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Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan addresses supporters.
(Photo: Arif Ali/AFP via Getty Images)
Free Imran Khan
Here are four reasons the United States should reverse itself, call for Mr. Khan’s release, and support his ability to run for office.
Nov 26, 2023
When I interviewed Imran Khan in February 2023 he was facing multiple criminal charges after being deposed as prime minister of Pakistan. He had also recently survived an assassination attempt. Khan was blunt about his interpretation of events. “My government was removed through a conspiracy,” he told me.
Since then, information has come to light which seems to add credibility to his claim of a conspiracy, orchestrated by the U.S., which led to his removal. There is now considerable evidence that the United States orchestrated his removal for tactical reasons and later rewarded his usurpers for doing it.
Meanwhile, Khan has been the target of an endless campaign of judicial “prosecutions” by the U.S.-installed government. Many of these legal efforts have already been declared null and void in court, but this has not stopped the government from adding new ones.
The actions against Mr. Khan limit the choices available to voters, undermining U.S. claims to leadership in this area. That puts the U.S. in the ironic position of appearing to subvert one democracy in its self-described quest to defend another.
Khan is now imprisoned after several arrests, some carried out extrajudicially, and after being convicted in a trial that the nation’s Supreme Court has ruled was conducted illegally.
Khan remains the most popular politician in his country, a nuclear power and the fifth most populous nation on Earth.
New information suggests that Khan was punished for defying a U.S. demand to support Ukraine against Russia’s invasion. The reputational harm to the U.S. is made even worse by the fact that Mr. Khan’s illegal trial concerned the release of information about U.S. interference in Pakistan’s democracy—an accusation denied by both Khan and the journalists involved.
Here are four reasons the United States should reverse itself, call for Mr. Khan’s release, and support his ability to run for office.
1. Democratic Principles
The United States claims to be a leading voice for world democracy. Whatever one may think of that claim, democracy requires an open, fair, and democratic political process. The actions against Mr. Khan limit the choices available to voters, undermining U.S. claims to leadership in this area. That puts the U.S. in the ironic position of appearing to subvert one democracy in its self-described quest to defend another.
Khan remains the most popular leader in Pakistan, while the government that is persecuting him is very unpopular.
2. Rule of Law
Khan’s detention and trials are a clear abuse of the judicial system for political purposes.
3. Political Stability
Cheating the Pakistani voters out of open and fair elections will lead to further chaos and instability in this populous and nuclear-armed country. It could also lead to more instability in the region. (Pakistan shares borders with Iran, China, and India.)
4. U.S. Strategic Interests
American intervention in Pakistan’s affairs was widely resented even before these latest revelations. The current U.S.-backed government is highly unpopular, while Khan retains wide support. The U.S. role in Khan’s removal has intensified anti-American feeling.
More Background
An August 2023 article by Ryan Grim and Murtaza Hussain in The Intercept contained information from a secret U.S. State Department “cypher” (something like a cable), which indicated that the Biden administration pressured Pakistani officials to remove Khan from power. Their motive? Khan refused to take sides in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. He wasn’t soft-spoken about it.
“Are we your slaves?” he asked rhetorically. “What do you think of us? That we are your slaves and that we will do whatever you ask of us?... We are not part of any alliance.”
That speech was given on March 2, 2022. On March 7, two State Department officials met with Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States. The cypher indicates that one of them, Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu, said “people here and in Europe are quite concerned about why Pakistan is taking such an aggressively neutral position (on Ukraine), if such a position is even possible. It does not seem such a neutral stand to us.” (“Aggressively neutral” is an interesting phrase.)
The document also reports that Lu said this:
Let us wait for a few days to see whether the political situation changes, which would mean that we would not have a big disagreement about this issue and the dent would go away very quickly. Otherwise, we will have to confront this issue head on and decide how to manage it.
And this:
I think if the no-confidence vote against the prime minister succeeds, all will be forgiven in Washington because the Russia visit is being looked at as a decision by the prime minister. Otherwise, I think it will be tough going ahead.
