Office of the Pardon Attorney

When asked if he would pardon Cohen, Trump told reporters, Now a presidential pardon forgives a federal offense but does not declare the recipient innocent or erase the conviction from the criminal record.

That's according to the Office of the Pardon Attorney.

It can remove certain civil restrictions resulting from the conviction, potentially restore federal firearms rights, and improve the recipient's ability to obtain employment, professional licenses, or bonding.

So Cohen was a prominent critic and a prosecution witness in Trump's 2024 New York criminal trial.

Right

... write him letters of recommendation to the Pardon Office, which was headed by Liz Olsen, who we now see on, on the internet-

Right

... and on Substack.

Let's go through first paragraph 28.

Paragraph 28 of the complaint, we can put it up on the board, says that she prepared a list, the Office of the Pardon Attorney, of approximately 95 candidates.

They were provided to the office of the Deputy Attorney General Blanche.

Mr. Blanche staff cut the list of candidates down to nine, so she had recommended 95 candidates.

This is on page 14 and 15 declared the defendants have violated her constitutional and statutory rights, declared th-that the defendants have violated the separation of powers declare that the removal notice is void, declare the defendant's reliance on Article II as a basis for removal is invalid order her reinstatement upon her reinstatement give her back the pay that she's owed back pay that she's owed and enjoin them from taking any further personnel actions against her once she gets her job back, um, under the r-- as required by the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution related to Due Process.

Here's a clip of Liz when she was being interviewed.

The office in which I served, the Office of the Pardon Attorney has always been headed by a career official, somebody who's able to make recommendations about clemency to the president free from political influence or considerations of partisanship.

I was prepared to continue in that role, but about seven weeks into the new administration I was very abruptly fired.

This is a different military than what we had in the lead up to January 6th.

There are teams of lawyers inside the Justice Department some of whom have left the Justice Department, people like Ed Martin, who defended the January Sixers and then was appointed U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C., and then was head of the Pardon Office inside the Department of Justice, also in charge of the weaponization of our government office inside the Department of Justice.

He's now left the Justice Department, and Donald Trump thanked him for his service and said, Ed Martin is now going out to practice law to protect the elections in November.

We have teams of lawyers who never joined our Justice Department who are ready.

And, you know, just a waiting game.

I mean, uh, uh, in July 14th, uh, the Pardon Office actually sent a letter to the court saying that they believe my pardon application warrants merit.

Uh, the judge replied that he wanted to make my pardon application part of the public docket.

Two days later, the Southern District of New York, the ones who are trying to put me in jail [laughs] for 11 years, the deputy wrote an opinion that he agrees with the Pardon Office, and my pardon application needs, should remain, uh, private.

That they've never in, ever, ever seen a judge ever try to make a pardon application part of a public docket.

The judge still replied that he wanted to give the media a chance to write an opinion on why the, the pardon application needs to be part of the public docket.

We're in Washington today, where the Justice Department has created a new path for eligible Americans with non-violent convictions to apply for the restoration of their federal firearms rights.

Joining us now to discuss this is the US Pardon Attorney and former Salem Radio host, Ed Martin.

Ed, welcome back here to the airwaves at Salem, and thank you for the public service you've rendered to the people of the United States.

I know you've announced that you're leaving the office soon, and I do wanna talk about that.

It was never done.

And so when Trump won, the president said, "Go do this," and it didn't quite get done in Trump too.

In this term, I got in as pardon attorney last May.

At the time, the deputy attorney general was a guy named Todd Blanche.

And, and the other, the other version is what usually happens.

What usually happens if someone's pardoned is that the pardon applications are sent to the Office of the Pardon Attorney, so that's part of the Justice Department.

And then there's this process usually whereby lawyers at the department assess these claims, they speak to people who are victims, they speak to families, they speak to, they speak to the lawyers involved in the cases, and they, you know, they usually focus on, you know, people who've already served a very long time.

For example, under the Obama administration, there were a lot of commutations and pardons handed out to people who were serving very long sentences for drugs convictions, for example, selling marijuana, which today would be legal in many places.

How has the process changed? What, what has happened to allow that number to go up so high?

So President Trump's critics, including people who've, who've worked within the, the US Pardon Attorney's office, say that under his m- second administration the process has changed.

So a process which had been quite lengthy where many lawyers within the office of the pardon attorney and the Department of Justice assessed claims, presented them to the president, and, and were then, you know, possibly pardoned or not pardoned depending on their decision.

But that has changed.

attorney in the District of Columbia.

He then got appointed to be the head of the Weaponization Task Force and the head of the Office of the Pardon Attorney.

I think he's still there as the pardon attorney, but he's become very quiet in recent days after his efforts to indict Letitia James that seemed to fall apart.

he said something really interesting when he first took on those roles, which was, we're going to name and shame people, even if we don't have the evidence to convict them, because that's what the public cares about.