WASHINGTON (AP) – President Donald Trump pardoned 15 people on Tuesday, including a few Congressional Republicans who were strong and early supporters, a 2016 campaign official entangled in the Russia probe, and former government contractors convicted in a 2007 massacre in Baghdad.
Trump’s actions in his last weeks in office show a president exercising his executive power to reward loyalists and others he believes have been wronged by a legal system he believes is biased against him and his allies. Trump pardoned Democrat Joe Biden – not an uncommon act for an outgoing president – even when he refused to publicly acknowledge his election loss, who will be sworn in on Jan. 20.
Trump will likely grant more pardons before then. He and his allies have discussed a range of other possibilities, including members of Trump’s family and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani.
Those pardoned Tuesday included former Republican representatives Duncan Hunter of California and Chris Collins of New York, two of the first GOP lawmakers to back Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Trump has also commuted the sentences of five other people, including former Rep. Steve Stockman from Texas.
Collins, the first congressman to endorse Trump as president, was sentenced to two years and two months in federal prison after admitting to helping his son and others avoid $ 800,000 in stock market losses when he learned that a drug research by a small pharmaceutical company had failed.
Hunter was sentenced to 11 months in prison after pleading guilty to stealing campaign funds and spending the money on everything from outings with friends to his daughter’s birthday party.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Hunter and Collins were pardoned “at the request of many members of Congress.” She noted that Hunter served the nation in the United States Marines and saw combat in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
In the group announced Tuesday night, four former government contractors were convicted in a 2007 massacre in Baghdad that killed more than a dozen Iraqi civilians and caused international uproar over the use of private guards in a war zone.
Supporters of Nicholas Slatten, Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard, the former Blackwater Worldwide contractors, had lobbied for pardon, arguing that the men had been excessively punished in an investigation and prosecution they said were tainted by trouble and exculpatory evidence withheld. All four served long prison terms.
The pardon reflected Trump’s apparent willingness to give the benefit of doubt to U.S. military and contractors when it comes to acts of war in war zones against civilians. For example, last November, he pardoned a former US Army commando who would face trial next year for the murder of a suspected Afghan bomber and a former Army lieutenant who was convicted of murder for ordering his men on three Shoot Afghans.
Trump also announced a pardon for two people entangled in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. One was for 2016 campaign advisor George Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about a conversation in which he learned Russia was dirty about Trump’s Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. The president also pardoned Alex van der Zwaan, a Dutch lawyer who was sentenced to 30 days in prison for lying to investigators during the Mueller investigation.
Van der Zwaan and Papadopoulos are the third and fourth convicts of Russia investigation to have been pardoned. By pardoning them, Trump refocused on Mueller’s investigation and made a broader effort to reverse the results of the investigation that spawned criminal charges against half a dozen employees.
The pardon was criticized from the highest democrats. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., The chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said the president was abusing his power.
Trump pardons not on the basis of remorse, restitution, or the interests of justice, but to reward his friends and political allies, to protect those who lie to cover him, to protect those guilty of killing civilians, and to undermine an investigation that uncovered mass abuse, ”said Schiff.
Last month, Trump forgave former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who had twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, and the sentence of another employee, Roger Stone, months before, days before he was due to report to prison.
Trump has granted about 2% of the pardons requested in his only tenure – just 27 before Tuesday’s announcement. In comparison, Barack Obama granted 212 or 6%, and George W. Bush granted about 7%, or 189. George HW Bush, another one-term president, granted 10% of the requests.
Among those pardoned by Trump was Phil Lyman, a Utah state representative who led an ATV protest through restricted federal states.
Lyman served as Utah County Commissioner in 2014 when he led about 50 ATV riders down a canyon of Native American cliff dwellings that officials closed to vehicular traffic. The ride took place amid a sputtering movement in the West that backed out against federal control of large tracts of land and came in the aftermath of an armed confrontation Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy had with Bureau of Land Management over pasturage.
Lyman spent 10 days in prison and was ordered to pay nearly $ 96,000 in restitution. The Trump administration lifted a ban on motorized vehicles in parts of the canyon in 2017, but put restrictions in other areas where Lyman led his ride.
Two former US border security agents, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, were also pardoned in 2005 for shooting and injuring a Mexican drug smuggler near El Paso, Texas.
Others on the list included a Pittsburgh dentist who pleaded guilty to health care fraud, two women convicted of drug crimes, and Alfred Lee Crum, now 89, who pleaded guilty to the uncle in 1952 when he was 19. of his wife to illegally distil moonshine.
Crum served three years of probation and paid a $ 250 fine. The White House said Crum had a clean track record and strong marriage for nearly 70 years, attended the same church for 60 years, raised four children, and regularly participated in charity fundraising events.
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Associated Press writers Zeke Miller, Jill Colvin, Michael Balsamo in Washington and Michelle Price in Las Vegas contributed to this report.