In an audacious round of pardons before Christmas, President Trump granted clemency on Tuesday to two people who pleaded guilty in the special council inquiry in Russia, four Blackwater guards convicted in connection with the killing of Iraqi civilians and three former corrupt Republican members of Congress.
It was a remarkable statement of forgiveness by a president who continues to dispute his defeat in the election and may well be followed by other pardons in the weeks before he left office on January 20.
Mr. Trump has overturned more of the legal consequences of an investigation in his 2016 campaign, which he has long labeled as a scam. He granted clemency to contractors whose actions in Iraq sparked an international uproar and helped to turn public opinion even more against the war in that country. And he forgave three members of his party who became examples of high-level public corruption.
The 15 pardons and five commutations were made public by the White House in a statement late on Tuesday. In many cases, they seemed to have bypassed the Department of Justice’s traditional review process – more than half of the cases did not meet the department’s standards for consideration – and reflected Trump’s old resentments about the investigation in Russia, his instinct to stay on the side of members of the military accused of transgression and their willingness to reward political allies.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of clemency claimants have been looking for ways to influence Trump as he weighs pardons before leaving office. The statement highlighted a number of prominent Republicans and Trump allies who had influenced on behalf of those who received clemency. Among them were Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general and lobbyist who helped defend Trump during his impeachment, and Pete Hegseth, a Fox News commentator who defended past pardons from service members.
One of the most notable pardons went to George Papadopoulos, who was a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign in 2016 and pleaded guilty in 2017 to making false statements to federal officials as part of the investigation by special attorney Robert S. Mueller III .
Alex van der Zwaan, a lawyer who pleaded guilty to the same charge in 2018 in connection with the special attorney’s inquiry, was also pardoned. He and Papadopoulos served short prison terms.
The Mueller-related pardons are a sign that more to come for people caught up in the investigation, according to people close to the president.
Trump has already forgiven his first national security adviser, Lieutenant General Michael T. Flynn, who pleaded guilty twice to charges, including lying to the FBI in connection with the Russian investigation. In July, the president commuted the sentence of Roger J. Stone Jr., his longtime adviser who was convicted of a number of charges related to the investigation. Both men maintained their innocence.
Trump’s list of pardons on Tuesday included four former U.S. military personnel who were convicted of charges related to the death of Iraqi civilians while working as contractors for Blackwater in 2007.
One of them, Nicholas Slatten, had been sentenced to life imprisonment after the Justice Department tried its best to prosecute him. Slatten had been hired by the private company Blackwater and was convicted of his role in the killing of 17 Iraqi civilians at Nisour Square in Baghdad – a massacre that left one of the most enduring stains of the war in the United States. Among the dead were two boys aged 8 and 11.
The three former members of Congress pardoned by Mr. Trump were Duncan D. Hunter of California, Chris Collins of New York and Steve Stockman of Texas.
Mr. Hunter was set to begin serving an 11-month sentence next month. He pleaded guilty in 2019 to a charge of misusing campaign funds.
Collins, one of Trump’s early supporters, was serving a 26-month sentence after pleading guilty in 2019 to charges of making false statements to the FBI and plotting to commit securities fraud.
Mr. Stockman was convicted in 2018 on charges of fraud and money laundering and was serving a 10-year sentence. Sidney Powell, the lawyer and electoral conspiracy theorist that Trump considered making a special White House lawyer to investigate electoral fraud, argued that he was a candidate for forgiveness.
The president also granted full pardon to two former Border Patrol agents whose sentences for their roles in the murder of an alleged drug dealer had previously been commuted by President George W. Bush.
Trump’s measures on Tuesday support the notion that he used his forgiving power more aggressively than most presidents for personal and political purposes. According to the Constitution, the president is the ultimate emergency brake on the criminal justice system.
A tabulation by Harvard Law School professor Jack Goldsmith found that of Trump’s 45 pardons or commutations before Tuesday, 88% went to people with personal ties to the president or to people who promoted his political goals.
The pardons “continue Trump’s unprecedented pattern of issuing pardons and selfish commutations that promote his personal interests, reward friends, seek revenge on enemies or gratify political constituents,” Goldsmith said on Tuesday. “Like his previous pardons, most, if not all, appear to be based on internal recommendations, rather than the normal Department of Justice verification process.”
The pardons of Blackwater contractors have direct links to two of Trump’s close allies: Erik Prince, the former head of Blackwater, and Prince’s sister, Betsy DeVos, the secretary of education.
Mr. Prince’s own conduct was investigated by the special attorney’s office. During the 2017 transition, Mr. Prince met with a Russian-sanctioned banker in the Seychelles to find ways for the Russian government and the next Trump administration to cooperate.
In overturning the legal consequences of the convictions in the Russian inquiry, Mr. Trump escalated a long campaign, aided by his attorney general, William P. Barr, to effectively undo Mr. Mueller’s investigation, discredit the resulting processes and punish those who instigated them in the first place.
The White House continued to destroy the legacy of Mueller’s investigation in the statement released Tuesday night. He made a point of saying that the investigation “found no evidence of collusion in relation to Russia’s attempts to interfere in the elections” and dismissed Papadopoulos’s crime as “related to the process”.
Mr. Papadopoulos, 33, served 12 days in prison for lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian intermediaries during the 2016 presidential race. He later published a book portraying himself as the victim of a “deep state” plot for ” overthrow President Trump. ” In an interview last month, he praised the possibility of clemency.
“Of course, I would be honored to be forgiven,” said Papadopoulos.
Mr. van der Zwaan was sentenced in April 2018 to 30 days in prison for lying to investigators at the special attorney’s office about his contacts with a business partner, said he was a Russian intelligence officer, who worked closely with the former Trump campaign president Paul Manafort.
Mr. Manafort was convicted in 2018 on a number of charges, including tax and banking fraud. He was ordered to serve a combined seven years in prison. This year, Mr. Manafort was granted confinement at home amid fears of the coronavirus spreading in prisons.
Mr. Manafort agreed to cooperate with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to some charges against him, but prosecutors later accused him of deceiving them and of not being useful in the investigation. Mr. Manafort’s allies hope that Mr. Trump will forgive him.
Two other figures condemned in the investigation in Russia – Manafort’s deputy, Rick Gates, and President Michael D. Cohen’s former personal lawyer – are seen as unlikely candidates for Trump’s forgiveness. The two men cooperated with investigations into the president.
The case involving Blackwater’s contractors was one of the weak points of the Iraq war: the death of civilians in Nisour Square, which destroyed any remaining US credibility with the Iraqis. The case highlighted the huge role that military contractors have taken to help besieged American forces in Iraq and led to a series of revelations about how American contractors were acting as criminal militias across the country.
The prosecution proved to be a huge headache for the Department of Justice, as investigators first had to collect evidence at a crime scene on the other side of the world. In 2009, a federal judge dismissed the cases against four of the contractors, arguing that investigators had relied on contaminated evidence.
Two years later, the federal appeals court in Washington reversed that decision. Although the case was reopened, it took many years to resolve it. In 2019, Mr. Slatten was sentenced to life in prison for what prosecutors claimed was his role in firing the first shot at Nisour Square that killed a civilian and caused contractors to fire grenades and machine guns at the crowd.
A switch in the White House list stood out for the recipient’s connections. Philip Esformes, who was sentenced last year to 20 years in prison for Medicaid fraud, had his commutation recommended by, among others, two former attorney generals, Edwin Meese and Michael Mukasey, the White House said.
Peter Baker contributed reporting.