'Rotten to the core!' Republican senator Ben Sasse slams Donald Trump's pardon spree after Roger Stone, Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner's father are given clemency with promise of more to come
Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse delivered a short denunciation of President Donald Trump's spree of pardons rewarding political allies and friends – including those like Paul Manafort who refused to cooperate with prosecutors in the Russia probe.
'This is rotten to the core,' said Sasse, one of the most outspoken elected Republicans when it comes to leveling criticism at the president.
Sasse issued the single-line statement Wednesday night as the nation amid the White House's second consecutive night dumping information on pardons Trump issued using his virtually limitless unchecked power in that area.
'ROTTEN TO THE CORE': Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) condemned Trump's spate of pardons
A brief statement said he made the comment after Trump 'exercised his constitutional power to issue pardons to another tranche of felons like Manafort and Stone who flagrantly and repeatedly violated the law and harmed Americans.'
Despite calling out Trump after his pardon of Manafort and others, Sasse was among 52 Republican senators voting to acquit Trump on both articles of impeachment almost a year ago, in a prosecution that centered on the president's effort to pressure Ukraine into investigating rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
Manafort had been convicted of corruption crimes and was a top target of the Russia probe.
Former top prosecutor for Robert Mueller Andrew Weissmann told MSNBC Thursday that the pardons were 'proof of obstruction' – an alleged crime that Mueller did not charge Trump with in his report after concluding that the president could not be charged with such a crime while in office.
'I mean, what president decides that of all of the thousands of people who are seeking pardons and commutations that corrupt politicians, corrupt law enforcements officials, people engaged in really serious civil rights abuses, that those are the most deserving people in the nation to receive a presidential pardon? This is really a president who has zero allegiance to the rule of law,' he said.
He continued: 'That's laid out in [the Mueller] report, that there were pardons that were dangled. It was a huge problem in getting people to cooperate. You can see that Roger Stone never cooperated. The judge found and in sentencing him he committed his crimes for the president.'
'With Paul Manafort the only explanation for his failed cooperation effort is that he was playing for a pardon. And what we saw yesterday was essentially the president, you know, carrying out the final act of an obstruction of justice. So to your point about, can the president currently be prosecuted for obstruction of justice? The answer is, yes. There's substantial evidence of that, and what he did yesterday is going to be proof of that obstruction, because it's really the final act that fulfills the promise of the dangled pardons.
Trump critics were warning even after Wednesday night's batch that more pardons could be in the offing – including pardons the president might seek to bestow on allies and family members, possibly including himself (although this could easily bring a court challenge).
Former top Robert Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann told MSNBC Thursday that the pardons were 'proof of obstruction' by the president
Sasse issued the short statement after the White House released Trump's latest list of pardons, with many going to friends and political allies, including those who refused to cooperate with prosecutors
Former FBI Deputy Director Any McCabe, a regular Trump target, blasted the pardons for sending a message that people who did not cooperate with investigators can get rewarded. He called the move a 'culmination' of acts of 'obstruction of justice.'
For those who cooperate, 'He will pay you off with a pardon and give you a get out of jail free card,' McCabe told CNN. The Mueller report explored whether Trump and allies dangled a pardon to Manafort to discourage him from cooperating with prosecutors.
'What was seen and referred to in the Mueller report has now been completed. Pardons were dangled. And now they've delivered in return for protection for the president. I don't even know how to describe it, it's so obviously corrupt,' he said.
Trump's first Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired McCabe after an inspector general faulted his actions in a leak probe.
The president announced another round of 29 pardons on Wednesday night, rewarding loyalists like Jared Kushner's father, his former campaign manager Paul Manafort and his longtime crony Roger Stone.
The pardons of Manafort and Stone reward two of the most high-profile and widely condemned former advisers to Trump, both of whom were indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller, went to trial and were convicted by juries of multiple crimes.
Trump long praised Manafort and Stone for their loyalty - both men refused to cooperate with prosecutors. The president had commuted Stone's sentence earlier this year.
Stone appeared on Fox News' Tucker Carlson shortly after the news broke Wednesday to thank the president, claiming that he had an 'enormous debt of gratitude to God almighty' for giving Trump 'the strength and courage to recognize that my prosecution was a completely politically-motivated witch hunt'.
He claimed that there is no truth to any claims that he remained silent during the Mueller investigation in return for a pardon and blasted his conviction as a 'Soviet-style show trial'.
Stone told Carlson that he did not know of his pardon until he heard about it will watching Fox but his attorney had now confirmed with the White House.
The Kushner family was greatly embarrassed by the prosecution of Charles Kushner, who plead guilty to multiple crimes in 2004 and served two years in prison in part for setting up his brother-in-law with a prostitute, videotaping it, and then trying to blackmail him over it.
Jared Kushner traveled with President Trump on Wednesday when the president and first lady Melania Trump flew to Mar-a-Lago for the Christmas holiday after Trump left Washington D.C. in chaos over a COVID relief measure and facing a potential government shutdown.
