60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl refused to go easy on a major Donald Trump ally as she grilled him about the president’s “pardon economy.”
Stahl, who kept her 60 Minutes chair as MAGA-curious CBS News boss Bari Weiss pushed three longtime correspondents out the door, sat down with Ed Martin, who left his post as Trump’s pardon attorney last month, during the show’s season opener on Sunday.
Weiss, an anti-woke opinion writer installed by Trump pal and Paramount CEO David Ellison as CBS News editor-in-chief nearly a year ago, has sought to push the network rightward and stalled at least two 60 Minutes segments critical of the Trump administration last season.
But Stahl, 84, pulled no punches Sunday as she pressed a flustered Martin, 56, on the ethical minefield surrounding Trump’s pardons.
Stahl noted that in Trump’s “pardon economy,” wealthy people are paying brokers with ties to Trump as much as $3 million to lobby the president for a pardon, while those seeking pardons through the traditional process at the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney are left in the lurch.
“Is that a fair system?” Stahl asked Martin, who led the office until he left last month. He had initially served as interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia from January to May 2025, but GOP opposition prevented his Senate confirmation.
“I reject your characterization of the system,” Martin replied. “I’ve not seen it. I’ve not heard it. I sat with a thousand people in the last year in my office, and I listened to them tell—some of them ended up with clemency, some of them were pardoned.”
But Stahl pointed out in a voiceover that roughly 70 percent of the clemencies Trump has granted in his second term have bypassed the Justice Department—a figure that rises to 92 percent when his pardons of Jan. 6 rioters are included.
She gave the example of Paul Walczak, a healthcare executive who pleaded guilty to tax crimes but was pardoned by Trump after his mother paid $1 million to attend a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser.
“A pardon seeker going to Mar-a-Lago and joining in a fundraising event where you had to pay money and then getting a pardon, why isn’t that a quid pro quo? Why isn’t that pay to play?”
Martin continued to insist he had never seen pay-to-play arrangements, claiming, “When people say, ‘It’s brokers, there’s quid pro quo,’ I’ve never seen it. I haven’t seen it, haven’t heard it.”
“Ed!” Stahl said. “The point is, they’re going around you. And the whole point, they’re bragging about going around you.”
Stuttering, Martin replied, “I—I just don’t, I don’t see any evidence of some magical brokers. I think people are trying to make money.”
He conceded that the brokers who have facilitated many of Trump’s pardons are “snake oil salesmen” and “swamp salesmen.”
At the end of her segment, Stahl included a statement from the White House saying, “Anyone spending money to lobby for pardons is foolishly wasting their money,” and adding, “President Trump performs his constitutional duties in an ethically sound manner, and to suggest so otherwise is either ill-informed or malicious.”
The White House offered a similar statement after The Daily Beast contacted it.
“Anyone spending money to lobby for pardons is foolishly wasting their money, and the President doesn’t even know who these so-called ‘lobbyists’ are,” White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said in the statement. “The Trump administration has a robust pardon review process which includes White House counsel, the Department of Justice, pardon czar Alice Johnson, and ultimately, the President himself as the final decider.”
