Stone was at the center of last week’s drama inside the Justice Department, with four career prosecutors quitting his case after Attorney General William Barr overruled their sentencing recommendation.
Stone’s looming fate has drawn Trump’s condemnation in recent weeks, with the president calling it a „miscarriage of justice!“ on Twitter and excoriating the prosecutors and judge for their handling of the case. On Tuesday, he appeared to echo a Fox News contributor’s call for a new trial but told reporters that he “hadn’t given it any thought” when asked whether a pardon was in the works.
Trump’s clemency moves furthered a pattern in which those seeking pardons have aggressively lobbied the president’s allies and associates, jumping ahead of the formal process by which the White House usually reviews pardon requests. And Tuesday’s announcement by the White House offered a few tantalizing hints as to who might be next on the president’s list.
Trump has teased a pardon for Blagojevich for years. But Tuesday’s commutation comes after a media campaign by the former governor’s wife that Trump appears to have seen.
Blagojevich, a Democrat, was impeached and removed from office in 2009 for corruption, and was later indicted on multiple corruption charges. He was accused of trying to solicit personal favors and sell the U.S. Senate seat when Barack Obama won the presidency, and was sentenced to 14 years.
In 2015, a federal appeals court overturned four of the original 18 counts on which Blagojevich was convicted, saying aspects of his handling of the Senate vacancy amounted to traditional political “logrolling” that wasn’t illegal. But it upheld the other counts and triggered a resentencing that affirmed his original sentence.
“I watched his wife on television, I don’t know him very well, I’ve met him a couple of times,” Trump said, despite Blagojevich having appeared for what Trump said was a “short while … years ago” on his reality TV show “The Celebrity Apprentice.”
He “seemed like a nice person,” Trump said of Blagojevich, contending that “many people disagree with the sentence.”
During the case, a tapped phone conversation revealed Blagojevich saying: „I’ve got this thing, and it’s f–ing golden. I’m just not giving it up for f–ing nothing.“
Last August, Trump dismissed the governor’s comments from his phone call as „braggadocio“ and insufficient for a conviction.
„I would think that there have been many politicians — I’m not one of them by the way — that have said a lot worse over the phone,“ Trump told reporters then. At the time, the suggestion he might grant Blagojevich clemency drew swift reproach from Illinois’ entire House Republican delegation.
The group said Tuesday it was “disappointed” in Trump’s decision, calling Blagojevich “the face of public corruption in Illinois” and noting that “not once has he shown any remorse for his clear and documented record of egregious crimes that undermined the trust placed in him by voters.”
Blagojevich appeared as a contestant on Trump’s reality show in 2010, after his removal from office, and was fired after the future president criticized him for doing inadequate research on Harry Potter-related product four episodes into the season.
But he also appeared to tie Blagojevich’s commutation to one of his perceived political foes, former FBI Director James Comey. The former FBI director has reemerged as a frequent target of Trump’s since as federal prosecutors seek to tie up loose ends of the Russia investigation Comey headed before his 2017 firing by Trump — the sentencing of Stone and former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
On Tuesday, Trump bashed the prosecutor who put Blagojevich behind bars, former U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who joined Comey’s legal team in the wake of his dismissal.
“It was a prosecution by the same people, Comey, Fitzpatrick — the same group,” Trump told reporters, before asserting that he made the decision because he was sympathetic to the pleas of the former governor’s family.
The president lamented that Blagojevich was imprisoned in Colorado, “very far from his children.”
“They are growing older, they’re going to high school now, and they rarely get to see their father outside of an orange uniform, I saw that and I did commute his sentence,” Trump said, indicating that Blagojevich will head home soon. “He’ll be able to go back home with his family after serving eight years in jail that was a tremendously powerful, ridiculous sentence in my opinion — and in the opinion of many others.”
The team of former prosecutors who put Blagojevich behind bars — including Fitzpatrick — criticized Trump’s move even as they acknowledged his right to grant clemency.
“While the president has the power to reduce Mr. Blagojevich’s sentence, the fact remains that the former governor was convicted of very serious crimes,” they said in a joint statement. They noted that Blagojevich’s conviction and sentence had been reviewed and affirmed by independent appellate judges and the Supreme Court. “His prosecution serves as proof that elected officials who betray those they are elected to serve will be held to account.”
