Summary:
In what may be a first in American history, President Trump just expanded the presidential pardon power to include corporations.
Corporations are artificial legal fictions designed to maximize shareholder wealth. Nonetheless, they can theoretically commit crimes and be indicted for them. According to a 1999 memorandum from the Justice Department, the “important public benefits” of prosecuting corporations include “deterrence on a massive scale,” particularly for “crimes that carry with them a substantial risk of public harm,” such as “financial frauds.”
Such public benefits now fall prey to the whims of the president with his pardon of a cryptocurrency company that smacks of political corruption.
On Friday, Trump issued full and unconditional pardons to four individuals and a related cryptocurrency exchange, BitMEX.
BitMEX solicits and takes orders for trades in derivatives tied to the value of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin. Last summer, BitMEX entered a guilty plea in a Manhattan federal court for violating the Bank Secrecy Act for having operated without a legitimate anti-money laundering program. Prior to August 2020, customers could register to trade with BitMEX anonymously, providing only verified email addresses. The latest in politics and policy. Direct to your inbox. Sign up for the Opinion newsletter
On Jan. 15, 2025, BitMEX was criminally fined $100 million in connection with its guilty plea, which was on top of $130 million in civil penalties previously imposed by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. At sentencing, the judge noted that BitMEX, which is incorporated in the Seychelles, had claimed not to operate in the U.S. for several years even though U.S. customers comprised a large share of its business.
Does this set a precedent for the President to pardon private mercenary companies?
Yes
And his own company that he definitely does not control or have an input on its day to day
OMG, for BitMEX of all things?? I expected at least a fossil fuel company of some sort.
Easier to launder money and have illicit money activities through crypto than fossil fuels
If corporations can receive pardons, then corporations should be able to receive the death penalty.
They can.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_death_penalty
Personally I prefer the avenue where all their IP is copylefted. Really, its a great way to spur innovation.
I hope one day we do this to all for profit companies. Imagine all for profit companies IP becoming open source, and only allowing nonprofits to form to replace them. It would be a huge Renaissance and economic success
Nope sorry, corporations can only be ‘people’ legally if it endows all of the benefits but none of the risks.
I’m told this is a cornerstone of capitalism.
Reminds me of this quote from Ambrose Bierce from the Devil’s Dictionary:
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.
- https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Devil’s_Dictionary/C
- https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ambrose_Bierce
There’s a lot of good ones in this book.
I’m 100% sure that no money went to Trump and this is purely his goodwill.
Because Trump is definitely the guy that would support a foreign company that supposedly doesn’t operate in the USA
April Fools! Right? RIGHT? It’s an April Fools joke isn’t it?
Aww fuk.
More crypto scam horseshit
The grift is real, in plain sight - and the MAGAts still think he cares about them 🤣
They still think he’s going to hunt down and stop all the Democrat run baby sex trafficking pizza kitchens.
As he flies around in Epstein’s jet.
They think he already has, and the only thing keeping them from popping back up into existence is him sitting on the throne.
Oh my god, I had managed to completely forget about the pedophile pizzeria shit - tabarnak, there’s just too much crazy to keep track of.
tabarnak
Got to hand it to the Québécois. Some of their profanity is just so much fun to say.
The conspiracy theory was that child-molesters ran the government. To fix it, they elected child-molesters to run the government.
I’ve always assumed that was the whole point
So Trump starts mining company for Bitcoin as they announced. Then once they have a decent amount they start investing all the gold from Fort Knox into Bitcoin as previously stated by the white House to inflate prices. Then uses the money for illegal bribes with anonymous accounts? Something like that I assume
Corporations, by contrast, cannot go to jail and or be physically executed
Ok so technically we can’t physically execute a corporation, but we could get pretty close if we rounded up the board and c-suite.
And major shareholders.
There is a death penalty you can actually execute against a corporation, you can dissolve their charter. For some reason this is seen as more extreme than putting a human being to death.
What happens to their stuff? I’d guess “it depends”. There’s no clear heirs or estate with a company, I think.
The government could seize the assets and liquidate/auction them
Like any corporation, the trustees assign value to all assets and the assets are sold off. Money collected pays off creditors
It’s worth a try, let’s do it.
April’s fools!
Right? Right?..
Wait, so for example, this company had to pay $230 million in fines. Suppose that they did a $20 million “donation” to the president (which, being a crypto exchange, could be done in untraceable Monero). Then they get pardoned even if they aren’t incorporated in the States and they claimed to not operate at all in the USA. When is the last time that you heard Trump caring this much about foreign companies who pay $0 in American taxes? Usually he is like “fuck them fuck that and slap additional tariffs on them”
Like that Nikola guy who sent Trump a $2 million “donation” and then by pure coincidence and sheer luck got pardoned.
