Beg Your Pardon? Trump Appointee Claims the President Won’t ‘Pardon People for Committing Crimes’

Kelly Loeffler, the head of the Small Business Administration, said President Donald Trump is not pardoning criminals.

Less than one year ago, Trump pardoned more than 1,500 people convicted or charged in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. In subsequent months, the president has granted clemency to a host of alleged and convicted fraudsters, bribe-takers, money launderers, drug traffickers, and other crooks.

Loeffler appeared on Fox News on Friday night, where she discussed the ongoing investigations into alleged business fraud in Minnesota among the state’s Somali community. Conservative media has run with the story after a YouTuber with a camera showed up unannounced at several taxpayer-funded daycare centers in the state and asked to see the children. The YouTuber, Nick Shirley, was accompanied by an older man who was only identified as “David.” Shirley concluded that because the centers did not allow two strange men inside, the centers must therefore be fronts and engaged in fraud.

On Fox News, guest host Jason Chaffetz noted that officials have been investigating alleged fraud among the Somali community for years.

“These are not highly sophisticated,” he told Loeffler. “Yet the investigations go in perpetuity for years… Hey, look, cut it off and see who yells and screams. Then we can go figure out where the problems are. But for the ones that have been going on for years, there’s got to be an acceleration to say, ‘Yeah, Monday, new year, new leaf. We’re going to take care of business that, quite frankly, we should’ve taken care of last year.'”

Loeffler responded by saying Trump is not in the business of pardoning criminals:

Well, you’re absolutely right. This is a new day in the Trump administration. We had four years under the Biden administration, where not only did they look the other way, but this is what the Democrat socialist welfare state looks like where Democrat politicians look the other way. They know it helps them. It not only helps them with votes, but it helps them with campaign contributions. And we’re gonna be following the money.

And we’re not gonna do what the last administration did, which is try to forgive fraudulent loans, look the other way, pardon people for committing crimes. And you can see an all-of-government approach in this, and it’s gonna be very different.

This week, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Department of Justice has eased away from probes into bribery, money laundering, and public corruption as many of Trump’s pardons have negated years of investigations into such matters.

In December, Trump pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was serving 45 years in federal prison after being convicted of taking bribes to allow the transport of 400 tons of cocaine to the U.S. Last January, Trump pardoned Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht, who was serving a life sentence after being convicted of a host of crimes that included narcotics distribution, money laundering, computer hacking, and engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise.

In November, the president pardoned former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, who had served four months in prison after pleading guilty to enabling money laundering on the cryptocurrency platform. The pardon came after Binance helped boost World Liberty Financial, the crypto firm helmed by Trump’s sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump.

Watch above via Fox News.