As reported here by NPR, "President Trump has pardoned his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who spent years enmeshed in an often bizarre legal war with the government that sprang from the Russia investigation." Here is more about an unsuprising act of clemency:
Trump announced the news on Twitter as Americans prepared to observe the Thanksgiving holiday this week.
The pardon brings an end to a long-running legal odyssey for Flynn, who was the only member of the Trump administration to be charged as part of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.
Flynn pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador, and then cooperated extensively with prosecutors. But he ultimately reversed course and accused the government of trying to frame him. Flynn went to so far as to withdraw his first plea of guilty and substitute a second plea of not guilty, even though he'd acknowledged the underlying conduct that was against the law and been close to receiving a sentence.
The pardon drew condemnations from critics who've said Trump's actions to help his friends interfere with the justice system. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., for example, who helped prosecute Trump at his impeachment, called the president's actions obviously corrupt.
Flynn, meanwhile, reacted on Twitter with a Bible verse alluding to a holy rescue.
Trump's action on Wednesday may open the door to possible clemency for other former Trump advisers who were indicted as part of the Russia investigation, including former campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
Meanwhile, this New York Times article, headlined "White House Weighs Pardon Blitz Before Trump’s Exit," highlights that I might have a lot of Trumpian clemency action to blog about in the coming weeks. Here is how the piece gets started and some additional excerpts:
It’s not just Michael T. Flynn. The White House is weighing a wave of pardons and commutations by President Trump in his final weeks in office, prompting jockeying by a range of clemency seekers and their representatives, including more allies of Mr. Trump.
Among those hoping for pardons are two former Trump campaign advisers, Rick Gates and George Papadopoulos, who like Mr. Flynn, the former national security adviser who was pardoned on Wednesday by Mr. Trump, were convicted in cases stemming from the special counsel’s Russia investigation.
Alan Dershowitz, the law professor who represented Mr. Trump during his impeachment trial, is considering seeking clemency for two of his clients — a New Jersey man serving more than 20 years for defrauding investors, and a billionaire businessman convicted in what’s been called “one of North Carolina’s worst government corruption scandals.” Mr. Dershowitz said he recently discussed the pardon process with the White House.
But it is not just the well-connected and wealthy who could benefit from one of Mr. Trump’s final exercises of executive power, lawyers in contact with the administration said. Several groups that have pushed for a criminal justice overhaul are working with an ad hoc White House team under the direction of Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, with a goal of announcing as many as hundreds of commutations for offenders now in jail for crimes ranging from nonviolent drug convictions to mail fraud and money laundering.
“Lists of people are being circulated,” said Brandon Sample, a Vermont lawyer who specializes in presidential pardons and has submitted several names of people to be considered. Among them is Russell Bradley Marks, 57, who has been imprisoned after pleading guilty in 1992 on a cocaine-related conviction for which he was given a mandatory life sentence....
Lawyers say the White House is also focused on ways to use presidential clemency powers to further burnish Mr. Trump’s role in what is considered the most consequential criminal justice legislation in a generation, which reduced sentences for nonviolent offenders. A blitz of late pardons or commutations for federal crimes — over which presidents have unchecked power — is seen by some criminal justice reform activists as another way to build his record on that issue....
The planned clemency initiative, and the lobbying that has unfolded around it, has been hindered in some ways in recent weeks by Mr. Trump’s refusal to formally concede his loss to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Potential pardon seekers and their representatives said in interviews that they were waiting to escalate their appeals until Mr. Trump conceded, or at least signaled that he had started to come to grips with the looming end of his presidency. Appealing for clemency before then, people involved warn, risks backfiring, because it could be seen as acknowledging a defeat that Mr. Trump has thus far refused to accept....
The effort to create a White House commutation program separate from the formal Justice Department office started last year after the 2018 passage of the First Step Act, which expanded an early release program and modified sentencing laws, including mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders. There are at least 13,700 people who have formally applied to the Justice Department for pardons that are listed as “pending.”
Representatives of inmates seeking sentence reductions have separately been sending the White House lists of names, typically focusing on people who received unusually long sentences for nonviolent crimes after declining to accept a plea agreement and others serving long sentences because of mandatory guidelines. “Each of these are sad, sad situations,” said Norman Reimer, the executive director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “They show massive injustice and over- sentencing, and we hope he will act on them.”
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