Paul Manafort took money from Ukrainian organized crime figures, he supported Kremlin kleptocracy over democratic freedom, and, unlike the rest of us, he decided not to pay his taxes.
Manafort is not the “good man” that President Trump asserts.
But with Manafort now accepting a plea deal to plead guilty to some of the outstanding charges against him, Trump might now decide to pardon Manafort or commute his sentence. Any such action would be a terrible mistake.
For one, Manafort isn’t just a swamp creature of the kind Trump pledged to banish from Washington. Manafort is a high-cost swamp prostitute: a man who wallowed in the corrupt opportunities of political power. To save Manafort from his proven poor choices, Trump would betray his underlying narrative of being the American Caesar (namely, a populist authoritarian on your family’s side). Instead, Trump would become just another politician: a leader who puts his friends first and the people a distant second.
But it’s worse than that. Rewarding Manafort for his personal loyalty would be an obvious corruption of the president’s pardoning power. It would signal to other powerful, corrupt figures across the nation that their best chance to ever avoid the long arm of justice is not to play by the rules, but simply to pay fealty at Trump’s throne. That’s a recipe for an orgy of immorality in the swamp, with Trump as the madam presiding over it.
Still, Trump has his own good reason not to pardon Manafort: doing so would undercut his own argument against the special counsel investigation into possible Trump campaign collusion with Russia. Trump’s relentless argument against that investigation is rooted in his variations on the claim: “I am innocent, there is no evidence against me, finish this absurdity now!” By pardoning a man so well-connected to Russian-connected organized crime figures and the Russian government itself, Trump wouldn’t exactly lend credibility to his claims of absolute innocence.
Yet, ultimately, this is about what kind of leader Trump wants to be. He can either be the populist leader for smaller government and forgotten Americans or he can be a swamp sultan. But he can’t be both.
