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Paul Manafort was Trump’s campaign manager before the 2016 presidential election and is serving a seven-and-a-half-year prison sentence for crimes and tax offenses for which he was convicted in the framework of the extensive Russia Investigation, which he examined possible Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The prosecutor Robert Mueller’s investigation.
The pardon was quickly criticized.
“Manafort withdrew his cooperation with prosecutors, lied, was convicted, and then Trump praised him,” Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, wrote on Twitter.
“Trump’s pardon completes an insidious plan,” he continues.
In May, Manafort had to get out of jail to serve his sentence at home, as the risk of the 71-year-old catching the coronavirus in prison was considered high.
Manafort thanks the forgiveness on Twitter.
“You really have done America good again. God bless you and your family,” he writes.
Forgiven stone
Roger Stone is another Trump employee who is pardoned by the president. Trump lifted his prison sentence in July, just before Stone began serving it, but only now will he be formally pardoned.
Stone was convicted in November 2019 of lying before Congress, obstructing the course of justice, and influencing witnesses. In February, he was sentenced to just over three years in prison.
Formally, Roger Stone stopped working for Donald Trump’s election campaign in August 2015, but then continued to support Trump in other ways and is often reported to have spoken to the presidential candidate by phone.
26 pardons
Stone and Manafort are on a list of 26 people Trump pardons, the day after his high-profile pardon of, among others, four men convicted of a 2007 Iraq massacre.
Also among the new pardons is Charles Kushner, father of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Charles Kushner pleaded guilty in 2004 to, among other things, tax offenses.
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