The Trump Presidency Timeline

Donald Trump has discovered a bold new way to support crime victims: take their money and give it to white-collar criminals. Since returning to office, he’s issued 117 pardons and commutations that don’t just wipe convictions, but also vaporize the fines and penalties that are legally supposed to flow into the federal Crime Victims Fund. At least $113 million that should have gone to domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers, child abuse treatment programs, and gun violence survivors has instead been converted into a loyalty rewards program for fraudsters and money launderers.

The crown jewel of this little experiment in upside-down justice is Trump’s corporate pardon of HDR Global Trading Limited, parent company of the BitMEX crypto exchange. The company owed a $100 million fine for ignoring anti–money laundering laws; Trump swooped in hours before the payment was due and signed a pardon that explicitly remits “any and all fines, penalties, forfeitures, and restitution.” That’s not mercy, that’s a $100 million smash-and-grab from the Crime Victims Fund, which was created under VOCA to help people pay for funerals, medical bills, and lost wages after violent crime.

The language here matters: “remission of any and all fines” is not standard pardon boilerplate. Trump barely used it in his first term; now roughly a third of his second-term pardons include this magical debt eraser for corporate criminals. Prosecutors are left wondering why they should spend years building complex white-collar cases if the president can just shred the financial penalties with a signature, while states scramble to plug the holes in victim services budgets because the guy who cosplays as the toughest man on crime keeps canceling the cash.

By comparison, Biden’s pardons interrupted less than $1 million in financial penalties, most of which had already been paid. Trump’s tally in just 14 months dwarfs that, and doesn’t even include the big fines that never got imposed because he pardoned people before trial. So the math is simple: corporations and rich defendants get their slates wiped clean; survivors of shootings and other violent crimes get shorter waitlists, fewer services, and state budgets duct-taped together to cover the federal betrayal. It’s a perfect encapsulation of Trump’s justice philosophy: protect the money, not the people who got shot.

The Trump White House has discovered a new emergency that must be addressed before the midterms: not healthcare, not climate, not democracy — crypto market structure. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, White House crypto whisperer Patrick Witt, and former AI/crypto czar David Sacks are all out doing PR for the CLARITY Act, a bill designed to finally decide which federal agency gets to not regulate digital snake oil.

They already rammed through the GENIUS Act last year — a stablecoin law lovingly crafted for the narrow slice of the industry that wants to pretend its casino chips are just digital dollars — but the real prize is this broader market structure bill. The administration is now leaning on Senate Republicans to "hold a markup" and hustle it to Trump’s desk, because nothing says responsible governance like rushing complex financial legislation in the final months before an election while your donor class is heavily invested in the outcome.

The Council of Economic Advisers has even produced a handy report telling the banking industry to stop whining and accept its new crypto overlords. Banks complain about systemic risk; the White House complains that the U.S. might "lose financial leadership" if it doesn’t let a bunch of venture-backed tokens cosplay as the future of money. The core dispute isn’t about protecting consumers or financial stability — it’s about which set of oligarchs gets to clip the coupons from the next bubble.

So as Trump posts AI images of himself being hugged by Jesus, his economic team is busy hugging the crypto lobby, racing to lock in a deregulatory framework that will be very convenient for industry players — and very awkward for taxpayers when it all inevitably blows up. Truly, a CLARITY Act: we’ve never been clearer on whose side this White House is on.

Hunter Biden has announced that he’s "100% in" for a cage match against Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, which is probably the most honest bipartisan jobs program we’ve seen in years. The challenge came in a promo video for YouTuber Andrew Callaghan’s "Carnival" tour, because naturally the sons of two presidents now book their public humiliation through internet creators. Somewhere, the Founders are regretting not workshopping the whole "republic" thing a bit longer.

Under the clown makeup, though, the money story is doing laps. Hunter, fresh off a federal gun conviction, tax-evasion charges, and a very controversial pardon from President Dad, is broke enough that his own lawyers are suing him for unpaid bills while describing him in court as "impecunious"—which is lawyer for "cannot afford ring-side seats to his own meltdown." The Trump spawn, on the other hand, reportedly made hundreds of millions during Daddy’s second term, including from foreign-tinged crypto ventures that raise more conflict-of-interest alarms than a Mar-a-Lago membership drive.

So on one side: the pardoned, indebted son of a president hustling appearance fees on a YouTube freak-show tour. On the other: the sons of another president, quietly cashing in on global crypto schemes while still running the family business empire that’s welded to the Oval Office. The proposed cage match is the least corrupt thing happening here; it’s the only part where everyone would have to disclose what they’re actually doing in public, under lights, with a referee.

The FDA has granted expedited approval to Eli Lilly’s new oral GLP‑1 weight-loss pill, Foundayo, under a program for drugs deemed of “national importance.” Apparently the national emergency is not, say, poisoned water systems or a collapsing maternal health infrastructure, but making sure Americans can get their hands on $149–$349-a-month diet pills a few weeks faster so Lilly’s earnings call doesn’t have to wait.

Because this is the Trump era, the public subsidy hose is already pointed in the right direction. Under a Trump administration proposal, Medicare could start covering the drug for certain patients as early as this summer, dropping copays to around $50 while taxpayers quietly eat the rest. So you get a neat little pipeline: fast-tracked FDA approval, direct-to-consumer shipping via LillyDirect, telehealth upsell factories, and a federal insurance program poised to underwrite the whole thing. It’s not healthcare, it’s a vertically integrated obesity monetization strategy.