Nice little country you’ve got here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it…
As The Intercept notes, “The day after the meeting, on March 8, Khan’s opponents in Parliament moved forward with a key procedural step toward the no-confidence vote.” Pakistan scholar Arif Rafiq told The Intercept:
What you have here is the Biden administration sending a message to the people that they saw as Pakistan’s real rulers, signaling to them that things will be better if he is removed from power.
Rafiq also said:
While the Biden administration has said that human rights will be at the forefront of their foreign policy, they are now looking away as Pakistan moves toward becoming a full-fledged military dictatorship.
An Unconstitutional Rampage
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Richard Eskow
Richard (RJ) Eskow is a journalist who has written for a number of major publications. His weekly program, The Zero Hour, can be found on cable television, radio, Spotify, and podcast media.
When I interviewed Imran Khan in February 2023 he was facing multiple criminal charges after being deposed as prime minister of Pakistan. He had also recently survived an assassination attempt. Khan was blunt about his interpretation of events. “My government was removed through a conspiracy,” he told me.
Since then, information has come to light which seems to add credibility to his claim of a conspiracy, orchestrated by the U.S., which led to his removal. There is now considerable evidence that the United States orchestrated his removal for tactical reasons and later rewarded his usurpers for doing it.
Meanwhile, Khan has been the target of an endless campaign of judicial “prosecutions” by the U.S.-installed government. Many of these legal efforts have already been declared null and void in court, but this has not stopped the government from adding new ones.
The actions against Mr. Khan limit the choices available to voters, undermining U.S. claims to leadership in this area. That puts the U.S. in the ironic position of appearing to subvert one democracy in its self-described quest to defend another.
Khan is now imprisoned after several arrests, some carried out extrajudicially, and after being convicted in a trial that the nation’s Supreme Court has ruled was conducted illegally.
Khan remains the most popular politician in his country, a nuclear power and the fifth most populous nation on Earth.
New information suggests that Khan was punished for defying a U.S. demand to support Ukraine against Russia’s invasion. The reputational harm to the U.S. is made even worse by the fact that Mr. Khan’s illegal trial concerned the release of information about U.S. interference in Pakistan’s democracy—an accusation denied by both Khan and the journalists involved.
Here are four reasons the United States should reverse itself, call for Mr. Khan’s release, and support his ability to run for office.
1. Democratic Principles
The United States claims to be a leading voice for world democracy. Whatever one may think of that claim, democracy requires an open, fair, and democratic political process. The actions against Mr. Khan limit the choices available to voters, undermining U.S. claims to leadership in this area. That puts the U.S. in the ironic position of appearing to subvert one democracy in its self-described quest to defend another.
Khan remains the most popular leader in Pakistan, while the government that is persecuting him is very unpopular.
2. Rule of Law
Khan’s detention and trials are a clear abuse of the judicial system for political purposes.
3. Political Stability
Cheating the Pakistani voters out of open and fair elections will lead to further chaos and instability in this populous and nuclear-armed country. It could also lead to more instability in the region. (Pakistan shares borders with Iran, China, and India.)
4. U.S. Strategic Interests
American intervention in Pakistan’s affairs was widely resented even before these latest revelations. The current U.S.-backed government is highly unpopular, while Khan retains wide support. The U.S. role in Khan’s removal has intensified anti-American feeling.
More Background
An August 2023 article by Ryan Grim and Murtaza Hussain in The Intercept contained information from a secret U.S. State Department “cypher” (something like a cable), which indicated that the Biden administration pressured Pakistani officials to remove Khan from power. Their motive? Khan refused to take sides in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. He wasn’t soft-spoken about it.
“Are we your slaves?” he asked rhetorically. “What do you think of us? That we are your slaves and that we will do whatever you ask of us?... We are not part of any alliance.”