President Donald Trump announced another round of pardons, giving them to longtime loyalists. Pictured: Trump and First Lady Melania Trump walk towards Marine One as they depart the White House en route to Mar-a-Lago, the President's private club, where they will spend Christmas and New Years Eve in Washington, DC
Josh Kushner, Charles Kushner and Jared Kushner attend a party in New York in 2014. The Kushner family was greatly embarrassed by the prosecution of Charles Kushner, who plead guilty to multiple crimes in 2004 and served two years in prison in part for setting up his brother-in-law with a prostitute, videotaping it, and then trying to blackmail him over it
Roger Stone appeared on Fox News' Tucker Carlson to thank President Trump on Wednesday night
Roger Stone Talks To Tucker Carlson After President Trump's Pardon
— The Columbia Bugle (@ColumbiaBugle) December 24, 2020
Roger: "My hat is off to the President, the greatest President since Abraham Lincoln."
Tucker: "I always felt watching what they did to you that if they could do that you, they could do that to anybody." pic.twitter.com/2B3NoKpZxJ
Jared Kushner, who serves as a senior adviser in Trump's White House, joined the president to fly to Mar-a-Lago Wednesday
Stone was quick to speak out about the pardon on Wednesday as he told Fox that Trump is 'the greatest president since Abraham Lincoln who had the courage to correct this injustice'.
He followed with allegations that the Mueller report found 'no evidence whatsoever of my collusion with Russia, Wikileaks, Julian Assange ... those things that I was accused of lying to Congress about'.
'How does one lie about something that they have now established one didn’t know?' he asked. 'The whole thing has been an outrage and my hat is off to the president.'
Stone added claims that the Mueller prosecutors asked him 'to lie' and that 'they wanted me to bear false witness against the president' in return for 'some kind of leniency in sentencing'.
'I refused to do so so I think that’s what this charge was about from the beginning,' he said of his conviction. 'They must have mistaken me for Michael Cohen, but they had the wrong guy and I refused to do this.'
Stone concluded that thee would be a 'typical rewriting of history by the left' in claims that he 'traded his silence on misconduct by the president in return for commutation of his sentence and now a pardon'.
The 29 pardons the White House announced Wednesday night followed a round of 20 pardons on Tuesday, where Trump cleared two former aides convicted as part of Mueller's probe, three former Republican members of Congress, and four Blackwater guards contracted by the government who were convicted in connection with the killing of 17 Iraqi civilians in a 2007 massacre in Baghdad.
The latest round of pardons also included absolution for the wife of a former Republican congressman, a man with ties to Kim Kardashian, and a Palm Beach socialite with ties to Mar-a-Lago.
Trump waves to his supporters as he arrives in Mar-a-Lago after the pardon announcement
President Trump waved and smiled to his supporters as he arrived in Mar-a-Lago on Wednesday night
Trump supporters outside of Mar-A-Lago awaited the president's arrival to his Florida home on Wednesday
The president's supporters continued to protest Wednesday outside of Mar-a-Lago, where he will spend Christmas
George Papadopoulos, also appeared on Fox on Wednesday night in which he told the Hannity show that 'Russian collusion was a fantasy' and that the Mueller Report was 'a premeditated counterintelligence set up by the Obama administration'
One of Tuesday night's pardons, George Papadopoulos, also appeared on Fox on Wednesday night in which he told the Hannity show that 'Russian collusion was a fantasy' and that the Mueller Report was 'a premeditated counterintelligence set up by the Obama administration'.
Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign aide, admitted to lying to investigators looking in to Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and in 2017, pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents about the timing and significance of his contacts with people who claimed to have ties to top Russian officials.
While stating at his sentencing hearing that he had made a 'terrible mistake', since his release from prison, Papadopoulos has claimed that he was targeted as part of an anti-Trump agenda.
‘This simply was the weaponization of the Obama administration’s intel agencies, targeting Americans affiliated directly with the rival presidential campaign, to essentially spy on them to find out what this rival presidential campaign was up to and to set various traps for them,’ Papadopoulos claimed on Wednesday.
Among Wednesday's most controversial pardons is Charles Kushner, who was prosecuted by Chris Christie, a Trump ally and confidant who recently said it was time for the president to give up his legal challenges to November's election.
Last year Christie described Kushner's crime as 'loathsome' and 'disgusting.'
'I mean it's one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes that I prosecuted when I was US attorney. And I was a US attorney in New Jersey ... so we had some loathsome and disgusting crime going on there,' he told PBS.
Charles Kushner plead guilty to 16 counts of tax evasion, one count of retaliating against a federal witness, and another count of lying to the Federal Election Commission.
Charles Kushner's retaliation conviction had to do with a revenge plot against his brother-in-law William Schulder, a former employee turned witness for federal prosecutors.
Charles Kushner hired a prostitute to lure Schulder into having sex in a Bridgewater, New Jersey, motel room as a hidden camera taped the encounter. That tape was then sent to Schulder's wife, who was Charles' sister Esther.
