Best way to get a Trump pardon? By lying to protect him, and committing a crime in the process.
Trump is arguably the most self-centered person on the planet over age two. He does nothing for anyone except himself (and, possibly, his immediate family, within limits) unless there’s something in it for him. That’s as true of the pardon power as everything else.
David Frum, writing in The Atlantic, says,
“Here’s the first and most important thing to understand about the crime for which President Trump just pardoned … Michael Flynn: Flynn did not lie to protect himself. He lied to protect Donald Trump.”
As Frum points out, Flynn wasn’t in any real trouble because of his December 2016 conversations with the Russian ambassador, so “there was no reason to lie about any of these conversations.” All he’d done was “pushing the limits a little bit, doing diplomacy before the new administration took office,” and could’ve avoided legal jeopardy simply by admitting it.
Trump’s attorney general nominee, Jeff Sessions, who unlike Flynn isn’t an habitual liar, also lied to protect Trump. In his Senate confirmation hearings, he misrepresented his conversations with Ambassador Kislyak, for no personal reason. Frum says, “Like Flynn, Sessions was not involved with Trump’s” messing around with Russia, and even didn’t know what Trump was up to. (Session won’t get a Trump pardon, because he doesn’t need one; he was never charged with a crime for his activities on behalf of Trump’s shady Russia dealings.)
And then there’s Roger Stone, who also lied to protect Trump, whose sentence has already been commuted, and it’s almost a sure bet that he, too, will get a Trump pardon.
Next (there’s a line stretching around the block) …
Frum observes that a “big question mark hovers over … Paul Manafort, the man most deeply implicated of all” in Trump’s Russia dealings. “Manafort has kept his mouth firmly closed. His silence helped defeat Robert Mueller’s investigation, limiting its effort to determine what, precisely, transpired between Trump and Russia. On trial and in prison, Manafort has not talked.” So, Frum speculates, “Is his reward from Trump coming?” Probably. Trump might have use for Manafort again in the future.
So where is Frum going with all this? If you haven’t figured out yet, I’ll spell it out: Trump’s use of the pardon power is corrupt. Whether or not the pardon power is absolute, or has some limits yet to be defined by the Supreme Court, he is using his authority to grant mercy to shield his own corrupt activities and protect those who aid and abet them to keep them from bearing witness against him. “Trump is offering clemency to people who each, in varying degrees, had and still have his fate in their hands. As he pardons them, he is presumably thinking not of justice to others, but of safety for himself.” The bottom line is that “an administration that began amid charges of conspiracy is ending with an effort at obstruction.”
And 73 million Americans voted to re-elect this guy? That’s hard to believe. There can’t be that many stupid people in this country, can there? So it almost makes me wonder if a dead dictator wrote secret software that somehow surreptiously created millions of phantom Trump votes or flipped Biden votes, but not quite enough because the software, like everything else Trump touches, is defective. (Okay, I’m being sarcastic; that’s not a serious suggestion.)
Read Frum’s article here.
Photo: Prison mugshot of convict Paul Manafort