President Trump’s latest batch of late-term pardons, issued Wednesday, went to his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, longtime friend Roger Stone, and the father of his son-in-law Jared Kushner, Charles Kushner. But the pardon list includes a series of other notable names.
It included Jesse Benton, who was campaign manager for the initial, successful Senate bid of Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, in 2010. Benton, 43, then went to work for the presidential campaign of the senator’s father, then-Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, who was seeking the Republican nomination.
It’s from that effort that Benton’s legal trouble stemmed. On Aug. 5, 2015, Benton was indicted by a grand jury on charges coming from an alleged cover-up to hide the expenditure of campaign money to hire an Iowa politician to help win the 2012 Iowa Republican caucuses.
He was found not guilty on charges of making false statements. But he was then reindicted on different charges of conspiring to cause false records to the Federal Election Commission. Benton got six months’ home confinement and two years’ probation.
Benton is married to a granddaughter of Ron Paul, making him a nephew of Sen. Rand Paul. Trump on Wednesday also pardoned John Tate, who, with Benton, was convicted based on indirect campaign payments to a state senator in efforts to help Ron Paul win the 2012 Iowa caucuses. Tate, too, had received six months’ home confinement and two years’ probation.
Another on the list was Margaret Hunter, estranged wife of former Rep. Duncan Hunter. The ex-lawmaker, a California Republican, on Wednesday received a pardon from Trump after pleading guilty to one count of misusing campaign funds. In court proceedings, he effectively blamed his wife, Margaret, for the family’s errant finances, which included spending hundreds of dollars in campaign funds to buy an airplane ticket for their children’s pet rabbit on a cross-country flight.
Margaret Hunter was sentenced to three years’ probation.
Also pardoned was Mark Siljander, a Michigan Republican, who was a House member from 1981 to 1987 but lost his seat in a Republican primary to Rep. Fred Upton, who is still in office. Siljander was an original member of a group of “religious right” lawmakers who swept into office in 1980 with former President Ronald Reagan and espoused a socially conservative agenda.
Siljander pleaded not guilty after being indicted in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri on five counts, including conspiracy, money laundering, and obstruction of justice on Jan. 16, 2008. Most of the original charges were dropped, but on July 7, 2010, Siljander pleaded guilty to acting as an unregistered foreign agent and obstruction of justice related to the case.
