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KShortly before the end of his term, US President-elect Donald Trump pardoned other loyal colleagues. Trump pardoned his former campaign team chairman, Paul Manafort, and his confidant Roger Stone on Wednesday night. He also pardoned real estate businessman Charles Kushner, father of his adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner. Trump had only announced a series of controversial pardons on Tuesday.
Manafort had been sentenced to several years in prison for tax evasion and bank fraud. Trump had already issued a prison sentence in July for Stone, who was convicted of Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Stone was sentenced to more than three years in prison in February for, among other things, false testimony and obstruction of justice. Kushner, in turn, had ended up in prison for tax evasion, among other things. He has already served his sentence, but with the pardon his criminal record is subsequently erased.
Pardons and commuted sentences for 29 people
Republican Trump was defeated by Democrat Joe Biden in the November 3 election, but he will remain president with full powers until January 20. Overall, Trump announced pardons and sentences for 29 people on Wednesday.
Former presidents like Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama also used the right to grant pardons until their last days in office. Also at that time there were always controversial cases; however, they were not persons who had been convicted of crimes directly related to the president or his electoral campaign.
On Tuesday, Trump had already pardoned two people convicted in the course of Mueller’s Russia investigation, including his 2016 campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos. He also pardoned former Republican MPs Duncan Hunter and Chris Collins, as well as four former government contractors who had been sentenced to lengthy prison terms in connection with a 2007 Baghdad massacre. More than a dozen Iraqi civilians were killed in the slaughter.
In November, the president pardoned former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who had admitted he lied to the FBI about conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergei Kisljak, in the period between Trump’s electoral victory and his inauguration in 2017. .
