At sentencing, the judge in Paul Walczak's criminal case said he's not entitled to a "get out of jail free" card.

Evidently, Trump came to the opposite conclusion — and added to his ridiculous list of controversial pardons.

But as it turns out, this was one of two such pardons issued around the same time. The New York Times reported:

President Trump has pardoned a Florida health care executive whose mother played a role in trying to expose the contents of Ashley Biden’s diary. The pardon of the executive, Paul Walczak, was signed privately on Wednesday and posted on the Justice Department’s website on Friday. It came less than two weeks after he was sentenced to 18 months in prison and ordered to pay nearly $4.4 million in restitution, for tax crimes that prosecutors said were used to finance a lavish lifestyle, including the purchase of a yacht.

.......Rather, what we have here is a Republican donor, from a Republican family, who was caught siphoning off tax payments for his employees — repeatedly, over the course of a decade — in order to finance an extravagant lifestyle.

Though Walczak professed his innocence, he was ultimately convicted and was poised to spend a year and a half behind bars — that is, until Trump decided to intervene in his case...

Taken together, Trump appears to have created an entirely new legal/political dynamic, without precedent in the American tradition, in which pardons are available to perceived political allies with whom the president sympathizes.

Traditionally, presidents have issued pardons in order to right a wrong or protect those who have been falsely accused of wrongdoing. In 2025, if Trump sees a convicted criminal as an ally, that’s apparently all the president needs to know.

For all the GOP hysterics in the Biden era about a “two-tiered” system of justice, it seems the White House has gone out of its way to create the very dynamic Republicans claimed to be against.