Explaining presidential pardons and how Trump is wielding this power newsday.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from newsday.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
19 Jan 2021
President Donald Trump announced late Tuesday night that he had pardoned and commuted the sentences of 143 people in the final hours of his presidency.
The president issued 73 pardons and 70 commutations.
The list included pop culture figures including rapper Lil Wayne, who was pardoned, and Kodak Black, whose sentence was commuted.
The president also pardoned several Republicans, including former Deputy National Finance Chair of the Republican National Committee Elliott Broidy, former Rep. Duke Cunningham of California, and former Rep. Rick Renzi of Arizona.
He also issued a pardon for his former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who was charged with fraud for his work on the “We Build the Wall” crowdfunding campaign fueled by Trump supporters to build a wall on the Southern border.
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) President Donald Trump has granted clemency to two Minnesota residents convicted of drug charges. Trump commuted the sentence of Cassandra Ann Kasowski, of Moorhead, who.
The last-minute clemency, announced Wednesday morning, follows separate waves of pardons over the past month for Trump associates convicted in the FBI’s Russia investigation as well as for the father of his son-in-law.
Associated Press
In what could be the longest of legal long shots, several of those arrested for storming the U.S. Capitol are holding out hope that President Donald Trump will use some of his last hours in office to grant the rioters a full pardon.
Longtime advisers to Trump are urging him against such a move but the rioters contend their argument is compelling: They went to the Capitol to support Trump, and now that they are facing charges carrying up to 20 years in prison, it’s time for Trump to support them.
“I feel like I was basically following my president. I was following what we were called to do. He asked us to fly there. He asked us to be there. So I was doing what he asked us to do,” said Jenna Ryan, a Dallas-area real-estate agent who took a private jet to the Jan. 6 rally and ensuing riot to disrupt the certification of the election of President-elect Joe Biden.