That speech was given on March 2, 2022. On March 7, two State Department officials met with Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States. The cypher indicates that one of them, Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu, said “people here and in Europe are quite concerned about why Pakistan is taking such an aggressively neutral position (on Ukraine), if such a position is even possible. It does not seem such a neutral stand to us.” (“Aggressively neutral” is an interesting phrase.)
The document also reports that Lu said this:
Let us wait for a few days to see whether the political situation changes, which would mean that we would not have a big disagreement about this issue and the dent would go away very quickly. Otherwise, we will have to confront this issue head on and decide how to manage it.
And this:
I think if the no-confidence vote against the prime minister succeeds, all will be forgiven in Washington because the Russia visit is being looked at as a decision by the prime minister. Otherwise, I think it will be tough going ahead.
Nice little country you’ve got here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it…
As The Intercept notes, “The day after the meeting, on March 8, Khan’s opponents in Parliament moved forward with a key procedural step toward the no-confidence vote.” Pakistan scholar Arif Rafiq told The Intercept:
What you have here is the Biden administration sending a message to the people that they saw as Pakistan’s real rulers, signaling to them that things will be better if he is removed from power.
Rafiq also said:
While the Biden administration has said that human rights will be at the forefront of their foreign policy, they are now looking away as Pakistan moves toward becoming a full-fledged military dictatorship.
From Your Site Articles
- Protests Erupt Across Pakistan After Former PM Imran Khan Arrested ›
- Secret Cable Reportedly Shows US Urged Pakistani Government to Oust Imran Khan ›
- Stop Using Pakistan as a Scapegoat for America's Disastrous 'War on Terror': PM Imran Khan ›
- Pakistan PM Imran Khan Calls on World to Pay Attention to India's "Fascist, Racist Hindu Supremacist Ideology and Leadership" ›
- Bombings Kill Dozens in Pakistan on Eve of Contentious Elections ›
Richard Eskow
Richard (RJ) Eskow is a journalist who has written for a number of major publications. His weekly program, The Zero Hour, can be found on cable television, radio, Spotify, and podcast media.
When I interviewed Imran Khan in February 2023 he was facing multiple criminal charges after being deposed as prime minister of Pakistan. He had also recently survived an assassination attempt. Khan was blunt about his interpretation of events. “My government was removed through a conspiracy,” he told me.
Since then, information has come to light which seems to add credibility to his claim of a conspiracy, orchestrated by the U.S., which led to his removal. There is now considerable evidence that the United States orchestrated his removal for tactical reasons and later rewarded his usurpers for doing it.
Meanwhile, Khan has been the target of an endless campaign of judicial “prosecutions” by the U.S.-installed government. Many of these legal efforts have already been declared null and void in court, but this has not stopped the government from adding new ones.
The actions against Mr. Khan limit the choices available to voters, undermining U.S. claims to leadership in this area. That puts the U.S. in the ironic position of appearing to subvert one democracy in its self-described quest to defend another.
Khan is now imprisoned after several arrests, some carried out extrajudicially, and after being convicted in a trial that the nation’s Supreme Court has ruled was conducted illegally.
Khan remains the most popular politician in his country, a nuclear power and the fifth most populous nation on Earth.
New information suggests that Khan was punished for defying a U.S. demand to support Ukraine against Russia’s invasion. The reputational harm to the U.S. is made even worse by the fact that Mr. Khan’s illegal trial concerned the release of information about U.S. interference in Pakistan’s democracy—an accusation denied by both Khan and the journalists involved.
Here are four reasons the United States should reverse itself, call for Mr. Khan’s release, and support his ability to run for office.
1. Democratic Principles
The United States claims to be a leading voice for world democracy. Whatever one may think of that claim, democracy requires an open, fair, and democratic political process. The actions against Mr. Khan limit the choices available to voters, undermining U.S. claims to leadership in this area. That puts the U.S. in the ironic position of appearing to subvert one democracy in its self-described quest to defend another.
Khan remains the most popular leader in Pakistan, while the government that is persecuting him is very unpopular.
