Top Trump cheerleaders warn 'totally corrupt' pardons could take down his presidency
By Jon Michael Raasch
Daily Mail
Dec 4, 2025
Trump holds up an executive order pardoning people convicted of the January 6 US Capitol attack.
Trump holds up an executive order pardoning people convicted of the January 6 US Capitol attack.
Some conservatives are growing worried that President Donald Trump's recent pardons and commutations could tank his reputation and stir up future legal troubles.
'If there's anyone close to Trump who actually gives a s***, they need to do an intervention on the pardons,' conservative pundit Mike Cernovich posted on X.
The right-wing personality's critique came shortly after the president's Wednesday pardon of Texas Democratic Congressman Henry Cuellar.
'Totally corrupt scammers are getting cases dismissed, sentences commuted, it's totally out of control,' Cernovich added.
Cuellar and his wife, Imelda, were charged by the DOJ with bribery and acting as foreign agents in an alleged $600,000 shell company scheme involving companies in Mexico and Azerbaijan. The couple have claimed they are innocence.
The Texas Democrat was unfairly persecuted by former President Joe Biden's DOJ, Trump said in his announcement pardoning the sitting congressman who was slated to go to trail next year.
Between his two terms so far, Trump has granted clemency, meaning pardons or commutations, to around 1,700 people, including around 1,500 January 6th Capitol riot defendants.
Biden, in his single term, granted clemency to over 4,200 individuals, including his family and scores of US officials. President Barack Obama granted around 1,920 clemency actions.
Some conservatives are warning that Trump's many pardons could lead to his downfall
The president shockingly pardoned sitting Democratic Congressman Henry Cuellar on Wednesday to the surprise of many congressional Republicans
'President Trump has exercised his constitutional authority to issue pardons and commutations for a variety of individuals,' White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told the Daily Mail.
The spokeswoman noted how Biden 'pardoned and commuted sentences of violent criminals including child killers and mass murderers– and that's not to mention the proactive pardons he 'signed' for his family members like Hunter on his way out the door.'
Though some of Trump's supporters are warning him that the pardons could push the president's supporters away.
'I voted for Trump, drove support for him, and am glad each day I did,' Cernovich wrote in another post. 'The pardons will be his downfall if this isn't handled immediately.'
It was recently announced by the DOJ that the president granted clemency to former real estate executive Tim Leiweke despite the businessman getting indicted by the president's DOJ for an alleged rigged bidding scheme in July.
The president also recently pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras, who was sentenced to 45 years in prison last year for drug trafficking. Trump has been slammed for releasing the convicted trafficker while bombing alleged Venezuelan drug boats in the Caribbean.
'I voted for Trump and support most of what he's doing, but it's hard to shake the feeling that all it takes to get a pardon from Trump is some combination of knowing the right people or being a celebrity or some high profile white collar case,' Scott Morefield, a writer for the right-leaning Town Hall, posted on X.
'God forbid some sort of pay for play proof emerges. No matter what, these are increasingly a bad look and giving fodder for Democrats ... An entirely self-inflicted wound.'
'If there's anyone close to Trump who actually gives a s***, they need to do an intervention on the pardons,' conservative pundit Mike Cernovich, shown above, posted on X
The most recent pardon of Cuellar even shocked the president's allies in Congress.
'I didn't know anything about it,' Speaker of the House Mike Johnson told Axios when asked whether Trump tipped him off to the surprise pardon.
Another House Republican, Rich Hudson, who is responsible for the House GOP's campaign apparatus, told the outlet the pardon does not make his job any easier.
Democrats have obviously been sounding off about the myriad clemency actions, too.
'The pardons Trump is handing out are a huge, growing scandal that not enough people are talking about,' Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy said this week.
'This is a money making operation - for Trump, his family, his crypto pals, and the Trump-affiliated lobbyists and grifters who the pardon seekers pay.'
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