Extending the pardon Trump’s streak to exercise his leniency powers against criminals who are loyalists, well-connected or next to his family. While all presidents grant controversial pardons at the end of their tenure, Trump appears to be moving faster than his predecessors and showing little inhibition in rewarding his friends and allies using one of the most unlimited powers of his office.
Manafort and Stone’s pardon rewards two of the president’s most high-profile and most convicted former advisers, both of whom were indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller, tried and convicted by juries of multiple crimes.
Manafort, who is under house arrest, admitted his crimes and initially agreed to work with Mueller and then lied to prosecutors, while Stone never cooperated after lying to Congress to protect the president. Manafort spent nearly two years in prison for banking and tax fraud, illegal foreign lobbying and witness testimony conspiracies before being released over the Covid-19 pandemic, while Stone’s sentence for interfering with Congress and threatening a witness previously stated this. years was converted by Trump. days before he would surrender.
He ultimately pleaded guilty to tax evasion 16 times, one time when he retaliated against a federal witness – his brother-in-law – and another time when he lied to the Federal Election Commission.
Christie went on to say in early 2019 that Charles Kushner had committed “ one of the most disgusting, disgusting crimes ” he had prosecuted, referring to an elaborate plan of revenge the elder Kushner hatched in 2003 to target his brother-in-law, William Schulder, a former employee, became a witness before federal prosecutors in their case against Kushner.
As part of the plot, Kushner hired a prostitute to seduce Schulder to have sex in a motel room in Bridgewater, New Jersey, while a hidden camera rolled.
A tape of the meeting was then sent to Kushner’s sister and Schulder’s wife, Esther. Ultimately, the intimidation stunt failed. The Schulders took the video to prosecutors, who tracked down the woman and threatened her with arrest. She promptly turned on Kushner.
Also included in Trump’s pardon list Wednesday night is Margaret, the wife of former GOP representative Duncan Hunter, just a day after Trump granted a full pardon to Duncan Hunter. Margaret Hunter last year pleaded guilty to conspiring “knowingly” to convert campaign funds for personal use.
In addition to the high-profile pardon, Trump also pardoned more than twenty other individuals, including those who pleaded guilty to various cybercrimes, gun possession, and postal fraud. He also commuted the sentences of three others.
Also in that party were Alex van der Zwaan, the Dutch lawyer who was sentenced to 30 days in prison after found guilty of lying to Mueller investigators; two Border Patrol agents convicted in 2006 of shooting and wounding an unarmed undocumented immigrant and then hiding him; and several people convicted of non-violent drug offenses serving long sentences.
The shatter of grace, poised to be a defining facet of Trump’s final weeks in office, follows a flood of phone calls and emails to the West Wing from people seeking to take advantage of the president’s broad leniency powers.
So inundated have Trump staff been with requests for pardon or surrender that a spreadsheet has been created to keep track of the requests addressed to Trump’s closest associates.
The president, who refuses to acknowledge his loss and whose officials say he falls further into denial, is nevertheless eager to engage in a conversation about who is asking what.
More pardon for the Mueller investigation
Trump’s pardon this week for the defendants of the Mueller investigation follows a long-standing pattern of Trump encouraging and rewarding his associates for refusing to assist federal investigators on national security issues if they have a relationship with him.
The pardon of Manafort and Stone also play a part in Trump’s crusade to undermine the findings of the Mueller investigation. Both men had been the primary targets investigators believed could have shared the truth about unresolved questions about the president’s campaign and Russian electoral meddling if they had wanted to.
Prosecutors were never able to determine whether Trump had learned in advance from Stone about planned releases of WikiLeaks of Democratic emails stolen by the Russians, and could not find out why Manafort shared internal campaign polls or discussed US policy in Ukraine with a Russian employee during Trump’s run for office.
Commenting on Stone’s crimes at his conviction, Federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson described how Congress, the Department of Justice, the judiciary and the American public should provide just punishment for people like Stone who are not telling the truth.
Manafort’s longtime deputy, Rick Gates, who held top positions during the 2016 Trump campaign and inauguration and became one of Mueller’s key associates, has received no leniency from the president
“Politics don’t corrupt people. People corrupt politics,” Jackson also said of Manafort and Gates’ plans when she separately oversaw their case.
Stone was convicted of seven charges in November 2019 – including lying to Congress, tampering with witnesses, and obstructing the proceedings of a congressional committee while investigating Russia. One of the things Stone misled Congress about was his communication with Trump’s campaign officials – messages prosecutors said he hid from his desire to protect Trump.
He was charged in January 2019 after armed FBI agents arrested him at his Florida home. Trump’s possible knowledge of Stone’s efforts to get Democratic documents leaked during the 2016 presidential campaign was a key question in the Mueller investigation, one that Democrats on Capitol Hill still want to investigate. In Mueller’s more recently released findings, the special counsel documented how he looked to whether Trump lied in written replies about his conversations with Stone. As president, Trump could not be charged with a felony due to departmental policies, Mueller said, and the office of special counsel never pressed him for a testimony.
As part of a plea deal that was dropped in September 2018, Manafort admitted to having money laundering, tax fraud and illegal foreign lobbying activities in connection with his years of lucrative work as a political advisor to Ukrainian politicians, including a former Ukrainian president who took refuge in Russia as well as defrauding banks to supplement his income with cash through mortgages.
He also agreed to work with the prosecutors at Mueller’s office – before lying during those interrogation sessions. A federal judge ruled that his willful lies invalidated his previous plea.
Andrew Weissmann, the former prosecutor who oversaw Manafort’s prosecution in the Mueller investigation, has claimed that the former Trump aide received special treatment from the Justice Department after his imprisonment.
This is a groundbreaking story and will be updated.