Ben Wallace-Wells

And when you look at these individual cases and you go through the names that pop up who are involved in the lobbying,

Roger Stone is involved in one.

Chris Kyes, the president's former defense lawyer, was also the defense lawyer for one of these figures.

There's often some element of just straightforward money, like a lot of these people have donated to political committees associated with the president, but there's also some element of connection, you know?

And I would say this is less remarked upon, but I would say there's also often a narrative element.

You know, there is often something that

might grab the president's attention.

You know, he might be able to say, this person was charged just as I was by an overreach by the Biden administration.

Or it might, you know, illuminate some issue he wants to.

You know, he pardoned a few people at the outset of his term who had been convicted of various crimes.

crimes against abortion clinics, so anti-abortion protesters.

So, you know, there's the straightforward money part of it, there's the connections part of it, and there's the narrative part of it.

I mean, I guess I'd say a couple of things.

The first is like a lot of things with Trump.

He sort of talks around it a lot without actually addressing why he's pardoning people a lot of the time.

You know, when 60 Minutes asked him why he was pardoning Zhao, he said he didn't know anything about that case.

I think that one thing that is striking, and I think a real vulnerability for him, is that in a lot of cases, he doesn't give a real reason.

What does he get out of it?

You know, I think that...

The way that Trump has operated in the second term, there's not a lot of legislation.