2. Rule of Law
Khan’s detention and trials are a clear abuse of the judicial system for political purposes.
3. Political Stability
Cheating the Pakistani voters out of open and fair elections will lead to further chaos and instability in this populous and nuclear-armed country. It could also lead to more instability in the region. (Pakistan shares borders with Iran, China, and India.)
4. U.S. Strategic Interests
American intervention in Pakistan’s affairs was widely resented even before these latest revelations. The current U.S.-backed government is highly unpopular, while Khan retains wide support. The U.S. role in Khan’s removal has intensified anti-American feeling.
More Background
An August 2023 article by Ryan Grim and Murtaza Hussain in The Intercept contained information from a secret U.S. State Department “cypher” (something like a cable), which indicated that the Biden administration pressured Pakistani officials to remove Khan from power. Their motive? Khan refused to take sides in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. He wasn’t soft-spoken about it.
“Are we your slaves?” he asked rhetorically. “What do you think of us? That we are your slaves and that we will do whatever you ask of us?... We are not part of any alliance.”
That speech was given on March 2, 2022. On March 7, two State Department officials met with Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States. The cypher indicates that one of them, Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu, said “people here and in Europe are quite concerned about why Pakistan is taking such an aggressively neutral position (on Ukraine), if such a position is even possible. It does not seem such a neutral stand to us.” (“Aggressively neutral” is an interesting phrase.)
The document also reports that Lu said this:
Let us wait for a few days to see whether the political situation changes, which would mean that we would not have a big disagreement about this issue and the dent would go away very quickly. Otherwise, we will have to confront this issue head on and decide how to manage it.
And this:
I think if the no-confidence vote against the prime minister succeeds, all will be forgiven in Washington because the Russia visit is being looked at as a decision by the prime minister. Otherwise, I think it will be tough going ahead.
Nice little country you’ve got here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it…
As The Intercept notes, “The day after the meeting, on March 8, Khan’s opponents in Parliament moved forward with a key procedural step toward the no-confidence vote.” Pakistan scholar Arif Rafiq told The Intercept:
What you have here is the Biden administration sending a message to the people that they saw as Pakistan’s real rulers, signaling to them that things will be better if he is removed from power.
Rafiq also said:
While the Biden administration has said that human rights will be at the forefront of their foreign policy, they are now looking away as Pakistan moves toward becoming a full-fledged military dictatorship.
From Your Site Articles
- Protests Erupt Across Pakistan After Former PM Imran Khan Arrested ›
- Secret Cable Reportedly Shows US Urged Pakistani Government to Oust Imran Khan ›
- Stop Using Pakistan as a Scapegoat for America's Disastrous 'War on Terror': PM Imran Khan ›
- Pakistan PM Imran Khan Calls on World to Pay Attention to India's "Fascist, Racist Hindu Supremacist Ideology and Leadership" ›
- Bombings Kill Dozens in Pakistan on Eve of Contentious Elections ›
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LATEST NEWS
Teasing Another Senate Run, Independent Dan Osborn Says 'We Could Replace a Billionaire With a Mechanic'
"Working-class candidate v. billionaire political race. I'm here for it," wrote one longtime progressive strategist.
Apr 03, 2025
Dan Osborn, an Independent U.S. Senate candidate who struck a chord with working-class voters in Nebraska and came within striking distance of unseating his Republican opponent last year, announced Thursday that he's considering another run, this time challenging GOP Sen. Pete GOP Ricketts, who is up for election in 2026.
"We could replace a billionaire with a mechanic," Osborn wrote in a thread on X on Thursday. "I'll run against Pete Ricketts—if the support is there." Osborn said that he's launching an exploratory committee and would run as Independent, as he did in 2024.
Ricketts has served as a senator since 2023, and prior to that was the governor of Nebraska from 2015-2023. By one estimate, Ricketts has a net worth of over $165 million—though the wealth of his father, brokerage founder Joe Ricketts, and family is estimated to be worth $4.1 billion, according to Forbes.
