pablo Torre?

  Well, one of the guys that came up in the vetting of Eagle Ed was this guy Timothy Hale Cusinelli, who was a convicted January 6th rioter, who, according to court records, quote, "held longstanding white supremacist and Nazi beliefs." And by that, they mean he wore a Hitler mustache, apparently allegedly told his coworkers that, quote, "Hitler should have finished the job." And then was hugged by Ed Martin at some sort of ceremony. And Ed Martin, Eagle Ed, told the audience that one of his goals was, quote, "to make sure that the world and especially America hears more from Tim Hale because he's extraordinary."

• 30:11Speaker 01

  I hope you'll join me in welcoming Tim Hale. Tim, welcome to the program. How are you, sir?

• 30:16Speaker 09

  I'm doing very well, Ed. Thank you for having me on. It's an honor.

• 30:19Speaker 10

  Yeah, thanks, Tim. But first, let me ask the question. I'm down here in the swamp. You're home in New Jersey. But there's a lot of talk of the DC Gulag, the prison.

• 30:31Pablo Torre?

  And I think you get something resembling the gist.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  It's interesting. I think Ed Martin is stupid. I read his, I'm a subscriber to his Substack.

• 30:40Pablo Torre?

  I just subscribed.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  It's, it's something else.

• 30:43Pablo Torre?

  They're very short posts.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  He's stupid. It's why. I think he's stupid. I, you know, it's, sometimes I think maybe I'm stupid because I, I think guys like this are stupid because he's a lawyer, he's in office. But then I'm like, no, I think he's actually like a stupid guy that you would like meet on the street who's too stupid to like move out of the way or like can't do something, you know, can't open a door. Like, I would say, I would pay money for someone to follow Ed Martin around with a video camera and every time he opens a door to turn it on and see how he struggles with it. And I'm saying this to somebody who struggled to get into the student.

• 31:09Pablo Torre?

  You did struggle to open the door.

• 31:10Speaker 01

  Well, it was a difficult door.

• 31:12Pablo Torre?

  Now, the door that Ed Martin ended up walking through.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 31:17Pablo Torre?

  Because he couldn't be U.S. Attorney, was Liz Oyer's office door.

• 31:21Speaker 01

  Yes. So he has replaced that woman, Liz Oyer.

• 31:24Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  And he is now the U.S. Pardon Attorney.

• 31:28Pablo Torre?

  And so he's the guy, by the way, who, relatedly in all of this, tweeted when Darryl Strawberry was pardoned in November, quote, "Good morning, America. How are you?" With a photo of Darryl Strawberry playing for the Yankees on a baseball card.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  Amazing. He is, he is also, and maybe we can get into this a little later, but he, he came to Brooklyn not too long ago.

• 31:50Pablo Torre?

  What was he here to do?

• 31:51Speaker 01

  He was dressed like Columbo for some reason, even though he doesn't always dress like that. But he was wearing, I believe, a little bit of a tan trench coat. Maybe I filled this into my mind. And he was taking selfies outside of Letitia James's house.

• 32:02Pablo Torre?

  Mmm.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  And Ed Martin was, was sort of sent after, even though he's the Pardon Attorney, he apparently was in some sort of maybe legal group chat with one of our favorite guys, sponsor of the show, Bill Pulte.

• 32:13Pablo Torre?

  Ugh.

• 32:14Speaker 01

  Looking into mortgage fraud, because that's how they were going after Letitia James, I think James Comey, everybody.

• 32:20Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  I think a lot of failures on that front. I don't think they've gotten very far.

• 32:24Pablo Torre?

  Well, his whole, like, slogan is "No MAGA Left Behind."

• 32:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 32:28Pablo Torre?

  He referred to January 6th as, I believe, Mardi Gras.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  Oh, interesting.

• 32:31Pablo Torre?

  An American Mardi Gras. And he does love sifting through documents, it seems, but he's not sifting through, like Liz Oyer called, the stacks of thousands of pieces of mail that she used to go through, like pardon applications.

