Summary:
In what may be a first in American history, President Trump just expanded the presidential pardon power to include corporations.
Corporations are artificial legal fictions designed to maximize shareholder wealth. Nonetheless, they can theoretically commit crimes and be indicted for them. According to a 1999 memorandum from the Justice Department, the “important public benefits” of prosecuting corporations include “deterrence on a massive scale,” particularly for “crimes that carry with them a substantial risk of public harm,” such as “financial frauds.”
Such public benefits now fall prey to the whims of the president with his pardon of a cryptocurrency company that smacks of political corruption.
On Friday, Trump issued full and unconditional pardons to four individuals and a related cryptocurrency exchange, BitMEX.
BitMEX solicits and takes orders for trades in derivatives tied to the value of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin. Last summer, BitMEX entered a guilty plea in a Manhattan federal court for violating the Bank Secrecy Act for having operated without a legitimate anti-money laundering program. Prior to August 2020, customers could register to trade with BitMEX anonymously, providing only verified email addresses. The latest in politics and policy. Direct to your inbox. Sign up for the Opinion newsletter
On Jan. 15, 2025, BitMEX was criminally fined $100 million in connection with its guilty plea, which was on top of $130 million in civil penalties previously imposed by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. At sentencing, the judge noted that BitMEX, which is incorporated in the Seychelles, had claimed not to operate in the U.S. for several years even though U.S. customers comprised a large share of its business.
My first reaction was “is that even legal?”
And then my second reaction was it doesn’t really matter with Trump there:
All this, and Biden wasn’t allowed to forgive our student loans…
That right there is something I’ll never forgive him for. He could’ve had the DoE wipe everything from their servers as an official act, helped millions, and gotten off Scot-free.
Instead he drug his feet, let Repubs tie it up in court, and ultimately failed all but a select few student borrowers.
Biden administration fought pretty hard for the student loan forgiveness. To the point where they were still able to forgive billions of dollars through other means after the blanket forgiveness was shot down. They were pretty creative with some of the ways they did it.
There are a lot of things to be mad at Biden about, but this really shouldn’t be one of them.
My forgiveness was exactly $0.00. Glad he helped some, but at the end of they day he failed to help me.
Too soon.