A mechanic and unionist who helped lead a strike against Kellogg's cereal company, Osborn lost to Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) by less than 7 points in November 2024 in what became an unexpectedly close race.
Although he didn't win, he overperformed the national Democratic ticket by a higher percentage than other candidates running against Republicans in competitive Senate races, according to The Nation.
"Billionaires have bought up the country and are carving it up day by day," said Osborn Thursday. "The economy they've built is good for them, bad for us. Good for huge multinationals and multibillionaires. Bad for workers. Bad for small businesses, bad for family farmers. Bad for anyone who wants Social Security to survive. Bad for your PAYCHECK."
Osborn cast the potential race as between "someone who's spent his life working for a living and will never take an order from a corporation or a party boss" and "someone who's never worked a day in his life and is entirely beholden to corporations and party."
"We could take on this illness, the billionaire class, directly," he said.
Osborn, who campaigned on issues like Right to Repair and lowering taxes on overtime payments, earned praise from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who told The Nation in late November that Osborn's bid should be viewed as a "model for the future."
Osborn "took on both political parties. He took on the corporate world. He ran as a strong trade unionist. Without party support, getting heavily outspent, he got through to working-class people all over Nebraska. It was an extraordinary campaign," Sanders said.
In reaction to the news that Osborn is exploring a second run, a former Sanders campaign manager and longtime progressive Democratic strategist Faiz Shakir, wrote: "working-class candidate v. billionaire political race. I'm here for it."
'Batsh*t Crazy' Trump Tariffs Should Be Seen as $7,000 Tax Hike on Workers, Says Economist
Instead of strategically imposing tariffs, Trump has chosen to "give the country the most massive tax increase in its history, possibly exceeding $1 trillion on an annual basis."
Apr 03, 2025
As stocks "nosedived" on Thursday, economists, policymakers, and campaigners around the world continued to warn about the impacts of U.S. President Donald Trump's trade war, which includes a 10% universal tariff for imports and steeper duties—that he claims are "reciprocal"—for dozens of countries, set to take effect over the next week.
"This is how you sabotage the world's economic engine while claiming to supercharge it," wrote Nigel Green, CEO of the international financial consultancy deVere Group. "Trump is blowing up the post-war system that made the U.S. and the world more prosperous, and he's doing it with reckless confidence."
As Bloomberg detailed after the president's "Liberation Day" remarks from the White House Rose Garden:
China's cumulative tariff rate of 54% includes both the 20% duty already charged earlier this year, added to the 34% levy calculated as part of Trump's so-called reciprocal plan, according to people familiar with the matter. The European Union's rate is 20% and Vietnam's is 46%, White House documents showed. Other nations slapped with larger tariffs include Japan with 24%, South Korea with 25%, India with 26%, Cambodia with 49%, and Taiwan with 32%.
In Europe on Thursday, "the regional Stoxx 600 index provisionally ended down around 2.7%," while "the U.K.'s FTSE 100 was down 1.6%, with France's CAC 40 and Germany's DAX posting deeper losses of 3.3% and 3.1%, respectively," according to CNBC.
In the United States, CNBC reported, "the broad market index dropped 4%, putting it on track for its worst day since September 2022. The Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled 1,200 points, or 3%, while the Nasdaq Composite fell 5%. The slide across equities was broad, with decliners at the New York Stock Exchange outnumbering advancers by 6-to-1."
American exceptionalism.
[image or embed]
— Justin Wolfers ( @justinwolfers.bsky.social) April 3, 2025 at 12:14 PM
However, as Economic Policy Institute (EPI) chief economist Josh Bivens noted last week, "because most households depend overwhelmingly on wages from work as their primary source of income and not returns from wealth-holding, the stock market tells us nothing about these households' economic situations."
And Trump's tariffs are expected to hit U.S. households hard, as the cost of his taxes on imports are passed on to consumers.