• 32:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:45Speaker 05

  Martin appears to have been involved in the pardon of this sheriff in Virginia named Scott Jenkins, who was selling badges for cash. He appears to have been involved in the pardon of an elected official in Nevada named Michelle Fiore. She was raising money to build a memorial to a fallen police officer killed in the line of duty, and she spent the money on plastic surgery. She got a full pardon from Donald Trump without spending a day in prison. She's off the hook because she's a big vocal MAGA booster. So that has been Martin's contribution to the pardon power. He literally sits in my old chair, which blows my mind every time I think about it.

• 33:25Pablo Torre?

  I hadn't heard before of a fallen police officer memorial turning into your personal plastic surgery slush fund.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, you know, obviously what I'm looking up right now is Michelle Fiore, before and after. And she is a, she is, it's...

• 33:43Pablo Torre?

  How'd that go? Was it worth it?

• 33:45Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I assumed it was gonna be a sort of Mar-a-Lago face transformation. I'm gonna be honest here, it does appear that it was maybe targeted on other parts of her body.

• 33:54Pablo Torre?

  Like Barry Bonds, she had various performance enhancements.

• 33:56Speaker 01

  Exactly. But, you know, I actually hadn't heard of this either, but there is an incredible trend of MAGA people just ripping other MAGA people off. I don't know, it's heartwarming. They just don't give a [bleep]. And they're, they're really forgiving. Like Steve Bannon was accused of ripping a ton of people off for this build the wall thing. Remember, it's like, the wall never got built. They just like, give each other money for things that don't happen, and then they get in legal trouble, and then they get forgiven.

• 34:21Pablo Torre?

  Right. And so in this case, the forgiveness, the stuff that he is sort of the big vector for is under the label of, let's say, politically motivated persecutions.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 34:30Pablo Torre?

  That's like his deal. What my Trump board lawyer source guy also pointed out is that, of course, there's also Alice Johnson, who's the pardon czar. That's her job that Trump invented. She herself was granted clemency by Trump. And in that category, I mean...

• 34:46Pablo Torre?

  I guess NBA Youngboy is one of them.

• 34:48Speaker 11

  Baton Rouge rapper NBA Youngboy was also pardoned by President Trump. He took to social media about his pardon, saying, quote, "This moment means a lot. It opens the door to a future I've worked hard for, and I am fully prepared to step into this." The rapper's legal troubles multiplied when he was implicated in unrelated charges in Utah, including a prescription drug fraud ring.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I saw that boozy badass is trying to get a pardon as well.

• 35:16Pablo Torre?

  So that's another vector here. But I think the point that I want to establish is, that's not even how you really do this if you really want a pardon.

• 35:26Speaker 05

  Unfortunately, there are now about 19,000 people whose applications are piled up at the Office of the Pardon Attorney, where I used to work, and it seems like they're just being ignored while people with political connections or wealth are going straight to the White House, straight to the President, to seek pardons. And they are getting pardons generally not based on merit, but based on political donations or connections that they're able to leverage with people in the President's inner circle.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  I had read that, for the most part, pardons come through the pardon attorney. However, in the second Trump administration,

• 36:04Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 36:05Speaker 01

  I think only like 10 applications have gone through, 10 of the pardons have gone through the pardon attorney.

• 36:09Pablo Torre?

  So ProPublica reported this. Only 10 of roughly 1,600 people granted pardons had even filed petitions to Ed Martin's office, which is [bleep] crazy.

• 36:20Speaker 01

  Well, he might not be able to read.

• 36:23Speaker 01

  You know what I mean?

• 36:35Speaker 04

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• 37:39Pablo Torre?

  So by Trump world source, as well as various other people now in these articles are pointing out like, yeah, if we want pardons, we're not filing these applications. What we're doing is we're trying to go directly as closely as we can to the office of the White House Counsel, to Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. We're climbing inside of Roger Stone's, you know, 16 buttoned, double-breasted suit, trying to like get really close personally to the President. And so, yeah, as Liz Oyer points out, the whole profile of who's in the pipeline takes on a very different flavor.

