Ghislaine Maxwell headed to Congress amid claims Donald Trump may have cut a deal to keep her silent.

If Congress will recognize the longstanding problem of the presidential pardon power and act on its responsibility – always a big "if" – the country will owe a debt of gratitude to Hunter Biden and Honduran President and drug kingpin Juan Orlando Hernández.

Trump granted Paul Pogue, the founder and former chief executive officer of a large construction company in Texas, a full pardon. In 2010, he was sentenced to three years of probation and charged several hundreds thousand dollars in fines for filing false income tax statements, according to the McKinney Courier Gazette.

In a joint statement released Thursday, state Sen. Vin Gopal, and Assemblywomen Margie Donlon and Luanne Peterpaul, expressed “outrage and disgust.”

State Sen. Camera Bartolotta (R., Beaver) is on both committees, and has been a vocal advocate for criminal justice reform. Reached shortly after Shapiro sent the nomination to the Senate, Bartolotta declined to comment specifically on O’Brien as a candidate.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy delivers his State of the State address to a joint session of the Legislature at the statehouse, in Trenton, N.J., Jan. 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File) From Camden and Cherry Hill to Trenton and the Jersey Shore, what ...