all right we are just going through some
of this breaking news moments ago
president trump
issued another round of pardons
including
for some very big names roger stone his
former campaign
advisor pardoned paul manafort his
former campaign chair
both were convicted as part of the
special counsel mueller's probe into
russian
election interference for sort of
peripheral issues
around that story in that investigation
also
charles kushner father of president
trump's son-in-law
jared kushner who did time in prison
decades ago has also been pardoned
joining me now mark thoughtson american
enterprise institute scholar
and brett tallman former u.s attorney
and former senate judiciary
judiciary committee council great to
have both of you uh with us this evening
um brett great to have you so brett let
me get your thoughts on this first um
paul manafort roger stone explained to
everybody
what they were convicted of why they did
time and now this pardon tonight
well look i mean this is not unexpected
for those who follow closely the mueller
investigation
some of the the pressure tactics and and
questionable investigations that went
forward and the
the almost forced uh prosecutions that
that occurred
um most of those cases boiled down to
misstatements to to investigators
which they were i think they were
utilizing to try to put leverage on them
to gain more information
on their investigation but let me let me
say something about charles kushner
i had the honor to to look into that
case and to dig into that
and i can i can say i don't think
there's anyone more deserving than
charles kushner i don't think he would
ask for this himself
i'm not aware of anybody asking for this
i think that he is
someone that was a was a product of
chris christie for example trying to
make a name for himself and
and people people like that get caught
up sometimes in investigations you do
have to look at it and you have to
to ask the president to make pardons and
commutations because sometimes he's the
only authority that can do so
mark your thoughts on what we're seeing
tonight
yeah i mean this is part of the
president's power it's a power granted
to him by the constitution he has every
right to do it there's no limits on this
power
whatsoever and uh so you know this i
mean there have been
far more controversial pardons than this
in uh in uh
in american history just have to go to
the uh clinton administration and the
mark rich pardon
uh and uh pardoning faln terrorists
uh and there's there's a lot worse
that's been done before than this so
look
paul manafort spent time in prison uh
he's uh
did roger stone uh you know he he was
convicted
uh of a crime and uh and well you know
he there's a guy who had his house
raided by
uh with live on cnn uh they they
obviously did things that they shouldn't
have done um but this is part of the
power of the president
yeah indeed it is um and we expect more
to come there was some
speculation that edward snowden might be
on this list
perhaps he will be on a list in the
future perhaps he won't
brett do you believe that he should be
do you know some people think he's a
patriot some people think he's a traitor
well yeah that's that's a difficult one
because i i have a strong
affinity for whistleblowers and i do
like
you know to know that uh we also have
the ability to secure
our our national secrets and so there's
a balance there
and uh look a pardon
is not a retrial and a re-sentencing and
a re-evaluation of what
heard at the time a pardon i think is
exactly like mark indicates it's the
power of the president to take a look at
at a situation later in time and to
assess whether or not
he should exercise that power and
authority to to pardon or commute a
sentence
yeah indeed it is and you know mark a
lot of people are going to look at these
pardons for stone and manafort
uh you know there was a lot of um
misinterpretation i would say in terms
of what they were actually convicted for
um but they'll say oh you know here's
the president letting off all those
people who were involved in russian
collusion quick thought
well first of all uh the russian
collusion investigation should have
never happened
uh they they spent all this time
investigating what turned out to be a
conspiracy theory there was no finding
that there was any collusion
and none of these people were convicted
of collusion they were convicted of
other crimes that came up in the course
of an investigation into russian
collusion
uh so trump could arguably say that look
they were caught up because these people
were going after me in a witch hunt and
they got hurt and got caught in the
crossfire
and maybe they did some things wrong but
they're they're they they deserve a
pardon
and pardoning edward snowden on their
hand would be an absolute travesty
this is a man who's done more damage to
our national security than any
human being in the in the last 50 years
gave away secrets that we still are not
be able to recover from entirely
uh we don't know how many people might
have died because of the secrets that he
that did that he gave away
and i think if president trump pardoned
him it would be an absolute it would be
the worst thing he did as president of
the united states
yeah wow all right mark thiessen thank
you very much brett tolman great to have
you with us as well
thanks guys merry christmas to you both