Trump pardons: Paul Manafort, Roger Stone and Charles Kushner granted clemency

[rajanikanth_tv9]

 

US President Donald Trump has pardoned former campaign manager Paul Manafort, ex-adviser Roger Stone and the father of Trump's son-in-law.

Manafort was convicted in 2018 in an investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 US election. 

Trump has previously commuted the prison sentence of Stone, who was convicted of lying to Congress.

They are among 29 people to benefit from Mr Trump's latest clemency spree before he leaves office next month.

Twenty-six of them received full pardons while another three received commutations.

A commutation usually takes the form of a reduced prison term, but does not erase the conviction or imply innocence.

Video captionAre presidential pardons Trump's secret weapon?

A pardon is an expression of the president's forgiveness that confers extra privileges such as restoring the convict's right to vote or serve on juries.

Presidents often grand pardons in the final days of office, and Mr Trump has used the power more sparingly than any president in modern history apart from George HW Bush.

Mr Trump's pardon for Manafort spared his former campaign chairman from serving most of his seven-and-a-half year prison term for financial fraud and conspiring to obstruct the investigation into him.

He had been serving his term under home confinement since being released from federal prison in May over fears of coronavirus, but is now a free man.

The grateful political operative responded by tweeting: "Mr President, my family & I humbly thank you for the Presidential Pardon you bestowed on me. Words cannot fully convey how grateful we are."

 

Another pardon went to Charles Kushner, a real estate magnate who is the father of Ivanka Trump's husband, Jared Kushner, a White House adviser.

Kushner Snr - whose family boasts a portfolio of 20,000 properties from New York to Virginia - 

was sentenced to two years in prison in 2004 for charges including tax evasion, campaign finance offences and witness tampering. 

The witness tampering charge arose from Kushner Snr's retaliation against his brother-in-law, who was co-operating with authorities against him. Kushner Snr hired a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law, recorded their encounter and sent it to his own sister.

Former Trump adviser Chris Christie, who as a New Jersey prosecutor jailed Kushner Snr, told CNN it was "one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes" he had come across.

Video captionRoger Stone speaks to reporters reacting to Trump's decision to grant clemency

It was the president's second wave of clemency orders in as many days. On Tuesday night he pardoned 15 people and gave commutations to five others.

They included two other figures who were convicted in the US special counsel inquiry into alleged Russian election interference, three ex-Republican members of Congress, and four Blackwater military contractors who were involved in a 2007 massacre in Iraq.