The White House rejected criticism that President Trump’s pardon Friday of political adviser Roger Stone was inappropriate, saying Trump had used the power a fraction of the times Barack Obama did and suggesting Bill Clinton had used it corruptly.
Trump, McEnany said, “has given 36 pardons and commutations. President Obama gave 1,927.”
“And when you look at the nature of some of the pardons given — let’s say, under President Clinton — … it can’t get more politically connected with pardons than pardoning your brother, Roger Clinton, as President Clinton did; Susan McDougal, one of your associates who was pardoned for her role in Whitewater; Marc Rich, who gave $450,000 to the Clinton Library, or at least his wife did, donated $1 million to Democrat campaigns, and then he gets a pardon from President Clinton.”
Clinton, she said, had issued many of his pardons as he “was going out the door.”
McEnany said that Trump had used the power “sparingly” in his efforts “to rectify racial disparities in our sentencing.”
“This president is the president of criminal justice reform,” McEnany said in a press briefing on Monday. “This president did the FIRST STEP Act. This president has fought for those who are given unduly harsh sentences more than any Democrat who like to talk about it but never actually did it.”
While both Obama and Clinton “did a whole lot of pardoning,” which McEnany said at times seemed to be politically motivated, they “didn’t do a whole lot to help the innocent people who have served their time and been given unduly harsh sentences.”
McEnany also rejected the allegation that people seeking a pardon are going to the White House instead of going through the Department of Justice Pardon Attorney’s Office.
At the White House on Monday, Trump said he was “getting rave reviews” for his pardon of Stone, days before Stone was to report to federal prison.
Stone was charged as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, convicted of lying to the House Intelligence Committee about his purported outreach to WikiLeaks, of obstruction of a congressional investigation, and intimidation of a potential congressional witness.
On Monday, the Justice Department released Trump’s clemency order, which eliminated Stone’s three-year sentence.
“I commute the entirety of the prison sentence imposed upon the said ROGER JASON STONE, JR. to expire immediately; I also commute the entirety of the two-year term of supervised release with all its conditions; and finally, I remit any unpaid remainder of the $20,000 fine imposed,” Trump writes in the order.
Asked today if he would pardon a death row inmate, Trump said that such cases were hard. “We’re going to see what happens,” Trump said during a roundtable with people whose lives were aided by law enforcement, the White House said.
