Trump explores with his advisers granting pardons to his children and his personal lawyer
Rudolph W. Giuliani, who promotes unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud, discussed a pardon with President Trump last week.
President Donald Trump has discussed with his advisers the possibility of granting pardons to his children, his son-in-law and his personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani, and spoke with the latter about the possibility of pardoning him last week, according to two people briefed on The issue.
Trump has told others that he is concerned that Biden's Justice Department may seek retaliation against the president by targeting his three oldest children - Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and Ivanka Trump - as well as his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a senior adviser to the White House.
Donald Trump Jr. had been investigated by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III for contacts he had with Russian citizens who offered damaging information about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign, but he was never charged. Kushner provided false information to federal authorities about his contacts with foreigners to obtain security clearance from him, but the president granted it anyway.
The nature of Trump's concern about any potential risk of criminal prosecution of Eric Trump or Ivanka Trump is unclear, although a Manhattan district attorney investigation of the Trump Organization has been expanded to include the tax deduction of millions. dollars in company consulting fees, some of which appear to have gone to Ivanka Trump.
However, presidential pardons do not offer protection against state or local crimes.
Giuliani's possible criminal exposure is also unclear, although this summer he was investigated by federal prosecutors in Manhattan for his business in Ukraine and his role in the removal of the US ambassador to that country. The plot was at the center of Trump's impeachment.
Speculation about clemency movements in the White House is fueled, underscoring how much the Trump administration has been dominated by investigations and prosecutions of people in the president's orbit. Trump himself was singled out by federal prosecutors as "Individual 1" in a court filing in the case that sent Michael D. Cohen, his former attorney and mediator, to jail.
The discussions between Trump and Giuliani occurred as the former mayor of New York has become one of the most striking voices promoting unsubstantiated claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 elections; Trump continues to publicly proclaim that he won the election. Many of Trump's former advisers have refused to follow his orders to try to overturn an election that President-elect Joe Biden won by nearly seven million votes. But Giuliani has repeatedly thrown himself into the limelight to question the results, which has ingratiated him with the president.
ABC News reported Tuesday that Trump was considering forgiving his family members.
A spokeswoman for Trump did not respond to an email requesting comment.
Giuliani did not respond to a message asking for his comment, but after a version of this article was posted online, he attacked it on Twitter and said it was false.
Christianné L. Allen, Giuliani's spokeswoman, said Giuliani "cannot comment on any discussion that he has with his client."
And Giuliani's attorney, Robert Costello, said: "He is not concerned about this investigation because he did nothing wrong, and that has been our position from day one."
Sean Hannity, a Fox News host and Trump ally, said Monday that given Democrats' animosity toward Trump, the president should consider forgiving his entire family. "If Biden were to become president, he would tell Trump to forgive himself and to forgive his family," Hannity told viewers of him.
Trump is an avid consumer of Fox News, particularly Hannity's show.
A pardon so broad that it anticipates any charge or conviction is highly unusual, but it is unprecedented. In the most famous example, President Gerald R. Ford forgave Richard M. Nixon for all of his actions as president. President George Washington pardoned the Whiskey Rebellion conspirators, protecting them from treason trials. And President Jimmy Carter forgave thousands of American men who illegally evaded draft for the Vietnam War.
Trump has freely exercised his clemency powers in cases that resonate with him personally or to benefit people who have a direct line to him through friends or family, while thousands of other cases await his review.
A clemency for Giuliani is sure to lead to allegations that Trump has used his clemency power to obstruct investigations and shield himself and his allies. Andrew A. Weissmann, one of Mueller's top prosecutors, has said that Trump's granting pardons to his allies hampered his work.
In July, the president commuted the sentence of his former adviser Roger J. Stone Jr., who had refused to cooperate with the special counsel's investigators and was ultimately convicted of seven felonies. Last week, Trump pardoned his former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn, who had retracted his cooperation agreement with the special counsel's office for "any and all possible crimes" beyond the indictment that he had faced lying to federal investigators.