The Schulders, in turn, brought the tape to prosecutors, who tracked down the prostitute and threatened her with arrest. She turned on Kushner and revealed the plot.
Christie prosecuted Charles Kushner in 2004 when he was U.S. attorney for New Jersey and claims that was the reason the younger Kushner got him fired from heading Donald Trump's transition team after the 2016 election.
Christie negotiated a plea deal with Charles Kushner.
The tawdry case not only put the elder Kushner in jail for two years, it caused great embarrassment to the Kushner family.
Jared Kushner worked on criminal justice reform as part of his portfolio of issues in the White House, where he serves as a senior adviser to the president. It is said he was drawn to the issue because of his father's time in prison.
Paul Manafort is on home release from his prison sentence due to the COVID-19 pandemic; he is seen at his daughter's home
Roger Stone was at Turning Point USA's gala at Mar-a-Lago this weekend
Manafort and Stone are two of the latest Trump allies who were brought down by Mueller's investigation to be pardoned by the president.
And it's the latest move by the president to undo what Mueller's investigation has brought. Trump has long claimed he is the victim of a 'witch hunt.'
He has now pardoned five people convicted in the Mueller probe, including former national security adviser Michael Flynn; campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI; and and Alex van der Zwaan, a Dutch lawyer who pleaded guilty in 2018 to lying to prosecutors.
Mueller's investigation revealed Manafort's business dealings with foreign officials as unregistered lobbyist.
Manafort was convicted on eight counts of bank fraud and tax fraud and then made a deal with prosecutors to avoid a second trial.
He is on home confinement due to the coronavirus after being sentenced to seven and a half years.
Stone was convicted on seven counts of lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstructing the House inquiry into possible Trump campaign coordination with Russia.
Trump commuted Stone's 40 month sentence back in July but this fully absolves Stone of any record.
Stone, who lives in Florida, was at Mar-a-Lago over the weekend for a gala held by Turning Point USA, an organization of young conservatives who adore Trump.
Also announced in Wednesday's round of pardons was absolution for Margaret Hunter, the wife of former Congressman Duncan Hunter, who Trump pardoned in Tuesday's round.
The couple had plead guilty to charges of misusing campaign funds for personal expenses, which included everything from school supplies for their children, to food and booze, to a plane ticket for the family bunny to fly from California to Washington D.C.
Another one of Trump's pardons has a Kim Kardashian link.
Topeka Sam, who served three years of a 130-month cocaine-related sentence, was the woman who inspired Kardashian to push for criminal justice reform and seek to meet Trump at the White House to ask for clemency for Alice Johnson.
Johnson has since received a full pardon from Trump. Johnson supported Sam's pardon, the White House said. Sam founded the Ladies of Hope Ministries, where she mentors formerly incarcerated women.
The list also included figures of less national renown, including Mary McCarty, once a prominent figure in Palm Beach and south Florida circles.
She went to federal prison after both she and her now deceased husband were convicted on corruption charges.
The statement said she had the backing of former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi – who defended Trump during impeachment, and Trump confidant Chris Ruddy, a Mar-a-Lago member.
Trump also pardoned Margaret Hunter (center), the wife of former Congressman Duncan Hunter (right), pardoned on Tuesday
Trump also inspired a man who helped inspire Kim Kardashian to work on criminal justice reform
McCarty was a Palm Beach County Commissioner, and as such voted on key issues affecting Mar-a-Lago. In 1996 she voted to approve a $75 million settlement between the Trump-owned club and the county over airport noise restrictions. As part of the settlement, Trump was able to lease land for a golf course.
She and her husband, former water district chairman Kevin McCarty, both served time in prison after a corruption sweep.
She formerly chaired the Palm Beach GOP. McCarty pleaded guilty to honest services fraud and was sentenced in 2009, spending two years at a federal work camp in Texas following charges she voted on projects that steered business that financially benefited her husband, who helped run a Raymond James office that did municipal lending. Prosecutors said she voted on bonds where he got a commission.
McCarty was accused of concealing his wife’s crimes, and the Florida power couple was ordered to pay back $272,000.
The president pardoned Stephanie Mohr, who was a Prince George’s County Police Department rookie in 1995 when she responded to a burglary and her police dog bit the suspect, an undocumented immigrant, causing him to get 10 stitches.
Several years later, the FBI launched an investigation into the department and her unit after a series in The Washington Post raised questions about the dogs' uses.
Mohr served a decade in federal prison over the dog bite. The Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund and the Fraternal Order of Police backed her clemency, the White House said.
Trump also pardoned Republican political aides Jesse Benton and John Tate, who in 2012 worked for Rep. Ron Paul's presidential campaign.
Benton and Tate concealed more than $70,000 given to Iowa State Senator Kent Sorenson so that he would change his endorsement from Rep. Michele Bachmann to Paul during the Republican presidential primary.
Sen. Rand Paul, who Benton also worked for, supported the pardon, the White House said. Benton also worked for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's 2014 re-election campaign.
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