Republican Cronyism Favoring Friends, Family and Loyalists

Pardoned a convicted drug smuggler who had connections with his son-in-law Jared Kushner's family after her served only two and a half years of his ten-year sentence

Personally lobbied to connect a business executive with prior criminal convictions for theft and fraud with the state comptroller overseeing a multimillion-dollar initiative meant to combat opioid overdoses despite him not having had any experience working on statewide public health initiatives

Pardoned his son-in-law's father Charles Kushner who served 14 months in prison in the early 2000's for illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion and witness tampering 14 years after he concluded his sentence which benefits his namesake company by making it much easier for them to secure financing for major projects

Pardoned former Rep. and early 2016 campaign supporter Duncan Hunter who admitted to stealing campaign contributions for personal use days before he was set to begin his 11-month prison sentence

Had a yearslong extramarital affair with a woman who worked for a Republican state senator and was able to keep it secret by using a fake Uber account to rendezvous with her and then facilitated her transfer to a job working for a wealthy business executive and donor he was criminally involved with

Pardoned personal friend Conrad Black who published a fawning book with a title calling him a "President Like No Other" and previously served time for scheming to siphon off millions of dollars from the newspaper company he was CEO of

Pardoned his late mentor's grandson who was convicted of felony drug trafficking and tried to keep it secret in a breach of precedent in which governors usually publicly identify the names of people they pardoned

Had sex with an intern in his private chambers and then later wrote her a letter of recommendation for a job in the local DA's office while also being a married father of two young children who ran on a platform highlighting the "importance of family" in his life

Pardoned a man convicted of soliciting sexually explicit messages from an underage girl after having a private lunch with a close friend of his family

Had his parents pay his close friend and his friend's wife who he had an affair with $96,000 to keep them both quiet and used his influence to get his friend a corporate lobbying job, all of which resulted in him eventually resigning from the senate