President Trump issued pardons to his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and to his longtime friend Roger Stone just before Christmas Eve, with the 26 new pardons and three additional commutations on Wednesday also including a full pardon to son-in-law Jared Kushner’s father.
Both Manafort and Stone had been swept up in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, and both were found guilty of crimes not directly connected to allegations of Russian collusion against them. Trump had pardoned 15 other individuals, including former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, on Tuesday.
The Wednesday pardons came after Attorney General William Barr’s final day as attorney general, and Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen will be taking over in an acting capacity
“Today, President Trump has issued a full and complete pardon to Paul Manafort, stemming from convictions prosecuted in the course of Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation, which was premised on the Russian collusion hoax,” the White House said. “Mr. Manafort has already spent two years in prison, including a stretch of time in solitary confinement – treatment worse than what many of the most violent criminals receive. As a result of blatant prosecutorial overreach, Mr. Manafort has endured years of unfair treatment and is one of the most prominent victims of what has been revealed to be perhaps the greatest witch hunt in American history.”
Manafort was convicted in Virginia in 2018 on five counts of tax fraud, one count of concealing his foreign bank accounts, and two counts of bank fraud while the judge declared a mistrial on 10 other charges. Manafort had also been charged in a separate case with failing to register as a foreign lobbyist, money laundering, making false statements to investigators, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and witness tampering, and he pleaded guilty to just the final two charges in Washington, D.C., a month and a half after his trial conviction.
In early 2019, Judge T.S. Ellis sentenced Manafort to 47 months in prison, and Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced him to another 43 months behind bars. Manafort was released from prison in May to serve the remainder of his sentence under home confinement amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Manafort, a GOP lobbyist who also spent years working overseas in places such as Ukraine, was the chairman of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign until he resigned in August 2016 and was convicted of a host of crimes arising from Mueller’s investigation.
A Senate Intelligence Committee report released in August was unsparing in its assessment of Manafort, especially in regard to his close relationships with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and with Russian national Konstantin Kilimnik, about whom Mueller had said “the FBI assesses to have ties to Russian intelligence” and who the senators concluded “is a Russian intelligence officer.”
“President Trump granted a full and unconditional pardon to Roger Stone, Jr.,” the White House also said. “President Trump had previously commuted Mr. Stone’s sentence in July of this year … Due to prosecutorial misconduct by Special Counsel Mueller’s team, Mr. Stone was treated very unfairly … Pardoning him will help to right the injustices he faced at the hands of the Mueller investigation.”
Stone had been convicted of lying to congressional investigators about his alleged attempted outreach to WikiLeaks, obstructing a congressional investigation, and attempting to intimidate a possible congressional witness.
Jackson, an Obama appointee who presided over Stone’s case, handed down Stone’s 40-month sentence earlier in 2020 following the GOP operative’s jury conviction in November 2019.
Federal prosecutors told the court in February that they recommended Stone receive up to nine years behind bars. But after Trump tweeted that he “cannot allow this miscarriage of justice,” the Justice Department suggested a less severe sentence.
The four prosecutors on the case withdrew as the department walked back the “unduly high” sentence recommendation. Barr called the Stone conviction a “righteous prosecution” and denied that the president’s tweet influenced the Justice Department’s actions — but Barr did complain that such tweets make “it impossible for me to do my job.” Trump eventually granted Stone clemency.
Mueller’s investigation concluded that the Russian government interfered in a “sweeping and systematic fashion,” according to his report that was released in April 2019. Mueller’s team also “identified numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump Campaign” but “did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
The special counsel also laid out 10 possible instances of Trump obstructing justice but did not reach a conclusion on that issue. Barr and Rod Rosenstein, who was deputy attorney general at the time, concluded Trump had not obstructed justice.
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s December 2019 report criticized the Justice Department and the FBI for at least 17 “significant errors and omissions” related to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants against Trump campaign associate Carter Page and for the bureau’s reliance on the Democratic-funded, discredited dossier compiled by British ex-spy Christopher Steele, who had been working with Deripaska to recover money allegedly stolen by Manafort before he was hired by Fusion GPS in 2016.
Declassified footnotes from Horowitz’s report indicate the bureau became aware that Steele’s dossier might have been compromised by Russian disinformation, and FBI interviews show Steele’s primary subsource undercut the credibility of the dossier.
In early December, Barr revealed he had quietly appointed U.S. Attorney John Durham to serve as a special counsel in October, tasked with investigating any violations of law related to the inquiries conducted by the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane operation and Mueller’s team.
Durham, a federal prosecutor from Connecticut, has been looking into a host of issues related to the origins and conduct of the investigation into Russian meddling and alleged collusion with the Trump campaign, and his criminal inquiry has netted one guilty plea already, with ex-FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith admitting to fraudulently altering an email to say that Page was “not a source” for the CIA.
Charles Kushner, the father of Jared Kushner, who is married to Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, was also pardoned on Wednesday, after pleading guilty to 16 counts of assisting in the filing of false tax returns, one count of retaliating against a cooperating witness, and one count of making false statements to the Federal Election Commission in 2004, in a case that had been prosecuted by then-U.S. attorney and future on-again, off-again Trump ally Chris Christie.
“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,” the White House said. “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.”
