Celebrity Justice: Exercising sympathy for rich, powerful, and prominent criminals, President Trump yesterday granted pardons or commutations to 11 people, including former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, former New York Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik, and Eddie DeBartolo, former owner of the San Francisco 49ers, and the infamous financial criminal Michael Milkin, the junk bond king.

  The NY Times reports that aides warned Trump not to do it, telling him he is forgiving exactly the kind of corruption he claims he’s fighting.

  “Today, Trump granted clemency to tax cheats, Wall Street crooks, billionaires and corrupt government officials,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders, the leading Democratic candidate for president. “Meanwhile, thousands of poor and working-class kids sit in jail for nonviolent drug convictions.” 

  Trump skirted the usual pardon vetting and relied on the word of longtime friends, business executives, celebrities, campaign donors, sports figures, political allies, and even the disgraced Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher whom Trump also pardoned.

  Blagojevich, among other offenses, tried to sell the vacant US Senate seat of Barack Obama. He has served eight years of a 14-year slam before Trump commuted his sentence. In 2010, when Blagojevich, was waiting for trial, he was a contestant on Trump’s “Celebrity Apprentice.”

  Yesterday after being released from prison the former Democratic governor declared himself a “Trumpocrat.”

  Kerik spent three years in federal prison for tax fraud and lying to the government. He was once considered to become head of Homeland Security. In pardoning Kerik, Trump said he is “a man who had many good recommendations from a lot of good people.”

  DeBartolo, who avoided prison, was caught attempting to pay $400,000 cash to the governor of Louisiana for a riverboat gambling license. He was fined $1 million and forced to give up ownership of the football team. 

 Michael Milkin, one of the biggest financial criminals in the history of the country, spent several years in prison and then became a philanthropist. Trump said. “He suffered greatly. He paid a big price, a very tough price, but he’s done an incredible job.” 

Get Me Roger Stone: Trump’s mercy for a roundup of rogues immediately raised the question of whether he will pardon his convicted friend Roger Stone, who’s up for sentencing this week. 

  US Judge Amy Berman Jackson is proceeding, even though Stone has claimed a “significant bias” on the part of one juror who once ran as a Democrat for Congress and has been a critic of President Trump.

  Stone was convicted of lying to investigators and trying to sway the testimony of a witness. Trump has tweeted condemnations about the judge, the jury, and the prosecution, causing Attorney Gen. William Barr to say Trump is making it impossible to do his job. Trump has essentially claimed that heis the law of the land.

  Today The NY Times reports that Barr has talked about resigning.

A Three Hour Cruise: Japan has released hundreds of passengers quarantined on a cruise ship at the port in Yokohama. The country’s health authorities have been criticized for essentially creating a coronavirus “petri dish” by keeping all the passengers and crew on board. At least 542 passengers and crew on the Diamond Princess have been infected.

  As of this morning the total of deaths is 2,012 and 75,282 have been infected.

The Bulletin Board: China has expelled three Wall Street Journal  reporters over a headline in the paper that said, “China Is the Real Sick Man of Asia.” The article was an opinion piece about Chinese financial markets written by an academic. — Race car driver Ryan Newman is reported to be awake and speaking in the hospital after a fiery crash at the end of the Daytona 500. — Actor Ben Affleck, who’s had some substance abuse problems, said the biggest regret of his life is his divorce from Jennifer Garner — what was his first clue?

The Maginot Line: Smugglers in Juárez, Mexico have found a way to beat President Trump’s vaunted border wall. They’ve been making  ladders out of rebar that blend so well with the vertical steel posts of the wall that the Border Patrol has a hard time seeing them. The local newspaper in El Paso reports that the city’s stretch of  wall is littered with rusted rebar ladders on both sides.

  There’s always a $1 solution to a $100 problem.

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