Party leaders in the state were more pointed in denouncing the move.
Current Gov. J.B. Pritzker declared in a statement that his constituents had “endured far too much corruption, and we must send a message to politicians that corrupt practices will no longer be tolerated.”
He added: “President Trump has abused his pardon power in inexplicable ways to reward his friends and condone corruption, and I deeply believe this pardon sends the wrong message at the wrong time.“
Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, also slammed the move, arguing it stands in a contrast with Trump’s professed focus on rooting out corruption in Washington.
“Former Governor Blagojevich betrayed the people of Illinois and engaged in a pattern of corrupt behavior for which he was held accountable and which cost him more than seven years of freedom,“ the Illinois senator said in a statement. “At a time when corruption by elected officials is still in the headlines, Illinois and Washington should move quickly to establish stricter ethics requirements, including the full detailed disclosure of income, net worth, and income tax returns by all elected officials.”
„I think it sends entirely the wrong message,” Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot told reporters while visiting state lawmakers in the state Capitol in Springfield. “With the challenges we have with ongoing public corruption, Blagojevich is a real touchstone for a lot of people about what is wrong in Illinois politics and it’s unfortunate that this has happened with this president.”
Trump also confirmed that he granted a full pardon to Kerik, a close associate of former New York mayor RudyGiuliani and frequent Fox News guest who served a four-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to tax and false statement charges in 2009.
„I just pardoned Bernie Kerik, a man who had many recommendations from a lot of good people,“ Trump said. „You know oftentimes, pretty much all the time, I really rely on the recommendations of people that know them.“
In a tweet, Kerik said that he had „no words to express my appreciation and gratitude“ to Trump.
“With the exception of the birth of my children, today is one of the greatest days in my life — being made a full and whole American citizen again,” he said.
One of the people mentioned by the White House as advocating for Kerik’s pardon is Sidney Powell, the attorney for Flynn, who is now fighting to withdraw his guilty plea for lying to investigators.
And the pardon request for Kerik was submitted by the lawyer representing Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher, a Navy SEAL who was stripped of military honors during his prosecution on murder charges, and lobbied to have his promotion reinstated. Kerik also advocated on behalf of Gallagher.
In turn, Gallagher was one of those listed along with Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, as recommending Kerik’s pardon, the White House said.
Trump’s pardon of Milken, the so-called junk bond king turned philanthropist, also found a roster of support among high-profile names in Trump world, including GOP megadonors Miriam and Sheldon Adelson, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and News Corp. founder Rupert Murdoch.
Milken pleaded guilty in 1990 to racketeering and securities fraud charges and became the face of the 1980s insider trading scandal. He was originally sentenced to 10 years in prison and fined $600 million for his actions while in charge of the bond department at the Drexel Burnham Lambert investment bank, though his sentence was later reduced to two years after he began to cooperate with investigators.
The president trumpeted Milken’s comeback story, praising the “incredible job” done by Milken in support of cancer research.
“He paid a big price, paid a very tough price, but he’s done an incredible job,” he told reporters.
The White House also announced seven pardons in total, including for Ariel Friedler, Paul Pogue, Angela Stanton and David Safavian, the former chief of staff at the Government Services Administration who was convicted of obstructing an investigation into a trip he took with a lobbyist.
Along with Blagojevich, Trump commuted the sentences of three others: Tynice Nichole Hall, Crystal Munoz and Judith Negron.
While the political ramifications of Trump’s clemency spree reverberated throughout Washington on Tuesday, criminal justice reform advocates urged Trump not to forget those without political connections.
„We hope to see him use this executive power to grant more commutations and clemencies in due course for any of the thousands of deserving individuals who are neither rich, nor famous, nor connected,“ said Holly Harris, president and executive director of the bipartisan Justice Action Network. „They are the forgotten majority of the country’s crisis in mass incarceration, a crisis the disproportionately impacts lower income communities and communities of color, and they are every bit as deserving of a second chance.“
Josh Gerstein and Shia Kapos contributed to this report.
Source: politico.com
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