• 38:11Speaker 05

  Unfortunately, the clemency process, as it has worked for over 100 years, has really been turned upside down. It's been turned on its head. All of the traditional standards for getting a pardon have fallen by the wayside, and the traditional vetting process is no longer being used. Right now, under Donald Trump, people are hiring lawyers and lobbyists and paying them hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars to seek pardons on their behalf. That is not normal. In ordinary times, the overwhelming majority of people seeking clemency do not even have lawyers representing them. That has totally changed under Donald Trump. There has cropped up this sort of pardon economy where lawyers and lobbyists

• 38:55Speaker 05

  with connections to his circle are profiting immensely. And as a result, the pardon process has really closed off to ordinary people who can't afford this special access, and it's become a free

• 39:08Pablo Torre?

  The class of person who is a lobbyist, to your point about like,

• 39:13Pablo Torre?

  The scammers.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 39:14Pablo Torre?

  It's pretty amazing.

• 39:16Speaker 01

  It's incredible.

• 39:16Pablo Torre?

  You just gotta... So, the document that's next in your folder, if you could open that, please. It takes us to April 2025. This is the month after Liz Ora gets fired, and a guy by the name of Joseph Schwartz gets sentenced to three years in prison for defrauding the government of $38 million. And Joseph Schwartz is alleged to have overseen, quote, "a collapsed nursing home empire" and has allegedly willfully failed to pay employment taxes. And so, at around this time, there arrives a lobbying filing, which is the thing in front of you. And so, our focus here isn't even on Joseph Schwartz, despite all of that stuff. It's on his lobbyists.

• 39:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:51Pablo Torre?

  And so, the tag team that he hires to lobby on his behalf, Brace, are who?

• 39:58Speaker 01

  Jacob Wall and Jack Berkman.

• 40:01Pablo Torre?

  And it is, like, the price, by the way.

• 40:03Speaker 01

  The price is $960,000. And I will say this. In a just world, it will be illegal to give them money.

• 40:14Pablo Torre?

  So, there is, in this filing also, if you flip through it, to the section called Convictions Disclosure. It is worth pointing out that, like, they do have to cop to the fact that they are seeking a federal pardon and have themselves, on November 30th, 2022, been found notably guilty of...

• 40:37Speaker 01

  Illegal campaign robocalls, telecommunications fraud in Cuyahoga County, Ohio.

• 40:43Pablo Torre?

  Could you catch us up on who these guys are?

• 40:46Speaker 01

  Jacob Wall is a character that was very prominent, front and center, during the first Trump administration. And I think of him, he was... God, we had so many amazing rookies, and few of them have stayed in the leagues. And, and I remember most prominently Jacob Wall from a number of things. One, he did a sort of rapid-fire series of fake me-tos against Pete Buttigieg. Against Elizabeth Warren, which I notably remember because he called her a cougar.

• 41:19Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 41:19Speaker 01

  And said she was engaged in BDSM cheating on her husband.

• 41:23Pablo Torre?

  A Hall of Fame trajectory for Jacob Wall so far.

• 41:25Speaker 01

  And then also on Mueller. And then also-

• 41:30Pablo Torre?

  He metooed Robert Mueller?

• 41:31Speaker 01

  He did metoo Robert Mueller. I don't remember if that was a gay one or not. I know one, he gay metooed someone too. He metooed like five different people. And what he would do is he would actually trick real people into thinking they were doing some like, he would like pay them to be like, oh yeah, you're gonna meet a commercial or it's like, you're acting for us or something, but he wouldn't actually tell them what was going on.

• 41:52Pablo Torre?

  But this is the whole, like, if you go through the timeline of when and how he executed other robocall frauds, it's all along the lines of just like outright scamming, trying to convince normal would-be citizens trying to do good to engage in, in 2023, something that resulted in a $5.1 million fine against these two guys. This was in Ohio. They said if you vote by mail, your personal information would be made available to debt collectors. That was 2023. Next year, Letitia James, she announced fines against Wall and Berkman, whom she called, quote, "two conspiracy theorists who launched a robocall campaign designed to prevent black New Yorkers from voting by mail ahead of the 2020 election." Year after that, Michigan, there's a plea deal. They plead no contest to charges of suppressing black voters in Detroit in 2020.

• 42:38Pablo Torre?

