Donald Trump would have forgiven former senior adviser Steve Bannon, among many others, in the final hours of his presidency.
Others pardoned, according to Reuters, were Elliott Broidy, a major former fund-raiser for Trump, who admitted to illegally lobbying the U.S. government to end his investigation into the 1MDB corruption scandal in Malaysia and deport a exiled Chinese billionaire.
Rappers Lil Wayne and Kodak Black – who were prosecuted for federal gun crimes – and former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who is serving a 28-year prison sentence on corruption charges, were also pardoned, according to the agency news according to government officials.
The New York Times and CNN described the forgiveness of Bannon, a former Breitbart editor, as a last-minute preventive move to protect Bannon from his trial for fraud. Bannon faces trial in May after his arrest in August last year on a luxury yacht off the Connecticut coast, accused of embezzling money from We Build the Wall, an online fundraising event for Trump’s contentious border wall with the Mexico.
Federal prosecutors claim that Bannon used a non-profit organization he controlled to divert “more than $ 1 million from the … online campaign, at least part of which he used to cover hundreds of thousands of dollars in personal expenses.”
Authorities said We Build The Wall raised more than $ 25 million. Bannon denied one charge of conspiracy to commit electronic fraud and another of conspiracy to commit money laundering.
The news about Bannon and Broidy brought rapid protests. Noah Bookbinder of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said: “Not even Nixon forgave his cronies on the way out. Surprisingly, in his last 24 hours on the job, Donald Trump found yet another way to break Richard Nixon’s ethical standard. “
Bannon was recently banned from Twitter for asking for the beheading of Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI director Christopher Wray.
Trump and Bannon split after the former adviser left the White House and made critical comments about the president in a book that told everything about the president, called Fire and Fury, by journalist Michael Wolff, and Trump said his former adviser he had “lost his mind”. But the two men would have healed the split, as an increasingly isolated president approached his final days.
CNN reported on Tuesday night that Trump told advisers that he had made the last-minute decision to include Bannon on his final pardon list. Bannon, however, may still face charges brought by state courts.
It is understood that Trump did not try to give himself a preventive pardon, and did not forgive members of his family or Rudy Giuliani, his former personal lawyer with whom he fought. Prosecutors and academics, however, said that a gray area in the constitution means that a president may be able to issue “secret” pardons without notifying Congress or the public.
The announcement was delayed, CNN and the New York Times reported, because Trump was divided for forgiving Bannon.
Several Republican party figures defending Trump in his second impeachment, for inciting the attack on the Capitol on January 6, advised him not to offer forgiveness to any of the more than 100 people arrested as a result.
Presidential pardon and acts of clemency do not imply innocence. Presidents often grant them to allies and donors, but Trump has taken the practice to extremes.
Previous recipients include advisers and allies Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, George Papadopoulos and Paul Manafort, all convicted of investigating interference in the Russian elections and links between Trump and Moscow, and Charles Kushner, father of Trump’s son-in-law and chief adviser, Jared Kushner.
Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are said to be intimately involved in the decision-making process for Trump’s final pardons.
Trump is expected to leave Washington on Wednesday morning, before Joe Biden takes office as 46th president. He will fly to Florida without the legal protection of the position.
Trump faces state investigations of his business and may face legal danger from acts in office, including his attempts to nullify the election defeat and his incitement to the Capitol riot on January 6, for which he was accused a second time.
If Trump is convicted at his second Senate trial, he could be barred from running again.