Page 16 - Mark Rich News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

There, tom? >> the parallel i draw if you recall you turn the clock back to 2001 and the final hours of the clinton administration, he overruled the advice of many of his top advisors in deciding to pardon mark rich and caved to political pressure. it is a parallel here. advisors at the defense department and national security advisors saying don't do this. giving manning the pardon sends a harmful signal to our security communities. don't bend to political pressure. he did. something historians will look back at and second guess. >> bill: ash carter's own defense secretary said don't do it. h...

>> well, i would just say this, there are a lot of people to speak on those kinds of issues. and i'm not going to say -- be critical of what president obama intends to do. i'm going to say i support how president bush has handled himself. leaving the stage and letting president obama deal with the very serious issues that we confront today as a country. >> all right. former attorney general alberto gonzalez, thanks for the time, appreciate it. >> you bet, thanks for having me. i want to bring in howard fineman, political analyst, global editorial director at the huffington post. i want to talk...

All right. we are back here live in washington, d.c. we are continuing to follow breaking news. the whe house announcing that president obama in one of his final acts as presidency. this is a big one, he is offering a commutation of the sentence that chelsea manning received. chelsea manning had been sentenced to 35 years in prison. the president now offering a commutation, of course this is something any president can do. pretty much as blanket authority when it comes to commuting sentences, when it comes to offering pardons, there is always a flurry of activity, a flurry of speculation in th...

Years, eard snowden was behind a massive leak. is edward snowden out of luck here? >> he's a fugitive, it's shyly unlikely that he would be anywhere in the ball park of any kind of legal leniency. commutation or pardon for a trial that hasn't occurred yet. you were mentioning earlier steve how controversial the clinton pardon of mark rich was. that was in part for the same rational. he was a fugitive. you have to come back, abide by the law, start serving your time and then only then considered this. the circumstantial reason, we've got a whole list of number ofs. and one more point on james c...

>> these soviet union. clemency meaning leniency. you can argue about this back back-and-forth and say but it's lenient if you are letting get someone get out in may. is this because president obama is calling julian assange's bluff? is that we are basing this on? inappropriate reason. >> the most egregious thing about president clinton's pardoning of mark rich was that, a major donor to the clinton foundation. her husband made a billion dollars selling oil to the armenians. that guy should have been in jail for a long time, certainly not allowed to do business here for a long time. >> best fr...