Leaving aside the obvious; that any pardons by Tru
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Posted On: 11/26/2018 11:33:23 PM
Leaving aside the obvious; that any pardons by Trump of Trump minions, from this point on, will clearly provide yet more planks with which to construct obstruction of justice charges...against Trump...is the obvious fact that Mueller is playing 3 dimensional chess.
I don't know WTF game Trump is playing but whatever it is called he's playing it stupidly. That will be one takeaway when the hammer falls. How could he have been THAT stupid?
I don't know WTF game Trump is playing but whatever it is called he's playing it stupidly. That will be one takeaway when the hammer falls. How could he have been THAT stupid?
Quote:
Pardons won't help Manafort. He admitted to state crimes in his plea agreement.
He committed many crimes not charged by Mueller, and in his plea agreement, Manafort admitted to many of those crimes. Because of those admissions, he basically has no defense if charged for those acts.
That was done to bypass some states' prohibition against prosecuting acts that were charged federally and subsequently pardoned by a president (this is especially important relative to New York, where many of Manafort's crimes were committed).
The point is that even if Trump were to pardon Manafort for the charged crimes, Manafort's plea agreement had him admitting to a slew of other acts that are chargeable by states. The bottom line is that Mueller put in place a mechanism that ensured that a possible pardon by Trump would not rescue Manafort from a long prison sentence.
This move by Mueller obliterated any pardon based motivation for Manafort to renege on his plea agreement. Mueller has "Trump-proofed" his deal with Manafort. See:
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/18/man...ump-827898
"Special counsel Robert Mueller’s plea agreement with Paul Manafort on Friday took unusual and possibly unprecedented steps to undercut President Donald Trump’s ability to pardon his former campaign chairman."
(Snip)
"Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz said he believes the main safeguard in the plea deal against a Trump pardon is the fact that Manafort admitted to many state-law crimes that he could be charged with if the federal cases are wiped out."
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