Just days after the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) awarded Donald Trump a newly-invented "Peace Prize," his Department of Justice moved to drop charges against Hernán López who had been “convicted of scheming to pay millions of dollars in bribes in exchange for the lucrative broadcast rights to soccer tournaments,” The New York Times reported Wednesday.

As Scott Horton noted (below), The Times somehow managed not to connect any dots between the award Trump has been craving (never mind the war crimes his administration is committing) and the sudden decision to drop charges against López.

López was the head of a Fox Sports broadcasting unit who was convicted in 2023 of “money laundering conspiracy and wire fraud conspiracy. Prosecutors had said Mr. López conspired to pay off the heads of national federations to win the rights to broadcast two South American soccer tournaments,” as per The Times (my emphases added). “Mr. López also helped Fox beat out ESPN to win the rights to broadcast the men’s World Cup in 2018 and 2022, prosecutors said.”

As The Times explained, López’s conviction was vacated, then reinstated by a federal appeals court. In September, he appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

It sure looks like López’s buddies at FIFA figured that appealing to Donald Trump’s vanity was a faster, more reliable way to get rid of the conviction.

If so, they made the right bet. And it probably cost a lot less than a SCOTUS appeal. “Federal prosecutors, who have for years fought vigorously against overturning the jury convictions in the long-running case, did not offer a reason for seeking a dismissal, saying only that it was ‘in the interests of justice,’” The Times said. It pointed out that the current judge could, “in theory” deny the request for dismissal but that such a denial is “exceedingly rare.”

I think we all know the “interests of justice” really means “the benefits of having Trump-fluffing friends in high places.”

I’ll just leave this Times paragraph here without further comment:

Mr. López, who is a citizen of both the United States and Argentina, founded the podcasting company Wondery after leaving Fox. That company was sold to Amazon in late 2020 for a reported $300 million. To promote his Supreme Court appeal, Mr. López retained a high-end strategic communications firm, FGS Global, which has spent almost $9 million so far this year lobbying the federal government for clients including the National Football League and Paramount Skydance, according to federal records.