Tom Crouser: Trump is wrong to use pardons for self-dealing (Opinion) wvgazettemail.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from wvgazettemail.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The Globe and Mail Published December 25, 2020
TOM BRENNER/Reuters
Donald Trump is using a power steeped in history in an 11th-hour effort to rewrite history.
The President is employing the constitutional power of the pardon to do more than settle scores that grew out of the Russia investigation. With the scratch of a pen, Mr. Trump is pardoning the principals convicted by Robert Mueller in a final-days effort to win his battle with the special counsel whose 2017-19 investigation tormented him.
American presidents since George Washington have used the clemency power in Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, but only Mr. Trump has pardoned or commuted the sentences of his political allies to the degree to which he has done, with more than 90 per cent of his decisions benefiting those with personal, political or legal ties to the President.
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WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. Among the dozens of people who received pardons from President Trump this week were several who lied to investigators and obstructed a federal probe into the president s links to Russia.
Some had personal connections to Trump or his most loyal backers. A handful were Republican lawmakers rewarded for fealty to the president after betraying the public trust. Others abused their authority in more violent ways, killing or injuring unarmed civilians.
Taken together, the rogues’ gallery of criminals receiving clemency this week showcased Trump’s willingness to exert raw political power for his own personal gain, handing out favors to friends at a time when he is seeking GOP support for his flailing bid to reverse his election loss.
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump on Wednesday pardoned a former Maryland police officer who served 10 years in prison in a police brutality case after her canine partner attacked a man suspected of burglary.
Stephanie Mohr, a former officer with the Prince George s County Police Department, was among the dozens of people who received clemency from Trump in the waning weeks of his presidency.
Trump has wielded his clemency powers in an unusual way, granting them to several allies, some of whom were convicted in cases tied to the president, and undercutting his own Justice Department in the process.
This week, Trump has issued several dozen clemencies, pardoning his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort; his longtime ally, Roger Stone; his former campaign aide, George Papadopoulos; and his son-in-law s father, Charles Kushner, to name a few.
The pardons of the ex-contractors involved in the killings of Iraqi civilians drew rebukes from civil rights groups in particular. The executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim advocacy group, called it an unconscionable act of moral insanity.
The four ex-contractors worked for Blackwater, a firm founded by Erik Prince, one of Trump s allies and the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos The idea of the pardon power is really to address injustice and to either right wrongs or show mercy when that’s appropriate, said Noah Bookbinder, executive director of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.