Galling List of Trump Pardons
Wikipedia has a fascinating and shocking List of People Granted Executive Clemency by Donald Trump.
Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is at the top of my list of most galling.
Blagojevich was convicted of soliciting bribes to appoint a senator in a seat vacated when Senator Obama became President Obama.
Here is a sampling of other names you may recall.
Trump’s use of the pardon power was marked by an unprecedented degree of favoritism. He frequently granted executive clemency to his supporters or political allies, or following personal appeals or campaigns in conservative media, as in the cases of Rod Blagojevich, Michael Milken, Joe Arpaio, Dinesh D’Souza, and Clint Lorance, as well as Bernard Kerik. Trump granted clemency to five of his former campaign staff members and political advisers: Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Stephen K. Bannon, and George Papadopoulos.
In November and December 2020, Trump pardoned four Blackwater guards convicted of killing Iraqi civilians in the 2007 Nisour Square massacre; white-collar criminals Michael Milken and Bernard Kerik; and daughter Ivanka’s father-in-law Charles Kushner.
In his last full day in office, Trump granted 143 pardons and commutations, including to his former chief strategist Steve Bannon, Trump fundraiser Elliott Broidy, and former Republican congressmen Rick Renzi, Robert Hayes, and Randall “Duke” Cunningham.
Charles Kushner is a wealthy real estate executive and the father of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law. After Charles Kushner learned that his brother-in-law was cooperating with federal investigators, Kushner hired a prostitute to lure the man into a motel room with a hidden camera, and sent the recording of the subsequent encounter to the man’s wife (Kushner’s sister) to retaliate against him.
Trump granted executive clemency to three court-martialed U.S. military officers who were accused or convicted of war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Trump granted the pardons against the advice of senior military and Defense Department leadership, as well as U.S. military lawyers. Critics state that Trump’s pardons of the officers undermined military discipline, constituted an inappropriate interference in the U.S. military justice system, and called into question the U.S. commitment to the law of armed conflict. Tensions between Trump and the Defense Department regarding Trump’s interventions in the military justice system culminated in the firing of Secretary of the Navy Richard V. Spencer. Two ex-military officers pardoned by Trump appeared with the president at campaign events in 2019.
Cyber Offenses
Trump pardoned Christopher Wade, whose sentence was under seal (unknown).
The Trump White House said that Wade had been convicted of several “cyber-related offenses” and showed “remorse and sought to make his community a safer place.”
Not Pardoned
The list of people not pardoned includes everyone else convicted, deserving or not, but also two deserving people not convicted of anything.
Julian Assange
Let’s discuss Julian Paul Assange Hawkins, better known as Julian Assange.
Julian Assange is an Australian editor, publisher, and activist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006. WikiLeaks came to international attention in 2010 when it published a series of leaks provided by U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. These leaks included the Baghdad airstrike Collateral Murder video (April 2010), the Afghanistan war logs (July 2010), the Iraq war logs (October 2010), and Cablegate (November 2010). After the 2010 leaks, the United States government launched a criminal investigation into WikiLeaks.
In April 2010, WikiLeaks released the Collateral Murder video, which showed United States soldiers fatally shooting 18 civilians from a helicopter in Iraq, including Reuters journalists Namir Noor-Eldeen and his assistant Saeed Chmagh. Reuters had previously made a request to the US government for the Collateral Murder video under Freedom of Information but had been denied. Assange and others worked for a week to break the U.S. military’s encryption of the video.
Other Manning material published by WikiLeaks included the Afghanistan War logs in July 2010, and the Guantánamo Bay files in April 2011.
WikiLeaks published a quarter of a million U.S. diplomatic cables, known as the “Cablegate” files, in November 2010. WikiLeaks initially worked with established Western media organisations, and later with smaller regional media organisations, while also publishing the cables upon which their reporting was based. The files showed United States espionage against the United Nations and other world leaders, revealed tensions between the U.S. and its allies, and exposed corruption in countries throughout the world as documented by U.S. diplomats, helping to spark the Arab Spring. The Cablegate and Iraq and Afghan War releases impacted diplomacy and public opinion globally, with responses varying by region.
Edward Snowden
Please consider the bio of Edward Snowden.
Edward Joseph Snowden (/ˈsnoʊdən/; born June 21, 1983) is an American former computer intelligence consultant who leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013, when he was an employee and subcontractor. His disclosures revealed numerous global surveillance programs, many run by the NSA and the Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance with the cooperation of telecommunication companies and European governments, and prompted a cultural discussion about national security and individual privacy.
