The pardon party continued for Donald Trump on Wednesday as he delivered another round of pardons and commutations. This time around the list of full pardons included his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Trump associate Roger Stone, and Charles Kushner who is the father of Trump’s son-in-law and advisor, Jared.
The Manafort and Stone pardons further unraveled the results of the Russian “hoax” as Donald Trump has called it. Manafort was convicted as part of the special counsel probe into election meddling. Stone was convicted of lying under oath to lawmakers. The White House said Stone faced “potential political bias at his jury trial” and that the pardon will help “right the injustices he faced at the hands of the Mueller investigation.”
Stone made it clear how he felt about the Russia probe with his reaction to Trump’s pardon, “On behalf of my family and myself, I wish to praise God and give my deepest thanks to President Donald J. Trump for his extraordinary act of justice in issuing me a presidential pardon, completely erasing the criminal conviction to which I was subjected in a Soviet-style show trial on politically-motivated charges, further corrupted by egregious, illegal misconduct by the Jury Forewoman in the case.”
“Mueller’s intrusive, lawless, malicious multimillion-dollar witch hunt could find no prosecutable crime against me, other than what they managed to fabricate,” Stone said.
Charles Kushner was sentenced to two years in prison after pleading guilty in 2004 to 18 counts of tax evasion, witness retaliation and making unlawful campaign contributions.
Other pardons made by Trump included individuals who had plead guilty for a range of offenses including cyber-crimes, firearms possession and mail fraud.
In total, Trump pardoned 26 individuals and commuted part or all of the sentences of three people. Trump still trails his predecessors by quite a bit as he has now granted 71 pardons and commutations. In comparison, Barack Obama granted 212 and George W. Bush granted 189.
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