It's the first Serious Trouble of the new Trump administration. We start with a discussion of pardons: the ones Joe Biden gave on his way out of office and the ones Donald Trump gave on his way in.

For premium subscribers: the Jack Smith reports (the one about the January 6 prosecution which was released publicly, and the one about the documents prosecution, which Judge Aileen Cannon has blocked from being released to Congress), New York Mayor Eric Adams’ overt campaign for a pardon, a defamation lawsuit that CNN lost (and apparently deserved to lose, says Ken), and finally, we express our thanks to Drake for filing consistently entertaining legal actions that we get to cover — in this case, a defamation lawsuit against his own music label.

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