In 2013, Snowden was hired by an NSA contractor, Booz Allen Hamilton, after previous employment with Dell and the CIA. Snowden says he gradually became disillusioned with the programs with which he was involved, and that he tried to raise his ethical concerns through internal channels but was ignored. On May 20, 2013, Snowden flew to Hong Kong after leaving his job at an NSA facility in Hawaii, and in early June he revealed thousands of classified NSA documents to journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Barton Gellman, and Ewen MacAskill. Snowden came to international attention after stories based on the material appeared in The Guardian, The Washington Post, and other publications. Snowden also made extensive allegations against the GCSB, blowing the whistle of their domestic surveillance of New Zealanders and acts of espionage under John Key’s government.
On June 21, 2013, the United States Department of Justice unsealed charges against Snowden of two counts of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and theft of government property, following which the Department of State revoked his passport.[6] Two days later, he flew into Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport, where Russian authorities observed the canceled passport, and he was restricted to the airport terminal for over one month. Russia later granted Snowden the right of asylum with an initial visa for residence for one year, which was subsequently repeatedly extended. In October 2020, he was granted permanent residency in Russia.
A subject of controversy, Snowden has been variously called a traitor, a hero, a whistleblower, a dissident, a coward, and a patriot. U.S. officials condemned his actions as having done “grave damage” to the U.S. intelligence capabilities. Snowden has defended his leaks as an effort “to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them.” His disclosures have fueled debates over mass surveillance, government secrecy, and the balance between national security and information privacy, something that he has said he intended to do in retrospective interviews.
Q&A On Assange and Snowden
Q: What Did Assange and Snowden Do?
A: Disclose the disgusting truth.
Q&A on Trump
Q: Who did Trump Pardon?
A: Those convicted of murdering Iraqi citizens, political cronies, a governor convicted of taking bribes to appoint a US Senator, close friends, and political donors.
People accuse Snowden of being a traitor. A traitor to what?
How the flying F is ignoring a government breaking laws, hiding military murders, spying on foreign allies including German Chancellor Angela Merkel being a patriot?
The opposite is being a patriot and a hero.
The government’s case against Assange, is even more ridiculous. Assange posted leaks as a journalist.
CIA Officials Under Trump Discussed Assassinating Julian Assange
To show just how revolting the Trump administration really was, CIA Officials Under Trump Discussed Assassinating Julian Assange.
Mike Pompeo and officials requested ‘options’ for killing Assange following WikiLeaks’ publication of CIA hacking tools, report says.
Senior CIA officials during the Trump administration discussed abducting and even assassinating WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, according to a US report citing former officials.
The discussions on kidnapping or killing Assange took place in 2017, Yahoo News reported, when the fugitive Australian activist was entering his fifth year sheltering in the Ecuadorian embassy. The then CIA director, Mike Pompeo, and his top officials were furious about WikiLeaks’ publication of “Vault 7”, a set of CIA hacking tools, a breach which the agency deemed to be the biggest data loss in its history.
Pompeo and the CIA leadership “were completely detached from reality because they were so embarrassed about Vault 7”, Yahoo cites a former Trump national security official as saying. “They were seeing blood.”
Some senior officials inside the CIA and the Trump administration went as far as to request “sketches” or “options” for killing Assange. “There seemed to be no boundaries,” a former senior counterterrorist official was quoted as saying.
Barry Pollack, Assange’s US lawyer, did not respond to a request for comment, but told Yahoo News: “As an American citizen, I find it absolutely outrageous that our government would be contemplating kidnapping or assassinating somebody without any judicial process simply because he had published truthful information.
Who are the Cowards? The traitors? The Heroes?
Snowden and Assange have been called traitors, heroes, whistleblowers, dissidents, cowards, and patriots.
Assange is not a US citizen, but they are both are patriots, heroes, whistleblowers, and dissidents in that order. I would not object to hero being first.
Neither are cowards or traitors.
Those accusing Assange and Snowden of being traitors, hide behind a false flag of alleged patriotism without having any genuine principles or integrity to speak of.
This post originated at MishTalk.Com.
Thanks for Tuning In!
Please Subscribe to MishTalk Email Alerts.
Subscribers get an email alert of each post as they happen. Read the ones you like and you can unsubscribe at any time.
If you have subscribed and do not get email alerts, please check your spam folder.
Mish
DeSantis will run and most likely win.
responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral
responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”
Didn’t think we were gonna have a winner thins week, but you’ve earned the Golden Kooky Award… congrats!