Elections in the United States: Donald Trump announces a batch of pardons before leaving office

US President Donald Trump today pardoned 15 people, including Republican allies, a 2016 campaign official caught in the Russia probe and former government contractors convicted of killing and injuring civilians in a 2007 Baghdad massacre.

Trump also commuted the sentences of five others. While it is not unusual for presidents to grant clemency when walking out the door, Trump has made clear that he has no qualms about intervening in cases of friends and allies he believes have been treated unfairly.

However, despite speculation, members of Trump’s own family, his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and the president himself were not on the list.

His actions in his final weeks in office show a president exercising executive power to reward loyalists and others he believes have been harmed by a legal system that he considers biased against him and his allies.

The pardons included former Republican lawmakers Duncan Hunter of California and Chris Collins of New York.

Collins, the first member of Congress to endorse Trump for president, was sentenced to two years and two months in federal prison after admitting that he helped his son and others avoid $ 800,000 in stock losses when he learned that a Drug trial by a pharmaceutical company had failed.

Hunter, a member of the House since 2008, was sentenced to 11 months in prison after pleading guilty to stealing campaign funds and spending the money on everything from outings with friends to his daughter’s birthday party.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said pardons for Hunter and Collins were granted after “the request of many members of Congress.”

Trump also announced a pardon for George Papadopoulos, his 2016 campaign adviser, whose conversation inadvertently helped spark the Russia investigation that followed Trump’s presidency for nearly two years.

By pardoning Papadopoulos, Trump again pointed to special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe and is part of a broader effort by Trump to undo the results of the probe that dumped criminal charges against half a dozen associates.

Last month, Trump pardoned former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who had twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, and months earlier commuted the sentence of another associate, Roger Stone, days before he was to report to prison.

Among the advertised group were four former government contractors convicted in a 2007 massacre in Baghdad that left more than a dozen Iraqi civilians dead and sparked an international uproar over the use of private security guards in a war zone.

Supporters of Nicholas Slatten, Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard, the former Blackwater Worldwide contractors, had lobbied for pardons, arguing that the men had been unduly punished in an investigation and prosecution that they said was tainted by problems. and withheld exculpatory evidence.

All four were serving long prison terms.

The pardons, issued in the final days of Trump’s single term, reflect Trump’s apparent willingness to give American service members and contractors the benefit of the doubt when it comes to acts of war zone violence against civilians.

Last November, he pardoned a former US military commando who was to stand trial next year for the murder of an alleged Afghan bomb maker and a former army lieutenant convicted of murder for ordering his men to shoot three Afghans.

The Blackwater case has taken a tricky path since the killings in Baghdad’s Nisoor Square in September 2007, when the men, former veterans who worked as contractors for the State Department, opened fire in the crowded roundabout.

Prosecutors claimed that the heavily armed Blackwater convoy launched an unprovoked attack using sniper fire, machine guns and grenade launchers. Defense attorneys argued that their clients responded to fire after being ambushed by Iraqi insurgents.

They were convicted in 2014 after a months-long trial in federal court in Washington, with each man defiantly asserting their innocence at a sentencing hearing the following year.

“I feel completely betrayed by the very government that I served with honor,” Slough told the court at a hearing packed with nearly 100 friends and family of the guards.

Slough and two others, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard, were sentenced to 30 years in prison, although after a federal appeals court ordered their re-sentencing, each received substantially shorter punishments. A fourth, Nicholas Slatten, whom prosecutors blamed for initiating the shooting, was sentenced to life in prison.

Joe Biden, speaking in Baghdad in 2010 as vice president, expressed “personal regret” for the shooting.

The pardons drew criticism from leading Democrats. Representative Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Standing Committee on Intelligence, said the president was abusing his power.

“Trump is handing out pardons, not on the basis of repentance, restitution, or the interests of justice, but to reward his friends and political allies, to protect those who lie to cover him up, to harbor those guilty of killing civilians and to undermine an investigation that uncovered massive wrongdoing, “Schiff said.

Trump has granted about 2 percent of the requested pardons in his only term in office, just 27 before today’s announcement. By comparison, Barack Obama awarded 212 or 6 percent, and George W Bush awarded about 7 percent, or 189.

George HW Bush, another one-term president, granted 10 percent of the requests.