Trump Pardoned a Bunch of People Who Are Almost as Corrupt as He Is Ryan Bort
Donald Trump is going out like he came in: corrupt as hell.
The departing president left the White House for Mar-a-Lago at 8 a.m. Wednesday morning, slinking out after a disastrous and deadly four years. One of his last acts on the job was granting a flurry of pardons and commutations (nearly 150 in all), many of them to his white-collar cronies. The last-minute pardon spree had long been expected, and wasn’t at all out of character for a president who routinely abused his ability to unilaterally absolve allies of federal crimes. As recently as December, Trump pardoned convicted felons such as Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Charles Kushner, and others. “This is rotten to the core,” Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) said of the action.
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With less than 12 hours before the end of his presidency, Donald Trump issued 143 pardons and commutations, including a pardon for Steve Bannon, his former chief strategist and campaign manager. Trump, who has pardoned other associates and allies during his single term, has so far rejected calls to pardon prominent whistleblowers including WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and NSA whistleblowers Edward Snowden and Reality Winner. Details continue to emerge about how allies of Trump have personally profited from people seeking pardons. We speak with John Kiriakou, a former CIA analyst and case officer who exposed the Bush-era torture program and was the only official jailed in connection to it, about the pardon system. He says an associate of Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani offered him a pardon for $2 million, which Kiriakou declined to pay. “They don’t see this as a bribe,” says Kiriakou. “This is the way W
UpdatedWed, Jan 20, 2021 at 10:58 am MT
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In this March 5, 2008, file photo, is then-U.S. Rep. Rick Renzi, who represented Arizona in Congress from 2003 to 2009, in Tucson. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
ARIZONA President Donald Trump issued a flurry of pardons and commuted sentences in the final hours of his presidency, including two with ties to Arizona.
Trump granted pardons to 73 people and commuted the sentences of another 70 as one of his final acts before leaving office Wednesday.
Notably, he did not pardon himself or any members of his family or former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, his personal attorney.