Executives like Eli Lilly CEO David Ricks are framing Foundayo as a way to “level the playing field” for people with obesity, which is an interesting way to describe a product priced like a car payment and pushed through a regulatory fast lane usually reserved for actual life-or-death crises. Fewer than 1 in 10 eligible patients are on GLP‑1s now, but don’t worry: between Trump’s Medicare rule change and Big Pharma’s direct-marketing blitz, that little obstacle called “cost” is on track to be someone else’s problem — namely, the federal budget and whatever’s left of a rational healthcare system.

Donald Trump has once again looked at the criminal justice system, weighed the plight of vulnerable people, and decided the real victim is the guy who siphoned millions out of nursing homes and stiffed the IRS. New Jersey nursing home mogul Joseph Schwartz pleaded guilty to a $39 million payroll tax scheme tied to his sprawling, collapsing Skyline chain, then got a three-year sentence. After a grueling three months behind bars, Trump stepped in with a full pardon, because apparently the only thing this administration hates more than taxes is consequences.

Meanwhile, families like that of 71-year-old retired cardiac nurse Doris Coulson — who died after landing in a Skyline facility with scrambled eggs in her lungs despite an NPO order — are sitting on court judgments they can’t collect. A judge awarded Coulson’s family nearly $19 million after finding Skyline’s cost-cutting left her without the care she needed. Schwartz had already shed his Arkansas assets like a snake skin, so the family gets nothing while he pays himself millions and claims he’s just a confused, sickly businessman who somehow misplaced all that money.

Schwartz is not an outlier; he’s the business model. Trump has repeatedly used clemency to rescue nursing home and health care fraudsters — commuting the sentence of Philip Esformes (tied to a $1.3 billion Medicare/Medicaid scheme) and Judith Negron ($200 million in Medicare fraud) — and even nominating nursing home owner Benjamin Landa as ambassador to Hungary while a facility he co-owns faces a $31 million Medicare overpayment audit. If you’re accused of bilking taxpayers and endangering patients and you can afford lobbyists, this White House is basically LegalZoom with nukes.

To complete the far-right Mad Lib, Laura Loomer rode in to launder Schwartz’s reputation, declaring he’d paid back “every dime,” wasn’t responsible for the taxes, and was the real victim of antisemitism and overzealous prosecution. The White House happily echoed her talking points, claiming Schwartz relied on a third party, didn’t enrich himself, and was just an overprosecuted 65-year-old in poor health — claims directly contradicted by court records and Schwartz’s own guilty plea. The sick patients and defrauded families? They don’t have lobbyists, so they get exactly what this administration thinks they deserve: nothing.

Jena Lisa Jones, who says she was abused by Jeffrey Epstein at 14, voted for Donald Trump in 2024 because he swore up and down he'd finally blow the lid off the Epstein files. He campaigned on it, fundraised on it, and turned survivors’ trauma into a merch line for the base. Then he won, walked into office, and suddenly the whole thing was a Democratic "hoax" and the Justice Department announced it would not be releasing any more Epstein records. Transparency, it turns out, has an Election Day sell-by date.

Only after bipartisan pressure made it obvious Congress would force his hand did Trump reverse himself, pretend he'd always been a champion of disclosure, and sign the bill requiring DOJ to release the files. DOJ then dumped millions of pages while somehow still not including key survivor interview files, overredacting some areas, and casually exposing personal information of survivors in others. Jones still can’t find her own FBI records, despite having worked with agents and even texting them the day Epstein died. She now says she fears "we're not going to get justice" or "take down the bad people" – which is exactly what you get when you trust a man who partied with Epstein to be the guy who cleans up the mess.

Survivors like Jones are left navigating death threats, online harassment, and a government that treats their evidence like optional paperwork. Trump, of course, denies any wrongdoing or knowledge of Epstein’s crimes while his administration’s line magically shifts from "we’ll release everything" to "we already released everything" to "also some of it’s classified, privileged, or part of an ongoing investigation, don’t worry about it." The predators had a system. The survivors got a circus.

Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser who twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his secret chats with the Russian ambassador, is now getting a mystery settlement from the Trump Justice Department because he claims he was "politically targeted." Translation: the guy who admitted the crime is cashing in on the MAGA fan-fiction version where he’s the victim and the FBI is the Deep State Boogeyman.

Flynn had sued for $50 million, because why not, alleging "malicious prosecution" over the 2017 case he already confessed to before deciding that consequences are for non–Fox News guests. A judge tossed his lawsuit in 2024, but after an amended complaint and a Trump-restored DOJ now run by Pam Bondi and Emil Bove/Blanche & Friends, the government suddenly decides it’s time to settle. The amount is secret, which is convenient when you’re using public funds to reward a loyalist who lied to federal investigators about a foreign adversary.

Flynn is, of course, thrilled. He’s praising Bondi’s DOJ for exposing "Russian Hoax FBI lawfare" and claiming the payout proves Trump’s Justice Department is bravely holding "partisan actors" accountable—those "actors" being the people who prosecuted the crime he admitted under oath. The same man who was warned as a blackmail risk, resigned in disgrace after less than a month, cooperated with Mueller, then flipped, got his charges dropped, and then pardoned by Trump is now getting another round of taxpayer-funded restitution for his troubles.

So the new accountability model goes like this: lie to the FBI about talking to the Russian ambassador, get caught, plead guilty, get a presidential pardon, have your allies torch the investigation as a "hoax," then send the bill for your hurt feelings to the American public. The swamp wasn’t drained; it filed a lawsuit and just got paid.