  And in that matter, the Michigan Attorney General in a press release said these two guys claimed to be founders of a civil rights organization.

• 42:44Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 42:45Pablo Torre?

  And urged predominantly black voters to not be, quote, "finesse into giving your private information to the man. Stay safe and beware of vote by mail." This was called, of course, an egregious example of voter suppression, and they were sentenced to probation, apparently, in December last month.

• 43:03Speaker 01

  In 2020, at one point, they staged, I guess because they weren't getting enough negative attention, they staged a fake FBI raid with actors they hired on their house that they actually portrayed as real without telling the actors they were going to portray it as real.

• 43:17Pablo Torre?

  They stolen-valoured a swatting?

• 43:19Speaker 01

  It wasn't a swatting, it was like a raid. It was like, it was like the FBI was doing lawfare on them. Actually, surprisingly, there's been way less legal repercussions for these guys than you'd think there would be.

• 43:30Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  Because they are real. Like, they are, and I guarantee they are like, like, I know that a lot of people, even people who like Trump. And of course, like, obviously, people know I'm a lifelong conservative, right? I came up in the conservative movement. I was groomed in the conservative movement. I've groomed others in the conservative movement. And, and so, and obviously, like, I'm, I'm in Trump world and the fact that, you know, you know, I'm, I'm dating one of his sons. And, and, and, but, like, Laura Lumer is kind of the one of these people that's really stuck around and gained prominence, but Jacob Wall is like a less successful Laura Lumer. Although now that I see this $960,000, I'm like, I think he might be a more successful Laura Lumer.

• 44:11Pablo Torre?

  And that's the thing with this story is that these guys, you'd, you'd forgotten, like, dustbin level characters have emerged as incredibly successful pardon lobbyists. And so on November 14th, 2025, seven months after the judge celebrated Schwartz's conviction, this being the guy, you know, with the nursing home stuff, Donald Trump grants Schwartz a full and unconditional pardon.

• 44:38Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 44:39Pablo Torre?

  We could spend the rest of this episode just like talking about stories like this, like the Trevor Milton guy.

• 44:46Speaker 01

  Nikola, yeah, which is, is fake, his fake semi truck?

• 44:50Pablo Torre?

  Yes, the fake hydrogen powered truck company.

• 44:52Speaker 01

  Amazing idea, though, to like, take a video of your, and this is the most famous thing about it, having the truck, like, taking a video, like, look, our product is working and it's a truck, but you just rolled the truck downhill without any actually working parts in it.

• 45:04Pablo Torre?

  He was found guilty in 2022 of securities and wire fraud. Federal prosecutors charged him in 2021 with defrauding investors. Some had lost their retirement savings, others had never invested in the stock market before. Again, just like classic predatory, like, caricature of a scammer scammer stuff. And, I mean, we're talking about this giant deception, this fake video, and on March 27, 2025, Donald Trump pardons Trevor Milton.

• 45:31Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 45:32Pablo Torre?

  And how he got pardoned, in this case, a $1.8 million donation to a Trump reelection campaign fund, less than a month before the 2024 election, him and his wife donate. And also, he hires two lawyers with Trump connections. One is Mark McCasey, who's represented Trump Organization before. The other, to bring us back to a certain woman once in Tampa.

• 45:58Pablo Torre?

  Her brother, Brad Bondi.

• 46:00Speaker 01

  Brad Bondi, BB.

• 46:02Pablo Torre?

  Much like Barry Bonds, another BB.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  Much like Bryce Belden, who also juices, to be clear, and is corrupt.

• 46:09Pablo Torre?

  But Brad Bondi and Mark McCasey, combined with the millions, result in a victory lap on Twitter as, uh, yeah, this dude, uh, posts this.

• 46:23Speaker 12

  What's up, guys? Oh, my gosh. Oh, you won't believe just what happened.

• 46:31Speaker 12

  Um, sorry, it's, it's pretty hard for me to talk about, but, um, probably the best day I've had in five years. I am now officially pardoned by the President of the United States, 4547, an amazing man that cared enough to call me personally, to tell me how much of an injustice this all was, done by the same officers that harassed and prosecuted him. And I'm now officially 100% pardoned.

