Donald Trump, who by his own admission “wants to be a dictator,” is the “most unabashedly pro-criminal, pro-crime president of my lifetime,” Chris Hayes said Tuesday in an impressive 10-minute analysis of the president’s many associations with questionable and sordid characters. The group includes Andrew and Tristan Tate, who have been accused of rape and trafficking, as well as Ghislaine Maxwell, who has been accused of sexual abuse and trafficking.
Hayes put together a list of people Trump has pardoned or helped since he assumed office in January — a list that begins with the approximately 1,500 pardoned Jan. 6 Insurrectionists: “Roughly 1500 convicted or suspected accused criminals. They included hundreds who were handed lengthy sentences for very serious felonies such as assaulting police with deadly weapons.”
Trump then pardoned Ross Ulbricht, founder of the black market drug dealing online marketplace the Silk Road and is perhaps “the biggest drug dealer in American history.”
On the third day of his presidency, Trump pardoned D.C. police officer Terence Sutton and Lieutenant Andrew Zabavsky, who were sentenced to 66 months and 48 months in prison for their roles in the 2020 murder of Karon Hylton-Brown.
The list, Hayes said, doesn’t stop there and is “wild” and “unlike any list I’ve ever seen or ever covered.”
On top of pardons, Trump has also come to the aid of the Tate brothers, who had been detained in Romania for three years when the Trump administration helped them repatriate to the United States in March 2025.
Trump worked to bring the Tates to the United States even as he and his administration “were falsely accusing hundreds of men — from hairdressers to soccer enthusiasts — of being hardcore MS-13 gang members and disappearing them from the country.”
On top of that, Hayes continued, “federal prosecutors under Trump are now quietly dropping charges against the actual bona fide leaders of that gang they spent years pursuing.”
“These are the criminal and unbelievable list of people who have done truly awful things,” Hayes later said. “Most of them convicted felons, some accused of doing truly awful things. Each one of these alone would be a scandal that wrecked another administration.”
Watch the clip from Chris Hayes in the video above.
