Former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos said Tuesday his legal team has formally asked President Trump for a pardon.
He confirmed it in an interview with Reuters. “My lawyers have applied for a pardon from the president for me. If I’m offered one, I would love to accept it, of course,” he said.
Papadopoulos also said he was considering withdrawing the guilty plea that he’d entered in the special counsel investigation.
The news came hours after House Judiciary Committee ranking member Doug Collins, R-Ga., released the transcript of a lengthy, closed-door interview Papadopoulos gave last year in front of the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees.
In a Monday interview with the Washington Post, Papadopoulos’ attorney Caroline Polisi said they had applied for a presidential pardon: “It would be malpractice not to. We submitted it prior to the investigation coming to an end, but the results of the investigation only strengthen our arguments.”
Special counsel Robert Mueller submitted his final report to the Justice Department on Friday, and over the weekend, Attorney General William Barr submitted a four-page letter to Congress stating that Mueller would not be charging anyone on the Trump campaign with colluding with Russia. “The Special Counsel’s investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election … despite multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign,” the four-page letter said.
On Monday, Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani claimed Trump likely wasn’t considering any pardons in relation to the special counsel investigation, saying: “No, I don’t think he should, and he’s not. I don’t think he is, at least.”
When asked whether Trump’s legal team was considering a pardon for Papadopoulos on Tuesday, Giuliani said: “No I’m not.”
Trump has repeatedly said he isn’t considering any pardons. During a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday, Trump said, “No, I haven’t. I haven’t thought about it.”
Still, Trump has made it clear in the past that he believes he has the right to issue pardons. On July 22, 2017, he tweeted: “While all agree the U. S. President has the complete power to pardon, why think of that when only crime so far is LEAKS against us. FAKE NEWS!” And on June 4, 2018, he sent out a tweet reading: “As has been stated by numerous legal scholars, I have the absolute right to PARDON myself, but why would I do that when I have done nothing wrong? In the meantime, the never ending Witch Hunt, led by 13 very Angry and Conflicted Democrats (& others) continues into the mid-terms!”
Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to a single count of making false statements to investigators about his contacts with Russians, and in late 2018, he spent nearly two weeks in prison.
A number of other Trump associates swept up in Mueller’s investigation have also either been charged or convicted of making false statements to investigators, including former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, former Trump campaign official Rick Gates, and Trump confidant Roger Stone. Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort was convicted of a host of other crimes, including FARA violations, bank fraud, tampering with witnesses, and more. It remains to be seen whether any of them will receive pardons.
Trump has issued politically controversial pardons in the past, including for Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Scooter Libby, and Dinesh D’Souza.
Trump also posthumously pardoned Jack Johnson, a black man who’d been convicted by an all-white jury in 1913 of violating the Mann Act for traveling across state lines with his white girlfriend. Trump also commuted the sentence of Alice Marie Johnson, who’d served over 21 years in prison for a non-violent drug offense following high-profile appeals from reality TV star Kim Kardashian and others.
