New Pardons From President Trump Include Manafort, Stone, and Kushner

The main roster for the Dinesh D’Souza All-Stars gets their end-of-the-year call ups as President Trump issues 26 more pardons.

CNN:

President Donald Trump on Wednesday evening announced 26 new pardons, including for longtime ally Roger Stone, former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and White House senior adviser Jared Kushner’s father, Charles.

The pardons extend Trump’s streak of wielding his clemency powers for criminals who are loyalists, well-connected or adjacent to his family. While all presidents issue controversial pardons at the end of their terms, Trump appears to be moving at a faster pace than his predecessors, demonstrating little inhibition at rewarding his friends and allies using one of the most unrestricted powers of his office.

The pardons of Manafort and Stone reward two of the most high-profile and widely condemned former advisers of the President, both of whom were indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller, went to trial and were convicted by juries of multiple crimes.

Manafort, who is serving home confinement, admitted his crimes and initially agreed to cooperate with Mueller then lied to prosecutors, while Stone never cooperated after lying to Congress to protect the President. Manafort spent close to two years in prison for bank and tax fraud, illegal foreign lobbying and witness tampering conspiracies before being released because of the Covid-19 pandemic, while Stone’s sentence for obstruction of Congress and threatening a witness was commuted by Trump earlier this year days before he was set to surrender.

Charles Kushner, meanwhile, had been prosecuted by then-US Attorney for New Jersey Chris Christie in the early 2000s for tax evasion, witness tampering and illegal campaign contributions.

The White House’s full list of pardons, including rationale, can be found here, and has some interesting takes:

Charles Kushner — President Trump granted a full pardon to Charles Kushner. Former United States Attorney for the District of Utah Brett Tolman and the American Conservative Union’s Matt Schlapp and David Safavian support a pardon of Mr. Kushner. Since completing his sentence in 2006, Mr. Kushner has been devoted to important philanthropic organizations and causes, such as Saint Barnabas Medical Center and United Cerebral Palsy. This record of reform and charity overshadows Mr. Kushner’s conviction and 2-year sentence for preparing false tax returns, witness retaliation, and making false statements to the FEC.

Which — aside from failing to mention Kushner is the father of White House Senior Advisor Jared Kushner, father-in-law to the president’s daughter Ivanka, and grandfather to the president’s grandchildren — leaves out the juicy tidbits:

He eventually pleaded guilty to 16 counts of tax evasion, one count of retaliating against a federal witness — his brother-in-law — and another count of lying to the Federal Election Commission.

(Then-US Attorney Chris) Christie in early 2019 went on to say that Charles Kushner committed “one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes” he had prosecuted, referring to an elaborate revenge plot that the older Kushner hatched in 2003 in order to target his brother-in-law, William Schulder, a former employee turned witness for federal prosecutors in their case against Kushner.

As a part of the plot, Kushner hired a prostitute to lure Schulder into having sex in a Bridgewater, New Jersey, motel room as a hidden camera rolled.

A tape of the encounter was then sent to Kushner’s sister and Schulder’s wife, Esther. Ultimately, the intimidation stunt failed. The Schulders brought the video to prosecutors, who tracked down the woman and threatened her with arrest. She promptly turned on Kushner.

There will be some chatter and complaints about the abuse of the pardon power and a need to reign it in, but short of a Constitutional Amendment that is not happening. Nor should it, as even with the utterly inexcusable pardons for the likes of Manafort, Stone, Duncan Hunter, and others there are those on the new list that most would find worthy of pardon. But as usual with this president, the focus is on what directly affects him, and all other things get lost in the gravitational media pull of that dominating singularity. Electing amoral people to offices endued with power has consequences, and in this case, it is the president employing yet another tool in the presidential workshop to benefit himself. It is not the office’s, law, or constitution’s fault such a man is in that position. There is no pardon to be had for the wider electorate and the decisions they make, only living with what they decided.