• 47:02Pablo Torre?

  The fact that he's driving and doing that is also just perfect.

• 47:05Speaker 01

  Let's see the car. Are you driving in Nikola?

• 47:09Pablo Torre?

  So the pardon, notably, comes two weeks after federal prosecutors urged a district court judge to order Trevor Milton to pay a total of $660 million in restitution.

• 47:21Speaker 01

  Okay, well, that's, you can't do that.

• 47:23Pablo Torre?

  What a deal, though.

• 47:24Speaker 01

  I know. Well, it's, it's interesting because if I'm not saying this happened, but if I did owe a lot of money in restitution, I would put forth somebody to maybe talk to somebody in Trump world and be like, maybe a percent goes to a certain something and I don't actually have to pay the full amount due to a pardon.

• 47:44Pablo Torre?

  It is fundamentally changing the concept of what crime even means anymore. Like what the law even is anymore.

• 47:50Speaker 01

  Yes. I mean, that's something that's so shocking about all of this, right? Is Trump's second term, Trump's first term too, but like Trump's second term has been like this law and order, restoring order to America. And since then, he has openly encouraged corruption, not only in his own orbit, but in these like various industries that he has like incurred a lot of support from, like the crypto industry.

• 48:11Pablo Torre?

  So the CZ thing.

• 48:12Speaker 01

  Amazing.

• 48:13Pablo Torre?

  So, so my Trump world lawyer source was like, listen, this was last week, he was like, listen. We've been talking about this pardon stuff for a while. You should know that the block's hotter than it's been before because of the CZ thing.

• 48:25Speaker 13

  The founder of the crypto exchange Binance, a man named Changpeng Zhao, also known simply as CZ, is one of the latest recipients of a controversial presidential pardon. President Trump told CNN's Caitlin Collins last month that the pardon, quote, "was recommended by a lot of people," unquote. And in an interview with 60 Minutes that aired last night, he reiterated a striking admission about the pardon.

• 48:51Speaker 07

  Why did you pardon him? Okay, are you ready? I don't know who he is. I know he got a four-month sentence or something like that. And I heard it was a Biden witch hunt. I can only tell you this.

• 49:03Speaker 07

  My sons are into it. I'm glad they are because it's probably a great industry, crypto.

• 49:08Speaker 01

  The CZ thing, I think, was tough. If you're trying to get a pardon during, because the CZ thing, I think, was the most obvious.

• 49:14Pablo Torre?

  So Changpeng Zhao, founder of Binance, he hires a hunting buddy of Donald Trump Jr.

• 49:20Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 49:21Pablo Torre?

  This guy, Ches McDowell. His lobbying firm is called Checkmate Government Relations.

• 49:25Speaker 01

  So good.

• 49:25Pablo Torre?

  One of the highest-earning shops in Washington during this second administration, by the way. They made $7.1 million in revenue in the last three months alone, at least at the time of the publishing of this article. They didn't have a Washington office until this year. Now, there's like boom times, millions of, millions of dollars. For one month's work, Binance and CZ pay Checkmate $450,000 for one month. And then, three weeks after the inauguration, Binance and CZ, in its individual capacity, they both hire Theresa Goodie-Gyen.

• 49:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 49:57Pablo Torre?

  This is a crypto lawyer. Trump had considered her to lead the SEC. Instead, she is, again, pardon lobbying, basically. And in the process, in addition to this, Binance happened to establish business ties with a certain, highly profitable, Trump family crypto venture called?

• 50:15Speaker 01

  World Liberty Financial. But don't, but don't say that like it's, it's such a bad thing. Because, okay, yes, there's some shady characters involved in this. But there's also the UAE.

• 50:25Speaker 14

  Changpeng Zhao applied for a presidential pardon. And shortly after the application, he was at the center of a blockbuster deal that put World Liberty on the map. Zhao is a citizen of the United Arab Emirates in the Persian Gulf. And in May, an Emirati fund put $2 billion in Zhao's Binance. Of all the currencies in the world, the deal was done in World Liberty Crypto.

• 50:57Speaker 01

  They basically did something they didn't need to do that gave World Liberty Financial a bunch of money. It was like clearly a way to put Trump on the take.

