maybe he should have purchased the "platinum edition" pardon

"[Marc] Rich, the fugitive Swiss-based commodities trader who received a controversial pardon from President Bill Clinton in January 2001, is a primary target of criminal probes under way in the U.S. attorney's office in New York and by Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, sources said.

"We think he was a major player in this — a central figure," a senior law-enforcement official told The [New York] Post.

Investigators are looking into a series of deals that took place in the months after his pardon from Clinton. If criminal wrongdoing is established in these deals, he could be subject to prosecution."

Rich's ex-wife Denise contributed $1,000,000 to Democratic campaigns including the Hillary Clinton Senate race as well as $450,000 for the Clinton library. This generosity was apparently enough to convice Clinton to override the recommendations of his staff and award a pardon to Rich. But the pardon awarded by Clinton only covered past crimes not future crimes.

I'm thinking that Rich might well have paid in excess of $10,000,000 for a "platinum" pardon that would have covered future crimes as well as past crimes. As things stand now, if Rich is again indicted, he will likely have to wait until a Hillary Clinton administration to get another pardon and that one is going to cost quite a bit more as the vast right-wing conspiracy folks are likely to go crazy over a second pardon.

One would think that a top grifter like Bill Clinton would have figured out a way to extract quite a bit more from the pardons than he did.