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US President Donald Trump pardoned 26 other people convicted of various crimes and reduced the sentence to five, following highly controversial measures already announced Tuesday. Among the last people pardoned by Trump, there are again many of his former collaborators and allies: the three biggest names are Charles Kushner, father of Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and current adviser; Paul Manafort, head of his 2016 election campaign; and Roger Stone, his lifelong friend and advisor.
As has happened in the past, Trump has been accused of aggressively using his power to circumvent court decisions and grant acts of clemency to people related to him: of the last 65 such acts, 60 have been aimed at having personal ties with Trump or had helped him politically, said Jack Goldsmith, a professor at Harvard University. Trump is expected to resort to clemency again before his term ends.
What caused much criticism, especially in the Democratic Party, were in particular the thanks given to Manafort and Stone, two of his former advisers who had been convicted as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the presidential election campaign. American. 2016. Manafort was convicted in 2018 for financial crimes and obstruction of investigations; Stone, to whom Trump had already reduced his sentence, was sentenced at the end of 2019 for several crimes, including obstruction of justice, perjury and for having acted as an intermediary between Trump’s electoral committee, Russian hackers and Wikileaks.
With these two acts of clemency, Trump continued his work of dismantling the results of the Mueller-led investigation into Russian interference. In the past, he had already issued similar orders to other former collaborators involved in the investigation, such as Michael Flynn, his former National Security adviser, convicted among other things of lying to the FBI.
– Read also: What a character, Roger Stone
Among the recipients of the pardon or sentence reduction, there is also Margaret Hunter, ex-wife of Duncan Hunter, a former Republican of California: both had pleaded guilty to having used campaign funds for personal expenses (Hunter had already been pardoned on Tuesday) . Grace to Kushner, on the other hand, was highly anticipated. Kushner was convicted in 2004 of lying to federal authorities and of financial crimes, including tax evasion.
Trump on Tuesday pardoned 15 people and reduced the sentences to another five: Among those pardoned, there were two who had pleaded guilty during the Mueller investigation: George Papadopoulos and Alex van der Zwaan, respectively, lawyers for the campaign’s foreign policy. 2016 Trump election and Dutch lawyer who worked with Paul Manafort, and four who were part of the private military company Blackwater and who were convicted of killing civilians during the 2007 Iraq war.
Other presidents had used forgiveness to help people close to them, for example, Bill Clinton pardoned his half-brother convicted of cocaine possession and trafficking, but no one had done so with the same consistency as Trump.
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