President Donald Trump granted 15 full pardons and commuted the sentences of five others on Tuesday, including allies convicted under the special counsel Robert Mueller probe, nonviolent drug offenders, and a man who was busted running moonshine in the 1950s as a teen.
White House press secretary Kaleigh McEnany issued the news in a statement, spelling out the reasoning behind each action and disclosing details of the offenses and who recommended clemency to the president.
The most high-profile names on the list included George Papadopoulos, a 2016 campaign adviser for Trump who served 12 days in prison after pleading guilty to lying to investigators in the Russian collusion investigation and later wrote a book about his account called "Deep State Target."
A second Mueller target, Alex van der Zwaan, who served 30 days in prison for a false statement charge before leaving the U.S., was also pardoned by the president, Politico reported.
Other noteworthy pardons were for former Republican congressmen Duncan Hunter (Calif.), whom Roll Call reported pleaded guilty to misusing "hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign funds for his own enrichment," and former Rep. Chris Collins (N.Y.), who pleaded guilty to securities fraud charges. Both representatives were among the first to endorse the president when he ran for president.
The Daily Caller pointed out the the president's pardons included four former Blackwater Worldwide military contractors — Nicholas Slatten, Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, and Dustin Heard — "who were convicted in a 2007 massacre that left 14 unarmed Iraqis dead."
At the recommendation of Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), state Utah Rep. Phil Lyman was wiped clean of his "conviction on charges of leading an illegal ATV protest on federal lands," and "a Utah music producer who was originally sentenced to 55 years in prison on a marijuana charge selling and gun possession conviction because of minimum sentencing rules," The Salt Lake Tribune reported.
President Trump also took the advice of Alice Johnson — whom he pardoned following her speech to the Republican National Convention after commuting her nonviolent sentence in 2018 — in commuting the remaining supervised releases of Crystal Munoz and Tynice Nichole Hall, who were also previously condemned to decadeslong nonviolent drug offenses.
Alfred Lee Crum, 89, was also granted a full pardon by the president on Tuesday. According to McEnany's release, Crum:
Pled guilty in 1952—when he was 19 years old—to helping his wife's uncle illegally distill moonshine in Oklahoma. Mr. Crum served three years of probation, and paid a $250 fine. Mr. Crum has maintained a clean record and a strong marriage for nearly 70 years, attended the same church for 60 years, raised four children, and regularly participated in charity fundraising events.
According to the Associated Press:
Trump has granted about 2% of requested pardons in his single term in office — just 27 before Tuesday's announcement. By comparison, Barack Obama granted 212 or 6%, and George W. Bush granted about 7%, or 189. George H.W. Bush, another one-term president, granted 10% of requests.
When President Donald Trump announced that he would be issuing a pardon for retired Gen. Michael Flynn, a longtime Trump ally and former national security adviser for the Trump administration, the president's opponents ripped the move as an alleged abuse of the president's clemency powers.
Donald Trump has repeatedly abused the pardon power to reward friends and protect those who covered up for him.Th… https://t.co/s6dk6kZwkB— Adam Schiff (@Adam Schiff)1606339535.0
Criticism of Trump's use clemency for allies is nothing new. Many observers were upset when he pardoned former Maricopa County (Arizona) Sheriff Joe Arpaio in 2017 for targeting Hispanics while searching for illegal aliens.
With so much alleged abuse of the presidential clemency power, the average news consumer could be excused for thinking that President Trump might have racked up a massive number of pardons (forgiving crimes and restoring civil rights) and commutations (reducing sentences for convictions) over the last four years.
But that estimation would be wrong, as a recent report from Pew Research pointed out.
The truth is that Trump has granted clemency only 44 times, Pew reported.. He has granted 28 pardons and 16 commutations. The president has granted less than 0.5% of all clemency requests.
Trump critics might not like whom the president has pardoned and why, but the Constitution grants him — and every president — the power to do so.
And he's a piker compared to his predecessor.