The longer this goes on, the more I think about Flying Squid, and think he was right to gtfo of dodge
Sadly, most folks aren’t in a position to gtfo of dodge, as much as we would like to.
I am (sorta - it would still take a tremendous amount of effort), but I also have dreams I want to chase here that just aren’t possible elsewhere. It’s a real shitty catch-22.
Most folks aren’t willing* to gtfo of dodge.
Seriously, I’ve had this conversation on Lemmy so many times. Every so often someone has a disability or is broke poor with no degree, but the other times people say things like “family”.
You don’t think FlyingSquid had a family? I’ve immigrated twice. You think I don’t have a family?
Most people who want to go can go. But most people don’t actually want to go.
You don’t think FlyingSquid had a family? I’ve immigrated twice. You think I don’t have a family?
FlyingSquid left the USA because of his family. His child was part of a group targeted by modern day conservatives. He did the most important job as a father and protected his child. He took his child to a safe country.
Good for him. I’m staying here. Not because I have to. In fact, there are several relatively easy paths available to me if I wanted to leave. I’m staying because I refuse to let these fascist fucks have my country. Leaving is the easy personal solution but it doesn’t help anybody else.
it doesn’t automatically help anybody else, but leaving can be allow you to be helpful somewhere else
I keep going back and forth on this for myself. I believe I have a responsibility to contribute to fixing the problems here as it affects others negatively and I have even the smallest amount of power to help fix this.
I dislike FS but he literally left the country because of his family. His daughter is targetted by MAGA fascism, and he got her and his family out.
He had the means to and I don’t blame him for getting out. If I had the money I would too, and give my friends the means to as well.
I dislike FS
Mind if I ask why? I mostly just know him as (until recently) one of the big Lemmy power users, and I never personally saw a bad take or had a problematic interaction with him.
I’ve had a few bad encounters with FS, personally. Most often when I called out something Biden did that was genuinely bad (Gaza, COVID mismanagement, Mexican border cages) and he would often blow up at me.
In the final months, he swore anyone attacking him was mocking him for his medical issues randomly, often felt like it was a way to gain sympathy and avoid being downvoted for being rude or oddly combative to people agreeing with him.
If FS comes back, I hope they’re better off mentally and health wise, and I hope they’re better in general, especially their children.
Stress does things to a person. I’m hopeful that his absence is indicative of getting all his ducks in a row across the pond, and when he’s ready to come back hopefully some of that stress is relieved.
God do I know, I’m stressed to high hell about my living situation, the landlord, and a worker/cleaner who hates being a cleaner he signed up for.
I hate my family, only have a weak associates degree, and have fucking cancer.
Also FlyingSquid literally left for the sake of their family, a trans child who needed out of the USA
Moving is expensive and complicated, especially international. Not to mention the difficulty of finding work in a new country.
Lol if you think “moving internationally” is complicated, then shut up about Trump because you’re clearly never going to do anything meaningful
Complicated and expensive. Expensive being the more limiting of the two. I saw a thread just today where a Canadian told an aspiring American ex-pat to have about $10k on hand, in addition to selective qualifications. Most aspiring ex-pats lack $10k on hand. I don’t know much about comparable costs in other countries, but just physically moving across an ocean would be expensive.
And by complicated I was referring more to the many, potentially exclusionary, complications that arise than to the complexity of the task itself. Canada is more selective than you might think, Europe presents its own unique challenges. Much easier in some cases if you have recent European ancestry, but a lot of Americans are 5th generation, or more.
Ah did they poof? Wondered why I hadn’t seen them around recently.
I believe flyingsquid moved to Britain? I’m trying to remember. I think they are still busy getting readjusted to life across the pond, and hopefully they’ll return to being active on Lemmy soon
Is that what happened?
I figured he’d still come back to post. Ive been afraid something worse happened.
He probably just swapping handles after getting too much recognition. Or hes that one guy who fled to canada lol
They don’t face any consequences anyway…so they’re being pardoned from the consequences they don’t actually face
We are truly in the second Gilded Age.
More like the gelded age.
Jaded age
My first reaction was “is that even legal?”
And then my second reaction was it doesn’t really matter with Trump there:
All this, and Biden wasn’t allowed to forgive our student loans…
That right there is something I’ll never forgive him for. He could’ve had the DoE wipe everything from their servers as an official act, helped millions, and gotten off Scot-free.
Instead he drug his feet, let Repubs tie it up in court, and ultimately failed all but a select few student borrowers.
Biden administration fought pretty hard for the student loan forgiveness. To the point where they were still able to forgive billions of dollars through other means after the blanket forgiveness was shot down. They were pretty creative with some of the ways they did it.
There are a lot of things to be mad at Biden about, but this really shouldn’t be one of them.
Too soon.
So we just gifted them $100 million? Looks like DOGE should be firing Trump next.
Nah, its just a tax DOGE
Guess we know who will be running his grift programs from now on…
