We at Move to Amend appreciate receiving emails and social media notices about the latest hideous corporate action or example of a corporation skirting public accountability. They simply add to our mounting evidence that corporations have too much political and economic power, and that the We the People Amendment is needed to unequivocally establish that the power and authority of people should be greater than the power of corporations.
More than usual communication was received recently when President Trump pardoned ButMEZ corporation, a cryptocurrency exchange that had pleaded guilty last year for violating the Bank Secrecy Act for doing business without establishing a legitimate anti-money laundering program. BitMEX was criminally fined $100 million in connection with its guilty plea, which was in addition to $130 million in previously imposed civil penalties.
Trump issued full and unconditional pardons to four individuals connected to the company, but also to the BitMEX corporation. It was historic . Never had a President previously pardoned a corporation.
People who shared with us the news expressed shock, disgust, and anger. Our reaction was "Pardon us, but not surprising. Of course Trump would pardon a criminal corporation."
The POTUS pardon of the prosecuted corporation was predictable for two reasons.
First, it's consistent with his pro=corporate agenda. More than 100 investigations and actions against corporations have been dropped, withdrawn or halted by the Trump administration in its first two months in office, according to Public Citizen. These include corporations connected to Trump allies or donors. Crypto corporations, which were mega MAGA political donors (actually more like political investors who are now cashing in) were among them. Helping cyptos also benefitsTrump and family members who are involved in various crypto schemes.
The second reason is more speculative, but very plausible given Trump's constant craving for attention and his tendency to avoid being outshone by rivals. Is it possible that, as head of the Executive Branch, Trump may simply be trying to lead the "corporate personhood" movement -- something the Judicial and Legislative Branches of the federal government launched or expanded?
If so, he faces stiff competition.
The Judicial Branch - namely the U.S. Supreme Court - reigns supreme in the idiocy of anointing corporate entities with constitutional rights. Nowhere in the U.S. Constitution is there language asserting or even implying that corporations are human "persons." Corporate constitutional rights were an invention of the Supreme Court, beginning in the 1880s, when it ruled that the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the 14th Amendment - originally intended to secure rights for human beings, including formerly enslaved people - applied to government chartered or licenced companies.
This was followed by a series of Supreme Court decisions recognizing that corporations also possess Fourth Amendment search and seizure rights, Fifth Amendment takings rights and First Amendment right to speak and the right not to speak. The 2010 Citizens United v. FEC decision simply expanded corporate First Amendment free speech rights. In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., the Supreme Court in 2014 ruled 5-4 that closely held for-profit corporations with religious objections, could deny contraceptive coverage to their employees based on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA)
That's an impressive display of corporate rights over people's rights and the rights of communities to protect the health, safety and welfare of their own residents.
The Legislative Branch - namely, Congress - has taken a different approach: protecting corporations by failing to take any substantive action to abolish corporate constitutional rights.
Intentional or not, some members of Congress appear to believe that ending "corporate personhood" requires nothing more than overturning Citizens United or supporting constitutional amendments that, if passed, would allow "Congress" may distinguish between natural persons and corporations or other artificial entities created by law" in the context of political spending. Yet even these modest efforts have failed to gain serious traction, let alone come close to passing. Former Senator Jon Tester introduced a Senate bill in 2023 stating "The rights enumerated in this Constitution and other rights retained by the people shall be the rights of natural persons." It had zero Senate co-sponsors.
The We the People Amendment (HJR54) has been introduced in several previous Congressional sessions, targeting the abolition of all corporate constitutional rights and the doctrine that political contributions equals free speech. It attracted support from 90 House members in the last session of congress and is consistent with the grassroot support from 520,000 individuals, nearly 800 organizations endorsers and 715 municipal and 8 state resolutions or ballot initiatives .
Massive political campaign contributions from corporations and the super rich have played a role in preventing passage of this effort, although the 2024 election with historic sums of political contributions from billionaires and corporations is triggering greater public attention to urge Congress to take action.
The Executive Branch, however, has largely been left out of the corporate personhood fandom. The closest anyone has come was Mitt Romney, who, during his 2011 presidential campaign, famously declared, "Corporations are people, my friend." But Romney was only then a candidate. While political retribution against him, especially after his two votes to impeach, may be in motion, Trump might feel could at least surpass Romney's low bar of equating a corporation as a person. Taking action is more impactful than making a statement. After all, Romney was never the POTUS with the power of the prosecutorial pardon pen.
Some may claim that a simple Executive pardon of a corporate criminal is pretty lame compared to the incredible authority to expand "corporate personhood" by the Judicial Branch or the Legislative Branch to collectively take no serious action to amend the constitution to abolish all corporate constitutional rights despite expanded and blatantly obvious corporate harms to people, communities, the natural world, and our declining power of We the People to self rule. As the head of the Executive Branch, Trump doesn't have all that many "expand corporate personhood" cards to play - maybe fewer cards in number than he claimed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has to negotiate peace with Russia.
Yet, full and unconditional Presidential pardons of corporate criminals as a means to uplift that "a corporation is a person" have a couple of built in advantages over the other two branches.
Each Executive pardon by Trump with a sharpie pen reinforces and deepens the "corporate personhood" narrative. Pardons are fast and potentially only limited by criminal acts of corporations. This compares to very slow moving Supreme Court cases brought by a corporation claiming constitutional rights.
Executive pardons are assertive. They're active and can be quite visible and public. This compares to the Legislative Branch simply playing defense by protecting corporate constitutional rights from the majority of the public who believe its absurd that "corporations are people."
Executive pardons of corporations are historic. The Supreme Court has been inventing corporate constitutional rights for more than a century. Congress had been sitting on their hands taking no action for just as long. Trump's persistent criminal corporate pardons could propel him and the Executive Branch as the bigliest of all bigley advocates and in normalizing "corporate personhood." They also, if done for a price, represent one more way to profit from the presidency.
It's up to us to add POTUS corporate pardons - be they from Trump or anyone else - to Supreme Court decisions and Congressional inactions to our educating and organizing against the illegitimacy of corporate constitutional rights and the need to create foundational change affirming people's rights over corporate rights.
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