The Fifth Amendment protects against self-incrimination — but not against self-sabotage.
When President Donald Trump announced a last-minute barrage of clemency grants on his last full day in office, perhaps it should have come as little surprise that among the mostly well connected lot was Billy Walters. If there are two things that Trump loves, it’s golf and celebrity. Walters offered both: in 2017, the massively successful sports gambler was convicted on charges of insider trading in connection with a stock tip he’d floated to Phil Mickelson in 2012. Walters was sentenced to five years, but had been out on home confinement since spring 2020 before Trump commuted the remainder of Walters’ sentence.
In and of itself, Walters’ clemency is unremarkable for a president who reveled in using his pardon power to forgive frauds, public corruptions, and all manners of self-interested deceptions. What makes Walters’ commutation so interesting is who supported it: according to the Trump White House, among Walters’ champions was Mickelson himself.
Two days later, Mickelson pushed back. Mickelson’s attorney told ESPN’s Bob Harig unequivocally that “Phil had nothing to do with this” — and, specifically, that Mickelson neither wrote any letters nor made any phone calls in support of Walters’ commutation.
Needless to say, of course, is that Mickelson’s history with Walters does not drip with forthrightness. In 2012, with Mickelson in debt to Walters to the tune of $2 million, Walters slipped Mickelson a stock tip based on insider information; the tip helped Mickelson clear more than $900,000, which he then used to pay Walters. When Walters stood trial in 2017, Mickelson was not called to testify after intimating that he planned to invoke the Fifth Amendment — an option available only if he reasonably believed his testimony could be used against him in a criminal prosecution.
Now, years later, the danger to Mickelson has passed; insider trading cases answer to a six-year statute of limitations, and more than eight years have gone by since Mickelson’s lucky week in the stock market. Doing a favor for an old friend would carry no risk in a court of law.
The court of public opinion, though, is another story altogether. It’s not hard to imagine why Mickelson wouldn’t want his name associated with a historically unpopular president — much less in the context of a case that still is his reputation’s greatest blemish.
The alternative possibility, of course, is that Mickelson’s attorney is telling the truth, and that Mickelson truly had nothing to do with Walters’ clemency request. That requires assuming that the Trump White House press shop simply screwed up — a possibility that requires little imagination. The White House’s statement announcing Walters’ clemency also claimed that the request was supported by David Feherty, Peter Jacobsen, Butch Harmon, and former CBS News reporter Lara Logan — all of whom, according to Harig, submitted a letter of support in Walters’ 2017 case. Harig later postulated on Twitter that the White House had confused the 2017 letter with support for the clemency petition.
But if that’s true, then it leaves unexplained how Mickelson’s name got thrown into the mix. Mickelson didn’t sign the 2017 letter. If the 2017 letter is where the White House pulled the names of Walters’ supporters, then Mickelson’s name shouldn’t have been included at all. And yet it was.
Even Mickelson’s denials raise more questions than they answer. Mickelson’s attorney told Harig that Mickelson didn’t write any letter or make any phone calls in support of Walters’ clemency petition — but those clearly are not the only manners by which one could communicate support for such a request. Mickelson himself, according to Harig, “reached out to ESPN to say he did not write a letter for Walters, but he declined further comment.” This is, of course, not the first time that Mickelson has refused to answer questions in connection with Walters. For someone who claims to have done nothing wrong, Mickelson seems to dodge a lot of questions.
Without Mickelson offering his explanation up to scrutiny, we are left to choose from two possibilities. Did Mickelson quietly support Walters’ clemency petition, then feign shock when that support wasn’t kept quiet? Or did the Trump White House press shop inexplicably pull Mickelson’s name — of all names! — out of thin air and mistakenly drop it into Walters’ clemency announcement?
Regrettably, we are left in the end to guesswork: neither Mickelson nor the Trump administration have much of an edge over one another when it comes to credibility. But only one of them had a motive.
. . .
You might also enjoy reading…