• 51:05Pablo Torre?

  At this point in the episode, you might be listening and being like, surely, surely there is some mechanism in which someone in government has raised their hand and said, "This seems like it shouldn't happen anymore." And the reality is that constitutionally, this broad unlimited power to grant pardons is super clear.

• 51:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:29Pablo Torre?

  As Donald Trump's right.

• 51:31Speaker 01

  Yes, he can absolutely do all of this.

• 51:33Pablo Torre?

  There's no legal question. He can totally do it. And as my Trump world source put it, the only mechanism that prevented Joe Biden from doing it throughout his second term as well like this was fundamentally shame.

• 51:47Speaker 01

  And sleep.

• 51:48Pablo Torre?

  And sleep.

• 51:49Speaker 01

  He had, he was too sleepy to do much of it.

• 51:51Pablo Torre?

  He was sundowning.

• 51:52Speaker 01

  Well, they're trying to, they're, you see, they're trying to overturn the Biden pardon, claiming that they were doing it on an auto pen.

• 51:58Pablo Torre?

  Right, right, right. But, but this whole thing, I mean, as Liz Zoyer put it, like, I suppose Congress could do something.

• 52:08Speaker 05

  Another thing that we're not seeing is rigorous requirements around reporting of lobbying and legal services in connection with these pardons. So it's sort of a very opaque murky area. We know there's this booming pardon economy that has cropped up, but we don't know all the payments that have changed hands and all of the players. And Congress could certainly do a great deal more to require disclosures in that area so that we can at least trace where the money is going.

• 52:35Pablo Torre?

  And unfortunately, they're not even bothering to announce when the pardons are being made. They're just like happening and you find out about them later and you're like, oh yeah, that, that just happened.

• 52:44Speaker 01

  It boggles my mind how even like a Trump partisan would be okay with this a little bit.

• 52:50Pablo Torre?

  And that's the thing. It's like we're testing the outer limits on what even matters anymore. And the answer truly is nothing. The answer is that nothing matters. From Darryl Strawberry to the highest levels of geopolitics, these things are being granted with a logic that is not even being defended.

• 53:08Speaker 01

  No.

• 53:09Pablo Torre?

  Not even pretending to defend it.

• 53:10Speaker 01

  They don't try to defend these in like really legal or moral, ethical terms, or political terms even. They're like, we're doing this because we can. Obviously, the US government has done a lot of things because the US government can. A lot of them have been very bad. But to even, this is, it feels like a leap in terms of even the way that it thinks of itself, or at least openly thinks of itself. And to have somebody so self-consciously governed in the way of like a barbarian warlord like this, but somebody who is in charge of the most powerful country in the world, I think it should give people pause because if the government says explicitly in many of these cases that there is one law that you have to follow, and if you don't follow it, we can do anything to you that we want. We can drum you up on terror charges, we can do this.

• 53:52Speaker 01

  But our friends, anybody that, that is either willing to pay us or in league with us, they don't have to follow the law.

• 53:59Pablo Torre?

  All of which is to say that the question now is who will Trump pardon next? Because there are some good candidates on the board.

• 54:06Speaker 01

  Well, we gotta get the Kaochi sponsorship up, right?

• 54:08Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 54:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:09Pablo Torre?

  Polymarket.

• 54:14Pablo Torre?

  But this is where I do need to note that we have, as of just last week, finally found something resembling a bridge too far. Because Donald Trump told the New York Times in a big interview Wednesday that Diddy Sean Combs wrote a letter to him seeking a pardon. But Trump is not considering granting their request. The betting line on Kalan Maxwell, meanwhile, did not come up. But speaking of gambling on everything, there is one more candidate, one more potential pardon client for this administration that I needed to talk to Brace about in order to bring us back to where we started. This might be insulting. Do you know who Pete Rose is?

• 54:59Speaker 01

  It sounds as if that's the name of a famous lover like Don Juan.

• 55:05Pablo Torre?

  He is like Darryl Strawberry, a guy who, if he was alive, could text an emoji as his signature.

• 55:12Speaker 01

  Of the ro- and that would be what an emoji to text.

