[oji0hub]

> My understanding is that there was a criminal investigation of Clinton's Marc Rich pardon that concluded without finding any evidence of criminality.

I don't know anything about the investigation, but no finding does not mean no criminality. Ignoring all the politics involved, there are plenty of more mundane examples. Someone attacks you. You call the police. It's your word against theirs and so the investigation is closed because they cannot show that a crime was committed, but you know it was.

The wiki article cited on HW suggests that bribes may have been constructed as either loans (that were not repaid) or as payment to Hugh Rodham for "representing their cases". Neither is criminal, but it's a simple and classic way of taking a bride and turning it legal by putting another sticker on it. Example:

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Almon Glenn Braswell was pardoned of his 1983 mail fraud and perjury convictions.[19] In 1998 he was under federal investigation for money laundering and tax evasion charges.[20] Braswell and Carlos Vignali each paid approximately $200,000 to Hillary Clinton's brother, Hugh Rodham, to represent their respective cases for clemency. Hugh Rodham returned the payments after they were disclosed to the public.[21][22] Braswell would later invoke the Fifth Amendment at a Senate Committee hearing in 2001, when questioned about allegations of his having systematically defrauded senior citizens of millions of dollars.[23]

[matthewdgreen]

If you're going to make the claim that payment for pardons (as opposed to lobbying) is common and accepted, you should back it up with facts. The actual facts in this case indicate that it wasn't common or accepted (as indicated by the fact that a major investigation was triggered and carried out), and in fact there's no evidence that it occurred in this case. You're now withdrawing to "well, we can't prove that criminal behavior didn't happen". That's true; we also can't prove that the Clintons aren't aliens. It doesn't make your claims any less unsupported.

ETA: The relevance to today is that the same standards will likely apply to any pardons made by Trump this morning. If people paid other parties to lobby for a Trump pardon then it may not be illegal (as much as it's terrible policy.) If direct payments to Trump or his businesses were made then it could be criminal behavior. There's also precedent for appointing a special prosecutor to investigate it.