Senator suspects sinister plot behind Trump's pardon spree

"I mean, he has made a series of what would seem to be audaciously politically toxic pardons," said MS NOW's Chris Hayes to Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT). "I mean, a man convicted and sentenced for 40 years for trafficking cocaine into the U.S., someone convicted of an enormous fraud enterprise and defrauding investors. I think today he's now pardoning someone who is indicted by his own Justice Department this July. And when he's asked about it, he says, I don't know who they are. What are we supposed to make of that?"

"The Binance owner, the owner of one of these big crypto companies, was pardoned," said Murphy. "And this is a bad, bad guy. He pled guilty. I mean, it wasn't like he was contesting the charges. He had essentially set up a company that was being used to launder money for terrorists and for child sex predators, and he got a pardon pretty explicitly because his company had chosen to give Trump's crypto coin advantage in the marketplace."

"And remember, that's not just Trump making money," he added. "That's anybody that gets inside information from Trump on when he's going to boost the cryptocurrency. If they get just two minutes notice of that, they can make millions of dollars and so on. The cryptocurrency stuff, there's clearly a whole group of people around him that are making millions of dollars, and they're handing out favors to folks in the form of pardons in order to make sure that they get their pockets lined."

Senator suspects sinister plot behind Trump's pardon spree