"Tariffs can be a legitimate and useful tool in industrial policy for well-defined strategic goals, but broad-based tariffs that significantly raise the average effective tariff rate in the United States are unwise," Bivens and EPI senior economist Adam Hersh stressed in a Thursday statement—which also called out Trump for mischaracterizing one of the think tank's 2022 analyses.
"Further, the second Trump administration's rationale, parameters, and timeline for tariffs have been ever-shifting," Bivens and Hersh continued. "As the original post cited by the administration argues, tariffs should not be a goal unto themselves, but a strategic tool to pair with other efforts to restore American competitiveness in narrowly targeted industrial sectors."
Instead of strategically imposing tariffs, Trump has chosen to "give the country the most massive tax increase in its history, possibly exceeding $1 trillion on an annual basis, which comes to $7,000 per household," warned Center for Economic and Policy Research co-founder and senior economist Dean Baker. "And this tax hike will primarily hit moderate and middle-income families. Trump's taxes go easy on the rich, who spend a smaller share of their income on imported goods."
Baker—like various other economists and journalists—also took aim at Trump's claims that the tariffs are reciprocal, explaining:
Trump's team calculated our trade deficit with each country and divided it by their exports to the United States. Trump decided that this figure was equal to that country's tariff on goods imported from the U.S.
Trump's method of calculating tariffs is comparable to the doctor who assesses your proper weight by dividing your height by your birthday. Any doctor who did this is clearly batshit crazy, and unfortunately so is our president. And apparently none of his economic advisers has the courage and integrity to set him straight or to resign.
However, outside Trump's administration, the intense criticism continued to mount, including from groups focused on combating the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency, which also endangers the global economy.
Andreas Sieber, associate director of policy and Campaigns at 350.org, said Thursday that "Trump's tariffs won't slow the global energy transition—they'll only hurt ordinary people, particularly Americans."
"Despite his claims he 'gets' economic policy, his record tells a different story: Tariffs are tanking U.S. stocks and fueling inflation," Sieber added. "The transition to renewables is unstoppable, with or without him. His latest move does little to impact the booming clean energy market but will isolate the U.S. and drive up costs for American consumers."
Allie Rosenbluth, U.S. campaign manager at Oil Change International, similarly emphasized that "Trump's tariffs will hurt working families first and foremost, raising costs for essentials we depend on and threatening to plunge the U.S. economy into a recession. Though Trump pretends to care about the cost of living for ordinary people, his real loyalties lie with his fossil fuel industry donors."
"If he actually cared about energy affordability, he would stop bullying other countries into buying more U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG), which boosts the fossil fuel industry's profits, but results in increased prices for domestic consumers and pushes us further toward climate catastrophe," she asserted. "The one step countries can take to hit Trump where it hurts most is wean off their dependency on fossil fuels from the United States."
The impact of Trump's new levies won't be limited to working-class people in the United States. Nick Dearden, director of U.K.-based Global Justice Now, pointed out that "Trump has set light to the global economy and unleashed a world of pain, not least on a group of developing countries that will suffer tremendous impoverishment as a result of his punitive tariffs."
"All those affected must come together and stand up to this bully by building a very different international economy that promotes the interests of ordinary people rather than the oligarchs standing behind Trump," he argued. "For all its scraping and crawling, the U.K. got no special treatment here, and the government should learn this lesson fast: They need to stop giving away our rights and protections in a futile effort to appease Donald Trump."
Leaders in the United States are also encouraging resistance to Trump. U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said Wednesday that "this week you will read many confused economists and political pundits who won't understand how the tariffs make economic sense. That's because they don't. They aren't designed as economic policy. The tariffs are simply a new, super dangerous political tool."
Murphy made the case that "the tariffs are DESIGNED to create economic hardship. Why? So that Trump has a straight face rationale for releasing them, business by business or industry by industry. As he adjusts or grants relief, it's a win-win: the economy improves and dissent disappears."
