House Democrats promise investigations, legislation after Trump commutes Roger Stone
Democrats are promising an “aggressive investigation” into the commutation.
House Democrats reacted furiously to President Trump’s Friday move to commute the prison sentence of political operative Roger Stone — demanding an investigation and even legislation to stop similar commutations happening again. (Story continued below following:
THE HYPOCRISY IS BEYOND STUNNING;THIS ALONE SHOULD MOTIVATE AMERICAN VOTERS TO RID CONGRESS OF ALL DEMOCRATS…AND A FEW REPUBLICANS OF MITT ROMNEY’S ILK; IT’S THAT BAD!
Franklin D. Roosevelt: 2,819 pardons
Harry S. Truman: 1,913 pardons
Dwight D. Eisenhower: 1,110 pardons
Woodrow Wilson: 1,087 pardons
Lyndon Johnson: 960 pardons
Richard Nixon: 863 pardons
Calvin Coolidge: 773 pardons
Herbert Hoover: 672 pardons
Theodore Roosevelt: 668 pardons
Jimmy Carter: 534 pardons
John F. Kennedy: 472 pardons
Bill Clinton: 396 pardons
Ronald Reagan: 393 pardons
William H. Taft: 383 pardons
Gerald Ford: 382 pardons
Warren Harding: 386 pardons
William McKinley: 291 pardons
Barack Obama: 212 pardons
George W. Bush: 189 pardons
George H.W. Bush: 74 pardons
Donald J. Trump: 10 pardons*
* Trump is serving his first term in office. Pardon count last updated on July 11, 2019.
(Note: In the links the distinction between ‘pardons’ and ‘commutations’ is spelled out. i.e. Arpaio was a ‘pardon’, Stone is a ‘commutation’) dlh
From the far left:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/07/trump-roger-stone-pardon-commutation/
And here’s Politifact, twisting itself into a pretzel to “prove” how much more legally and honestly Obama used the presidential pardon and commutation powers:
But how will most Americans even learn of the absurdity of the Democrats’ posturing? With the exception of Fox News, the facts of this story are not presented.
And possibly more sadly is that Bill Barr and John Durham are content to delay the facts of the Democratic Party’s and Obama administration’s truly horrifying behavior, until AFTER the Nov. election !
The Barr/Durham action, rather ‘inaction’, seems to have only one plausible explanation…they are of the Deep State!
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Remember Marc Rich?
From the N Y Post, Jan.2016: Fifteen years ago this month, on Jan. 20, 2001, his last day in office, Bill Clinton issued a pardon for international fugitive Marc Rich. It would become perhaps the most condemned official act of Clinton’s political career. A New York Times editorial called it “a shocking abuse of presidential power.” The usually Clinton-friendly New Republic noted it “is often mentioned as Exhibit A of Clintonian sliminess.”
Congressman Barney Frank added, “It was a real betrayal by Bill Clinton of all who had been strongly supportive of him to do something this unjustified. It was contemptuous.” Marc Rich was wanted for a list of charges going back decades. He had traded illegally with America’s enemies including Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran, where he bought about $200 million worth of oil while revolutionaries allied with Khomeini held 53 American hostages in 1979.
Rich made a large part of his wealth, approximately $2 billion between 1979 and 1994, selling oil to the apartheid regime in South Africa when it faced a UN embargo. He did deals with Khadafy’s Libya, Milosevic’s Yugoslavia, Kim Il Sung’s North Korea, Communist dictatorships in Cuba and the Soviet Union itself. Little surprise that he was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List.
Facing prosecution by Rudy Giuliani in 1983, Rich fled to Switzerland and lived in exile.
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And then, there’s Obama’s clemency for a convicted terrorist, Lopez Rivera and “Chelsea” Manning (Politifact, as usual, tried to make these Obama actions look right and noble):
Manning and Lopez Rivera were granted commutations (as Trump’s was for Roger Stone), or shortened sentences.
Manning was an Army intelligence analyst convicted of leaking American military and diplomatic information through Wikileaks in 2010. Manning’s 35-year sentence was the longest ever imposed in the United States for a leak conviction, but it was cut short at seven years when Obama commuted, or shortened, her sentence.
A transgender woman in a men’s military prison, Manning attempted suicide twice.
Lopez Rivera helped lead the Armed Forces of National Liberation, a Puerto Rican nationalist movement. The group’s most famous bombing, in 1975, resulted in four deaths, although no one was charged with carrying it out. He received a 55-year sentence for seditious conspiracy, attempted robbery, explosives and vehicle theft that was extended 15 years after conspiracy to escape.
Lopez Rivera was the last remaining member of the Armed Forces of National Liberation still in prison. In 1999, he rejected President Bill Clinton’s conditional clemency offer (he refused to express ‘remorse’; but that later was apparently OK with Obama). Obama shortened his sentence to 36 years.
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But Nancy and the Democrats Are Wetting Their Pants over How Terribly Trump Has Abused His Powers….
Democrats are promising an “aggressive investigation” into the commutation.
“President Trump’s decision to commute the sentence of top campaign advisor Roger Stone, who could directly implicate him in criminal misconduct, is an act of staggering corruption,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a statement on Saturday.She went on to promise that Congress would “take action” to prevent future such commutations: “Legislation is needed to ensure that no President can pardon or commute the sentence of an individual who is engaged in a cover-up campaign to shield that President from criminal prosecution.”
The White House announced Friday that Trump has signed an Executive Grant of Clemency for the colorful political operative, who was sentenced to more than three years in prison after he was convicted last year on seven counts of obstruction, witness tampering and making false statements to Congress in relation to FBI Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
Stone, who has appealed the conviction and denies wrongdoing, was due to report to prison on July 14 to serve 40 months. But the White House said the president had commuted the sentence “in light of the egregious facts and circumstances surrounding his unfair prosecution, arrest, and trial.”
“Roger Stone is a victim of the Russia Hoax that the Left and its allies in the media perpetuated for years in an attempt to undermine the Trump Presidency,” White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said in a statement Friday night. “There was never any collusion between the Trump Campaign, or the Trump Administration, with Russia. Such collusion was never anything other than a fantasy of partisans unable to accept the result of the 2016 election.”
The White House also cited medical risk as a reason for the commutation, given Stone’s age and the coronavirus pandemic.
