“60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl, who remained after the purge of talent amid an apparent lean toward President Donald Trump under CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss, kicked off a new season Sunday by getting in the face of the president’s former pardon attorney.

In a segment about brokers charging convicts into the millions of dollars for the not-always-fulfilled promise they’ll secure a pardon from Trump, Stahl grilled Ed Martin, a “Stop the Steal” Trump soldier who announced his resignation from the Department of Justice last month.

Stahl charged that people seeking pardons in a traditional application process through the DOJ had largely been ignored.

“Is that a fair system?” Stahl asked.

“I reject your characterization of the system,” Martin answered. “I’ve not seen it. I’ve not heard it. I sat with a thousand people in the last year in my office, and I listened to them tell. Some of them ended up with clemency. Some of them were pardoned.”

Stahl countered in a voice-over that 70% of the clemencies Trump handed out in his second term didn’t go through the Justice Department ― and that spikes to 92% if the president’s Jan. 6 pardons are included.

The segment eventually turned to a healthcare executive tax cheat who, Stahl noted, was pardoned by Trump after his mother paid $1 million to attend a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser.

“A pardon-seeker going to Mar-a-Lago and joining in a fundraising event where you had to pay money and then getting a pardon. Why isn’t that a quid pro quo?” she asked. “Why isn’t that pay-to-play?”

Martin noted Trump’s “prerogative” to pardon whom he wants and sounded a familiar refrain. “When people say, ‘There’s brokers, there’s quid pro quo,’ I’ve never seen it. I haven’t seen it, haven’t heard it.”

“Ed!” Stahl said. “The point is, they’re going around you. And they’re bragging about going around you.”

“I don’t see any evidence of some magical brokers,” he said. “I think people are trying to make money.” He referred to the brokers as “snake oil salesmen.”

Stahl then tagged on a White House statement, reading: “Anyone spending money to lobby for pardons is foolishly wasting their money. ... President Trump performs his constitutional duties in an ethically sound manner, and to suggest so otherwise is either ill-informed or malicious.”

Stahl’s “gotcha” attitude appeared consistent with the reputation of “60 Minutes” before Weiss’ makeover. But the show made no mention of the tumultuous weeks in which turnover skyrocketed amid cries that the show’s independence and integrity were being compromised.

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