"But as long as we see this clearly, we can stop him. Public mobilization is working. Today, a few Republicans joined Democrats to vote against one set of tariffs," he added, referring to a
resolution that would undo levies on Canadian imports. "The people still have the power."
Criminal Corporations Are Not People, But Trump Just Pardoned One Anyway
"If you're a corporation in a favored industry, you can break the law. You can get caught. You can be prosecuted and sentenced with a $100 million fine, and it doesn't matter," said one consumer advocate.
Apr 03, 2025
In what could be a U.S. first, President Donald Trump last week pardoned a criminal corporation, a move that largely flew under the proverbial radar amid his pardon spree for white-collar criminals including at least one of his supporters.
On March 28, Trump pardoned HDR Global Trading, the owner and operator of the cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX; company co-founders Arthur Hayes, Benjamin Delo, and Samuel Reed; and former business development chief Gregory Dwyer.
The company and the four men hads each pleaded guilty to one count of violating the Bank Secrecy Act "by willfully failing to establish, implement, and maintain an adequate" anti-money laundering program, as required by law. In January, the U.S. Department of Justice sentenced BitMEX to a fine of $100 million, while the executives were sentenced to criminal probation and ordered to pay civil fines.
While experts noted that Trump acted within his rights to pardon the corporation, there is no known precedent for a president taking such action.
Trump's corporate pardon sends a clear message: “If you’re a corporation in a favored industry, you can break the law. You can get caught. You can be prosecuted and sentenced with a $100 million fine, and it doesn’t matter”
[image or embed]
— Rick Claypool (@rickclaypool.bsky.social) April 2, 2025 at 7:18 AM
Noting the U.S. Supreme Court's highly controversial 2010 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling—which affirmed corporate personhood and the dubious notion that unlimited outside spending on political campaigns is free speech—Stanford Law School professor Bernadette Meyler told The Intercept that "while we have seen the rise of a trend of treating corporations as persons in other areas of law, we haven't seen that so far in the area of pardoning."
Kimberly Wehle, a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law and preeminent pardons expert, wrote for The Hill on Tuesday that the BitMEX pardons send the message that "companies involved in financial crimes don't have to worry about accountability under this president, as least when it comes to crypto, for reasons that he has no incentive to ever make known."
"BitMEX can continue its prior criminal practices with federal impunity, and maybe even rely on the pardon to thwart future investigations into related conduct by federal lawmakers or state prosecutors," Wehle added. "The biggest losers in this deal are, once again, the American people, including the more than 77 million who might finally be realizing that they voted for lawlessness last November."
"The biggest losers in this deal are, once again, the American people."
Brandon Garrett, a Duke University law professor specializing in corporate crime and punishment, told The Intercept that the BitMEX pardons are part of a wider pattern of impunity under Trump, who "now seems to be systematically pardoning corporate malefactors left and right without respect, really, to any real serious consideration about the merits of the cases [or] the larger policy implications of issuing these pardons."
As the consumer advocacy watchdog Public Citizen recently noted, "The Trump administration has dropped, withdrawn, or halted investigations and enforcement actions against over 100 corporations in its first two months in office."
Beneficiaries include companies owned or led by Trump donors or allies, including private prison giant GEO Group; Zelle network banks JPMorgan and Bank of America; crypto firms Coinbase, Gemini, Kraken, OpenSea, Ripple, and Robinhood; and Elon Musk's SpaceX.
"Trump's corporate pardons show the president's true base is the billionaire executives and corporate elites lining up to indulge their greed at the trough of Trump's corruption," Public Citizen research director Rick Claypool said last week. "Trump's soft-on-corporate crime approach invites a corporate crime spree and potentially catastrophic abuses for America's consumers, workers, and communities."
Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman added that the Trump administration's "effective no-enforcement policy against corporations virtually guarantees more financial scams, more workplace discrimination, more poisoning of the air and water, more food contamination, more fraud, more disease, and more preventable death."
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