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WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump on Tuesday pardoned 15 people, including Republican allies, a 2016 campaign official caught in the Russia probe and former government contractors convicted in a 2007 Baghdad massacre.
Trump also commuted the sentences of five people. 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.
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The pardons included former Republican Representatives Duncan Hunter of California and Chris Collins of New York. Trump commuted the sentence of former Representative Steve Stockman of Texas.
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 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.
Trump also announced pardons for allies caught in the Russia probe. One was for George Papadopoulos, his 2016 campaign adviser, whose conversation unknowingly helped spark the Russia investigation that followed Trump’s presidency for nearly two years.
He also pardoned Alex van der Zwaan, a Dutch lawyer who was sentenced to 30 days in prison for lying to investigators during special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
Van der Zwaan and Papadopoulos are the third and fourth Russian investigative defendants granted clemency. By forgiving them, Trump again pointed to the Mueller investigation and pushed for a broader effort to undo the results of the investigation 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.
In the group announced Tuesday night were four former government contractors convicted in a 2007 massacre in Baghdad that killed more than a dozen Iraqi civilians 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 reflect Trump’s apparent willingness to give the U.S. military and contractors the benefit of the doubt when it comes to acts of war zone violence against civilians. Last November, for example, he pardoned a former US Army commando who was to stand trial next year for the murder of a suspected Afghan bomb maker and a former army lieutenant convicted of murder for ordering his men to shoot three Afghans. .
“Paul Slough and his colleagues did not deserve to spend a minute in prison,” said Brian Heberlig, attorney for one of the four defendants pardoned from Blackwater. “I am overwhelmed by the excitement of this fantastic news.”