President Barack Obama issued clemency 1,927 times — including 212 pardons and 1,715 commutations.
And many of Obama's clemency moves were seen extremely controversial at the time, Pew noted:
But Trump is far from the only president who has faced scrutiny over his use of clemency. Obama's frequent use of commutations, particularly for prisoners convicted of drug-related crimes, prompted criticism from Republicans, who said it benefited “an entire class of offenders" and infringed on the “lawmaking authority" of the legislative branch.
Defenders of President Obama's use of clemency power will note that Obama granted only 5.3% of all requests.
But that doesn't tell the whole story. There was a spike in the total number of requests during the eight years of the Obama presidency — 36,544 — nearly three times the previous record number of requests, which was set in 12 years of the Franklin Roosevelt administration.
The reason for the spike, as Pew noted, was that the Obama administration actively encouraged prisoners to request pardons and commutations. They even set up a program called "the Clemency Initiative."
This massive increase in the number of petitions drove down Obama's requests-granted rate.
More from Pew:
Obama's relatively low percentage, however, is largely due to the fact that his administration encouraged federal prisoners to apply for leniency under a program known as the Clemency Initiative. The program, which launched in April 2014 and ended in 2017 when Obama left office, allowed “qualified federal inmates" – those who met certain Justice Department criteria – to apply to have their prison sentences commuted. The initiative led to a surge in petitions and helps explain why Obama's use of clemency tilted so heavily toward sentence commutations, rather than pardons.
Overall, Obama received more than 36,000 clemency petitions during his time in office, by far the largest total of any president on record. Petitions have declined considerably during Trump's tenure.
Prior to President Trump, the lowest rate of clemency requests granted was came during the George W. Bush presidency (2%).
During the "Gotcha!" portion of his MSNBC program Sunday, Al Sharpton went to work on President Donald Trump, going over a lengthy list of folks the president may pardon soon following his pre-Thanksgiving pardon of former national security adviser Mike Flynn.
Who could be next? Paul Manafort? Rick Gates? Steve Bannon? Elliott Brody? Trump himself?
Sharpton then said "the villains in the Trump administration cannot be granted a total reprieve with the presidential pardon because the president of the United States can only pardon federal crimes. He has absolutely no power over state charges, and nearly everyone in the Trump orbit is facing state-level liability."
He added that Trump "and his adult children are facing multiple tax fraud cases. His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is under investigation for falsifying real estate documents, and Paul Manafort could see a revival of state charges, just to make a few. And none of those can be disappeared with the presidential pardon. The president and his cronies will be held accountable for their many crimes. The turkeys have come home to roost. And I gotcha."
POLITICS NATION WITH REV AL GOTCHA RE tRump TURKEY 11 29 2020 youtu.be
It's one thing for a cable news host to call out elected officials and their employees over purported criminal activities, but it's quite another thing when said host does the calling out while legal questions surround him.
USA Today reported in September that Sharpton owed nearly $700,000 in back taxes for three for-profit businesses.
In addition, the New York Post reported earlier this month that Sharpton's charity, the National Action Network, paid Sharpton's 33-year-old daughter $63,250 last year to do social media work and consulting and paid his 45-year-old niece $13,750 for special-event work in NAN's Atlanta bureau, citing the group's most recent tax filing.
NAN also gave a $5,000 grant to Sharpton's wife, from whom he separated in 2004, the Post reported, adding that the amount was listed on the form as scholarship money.
Sharpton — NAN's president — received a "modest raise of 1% in 2019, bringing his pay to $327,570," the paper added.
The Post also said Sharpton's relationship with NAN "raised eyebrows in 2018 when tax filings revealed he was selling the rights to his life story to the nonprofit for $531,000. NAN said it would make money by selling the rights to filmmakers or others although it's unclear if any cash has come in."
Hunter will learn the severity of his sentences at hearings on November 13 and December 16—unless, of course, he is saved by a presidential pardon from his dad.
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