• 55:16Pablo Torre?

  At the time of his death in September 2024, at age 83, Pete Rose was not only Major League Baseball's all-time hit king, Pete Rose, of course, was the guy who got banned by the sport for betting on baseball while managing the Cincinnati Reds, although he's always maintained that he never bet against his team. But he's also, notably, here, the guy who spent five months in prison after pleading guilty to tax evasion in 1990.

• 55:44Speaker 01

  Well, how much was the evasion?

• 55:46Pablo Torre?

  He admitted he failed to report $354,968.

• 55:50Speaker 01

  Dude, that's not that much!

• 55:51Pablo Torre?

  In income from autograph appearances and memorabilia, much like Mr. Strawberry emoji.

• 55:57Speaker 01

  Fellas, you gotta start paying taxes on these autographs. I'm telling you, I'm telling you.

• 56:04Pablo Torre?

  But last March, with Cooperstown in mind, Donald Trump had vowed to give Pete Rose a very special and even more spiritual distinction: the posthumous presidential pardon.

• 56:20Speaker 01

  Interesting. For me, I'm like, unless you like, killed multiple people, or like raped or something, I feel like after you die, you should be pardoned. You know, like after you-

• 56:37Speaker 01

  It's like, you know, it's like, not like, cause it's, what do you, you can't like, there's no recidivism there.

• 56:44Pablo Torre?

  Race, that is the least Catholic thing you've ever said.

• 56:47Speaker 01

  What are you talking about? Catholics have this thing, I found out about this at a party a couple of years ago, Catholics have like a waiting room for heaven that you have to go to. It's purgatory, or it's a little bit hell, too.

• 56:59Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, a bit of a narthex, a narthex in the-

• 57:02Speaker 01

  What the [bleep] is a narthex?

• 57:04Pablo Torre?

  Oh god, you don't know about narthexes?

• 57:06Speaker 01

  No, is that like Pete Rose?

• 57:07Pablo Torre?

  It's like an antechamber.

• 57:08Speaker 01

  So there's a heavenly antechamber?

• 57:11Pablo Torre?

  The question is, how do you get moved on up from the antechamber of baseball heaven?

• 57:18Pablo Torre?

  And beyond the pearly gates of Cooperstown, New York, where of course the baseball Hall of Fame resides.

• 57:21Speaker 01

  Which is better than heaven, yeah.

• 57:23Pablo Torre?

  What this is now, though, because it was said in March, is a question: Why hasn't it happened yet? Which means that Pete Rose posthumously also needs, I think, a pardon lobbyist. He needs someone to agitate on his behalf here on our mortal coil.

• 57:40Speaker 01

  I'll say this, obviously goes surreal. Pete, if you're watching this from your little from your little iPad in heaven.

• 57:48Pablo Torre?

  If you're watching this, hire Mel Gibson.

• 57:50Speaker 01

  Hire Mel Gibson, oh my god, that's the perfect guy.

• 57:53Pablo Torre?

  Well, well, actually, you know what? Now that I think about Mel Gibson's cinematic oeuvre.

• 58:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:01Pablo Torre?

  He has once famously said that you may take our lives, but you will never take our freedom.

• 58:08Speaker 01

  Yes, in Braveheart. Is there a ghost in that movie? I'm failing to follow here.

• 58:13Pablo Torre?

  I think I was, no, I was thinking of Passion of the Christ.

• 58:16Speaker 01

  Passion of the Christ, Scott, you, but there is, but he's making a second one that does feature Christ coming back. And so this is what I'm saying. This is what I'm saying. When that happens, Pete Rose, you need to possess Jim Caviezel when you do this, because it goes surreal. Obviously, possession is real, and you need to accompany Mel Gibson, drive drunk to Mar-a-Lago. Every single minority you see just be like, "Don't say anything, don't say anything." And, uh, and then, and then get there and be like, "You know what? Pete needs a pardon."

• 58:46Pablo Torre?

  The hit king must reign again.

• 58:49Speaker 01

  He must reign again, because if he does get pardon, he might come back. We don't know that.

• 59:03Pablo Torre?

  This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.