Flynn's clemency raised expectations that Trump would grant clemency to other associates - like his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who declined to discuss 2016 election issues with prosecutors - in his final weeks in office.
Giuliani has asked the Trump campaign to pay him $ 20,000 a day for his work in an attempt to overturn the election, a figure that would make him one of the highest-paid lawyers in the world. The staggering sum has drawn opposition from Trump aides, who fear Giuliani has perpetuated the allegations of voter fraud in hopes of making as much money as possible.
Giuliani has expressed concern that any federal investigation of his conduct that appears to have been dormant during the Trump administration could be rekindled in the Biden administration, according to people who have spoken with him.
Legal experts say that if Trump wants to fully protect Giuliani from prosecution after he leaves office, the president will most likely have to spell out in clemency wording what crimes he believes Giuliani has committed.
Manhattan federal prosecutors have since 2019 investigated the role of Giuliani and two other associates in a broad lobbying campaign aimed at pushing the Ukrainian government to investigate Trump's rivals, namely Biden's son Hunter Biden.
Giuliani's two associates - Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman - were arrested in October 2019 as they prepared to board a flight from Washington to Frankfurt with one-way tickets. They were accused of violating campaign finance laws as part of a complex scheme to undermine former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie L. Yovanovitch, who Giuliani and Trump believed should have done more to pressure Ukrainians.
Manhattan prosecutors continued their investigation of Giuliani's role in such a plan over the past year, focusing on whether, by pushing to impeach Yovanovitch, he was essentially doing a double dip: working not just for Trump but also for Ukrainian officials who they had their own reasons for wanting the ambassador to leave, according to people briefed on the matter.
It is a federal crime to try to influence the United States government at the request or on the orders of a foreign official without revealing your involvement. Giuliani has said that he did nothing wrong and that he did not register as a foreign agent because he was acting on behalf of Trump, not any Ukrainian.
Even as Trump maintains that the election was stolen and files lawsuits to delay his certification, his White House is preparing for the final stages of his presidency. The end of any government often causes a wave of pardons, especially when a term has been embroiled in a controversy like Trump's, in which several people close to him were caught in federal investigations.
“The power of forgiveness has been used by many presidents in a politically interested way, whether it is George H.W. Bush or Clinton, ”said Jack L. Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor, citing how Bush pardoned six of his associates - including former Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger - for his role in the Iran-against affair.
"Politically, a pardon to Giuliani would be explosive," added Goldsmith, "but forgiving friends has been done before."
In previous administrations, presidents have largely granted pardons after going through a formal review process at the Justice Department, in which attorneys reviewed convictions, discussed the ramifications of a possible pardon with prosecutors, and then provided prosecutors. the White House recommendations on how to proceed. On several occasions, Trump has gone against the recommendations of the Justice Department and the advice of his own White House advisers, granting pardons to political allies and celebrities.
When presidents have deviated from that process, scandals have occasionally occurred, especially after pardons in the final days of an administration. On the last day of Bill Clinton's presidency, he granted a clemency to Marc Rich, a wealthy financier and longtime Democratic donor deemed a fugitive as he had fled the United States to avoid tax crime charges.
Manhattan prosecutors investigated whether the pardon was part of a quid pro quo, but no one was charged. At the time, Giuliani, who had helped file criminal charges against Rich years earlier as a federal prosecutor, deeply criticized the move, calling it "an embarrassment" and declaring it "a pardon between roosters and midnight."
No president has ever tried to grant someone a pardon for crimes he has not yet committed - which would essentially be a possible release card - and legal experts say it is unlikely to carry any weight. In the case of Donald Trump Jr., the Mueller investigation examined questions of whether his contacts during the 2016 election with Wikileaks and Russians who offered dirty information about Clinton amounted to campaign finance violations. Donald Trump Jr. was never interviewed by the special counsel's office and was never charged.
In Kushner's case, he missed several important contacts with foreigners when he filled out a form for his White House security clearance, including those with Russians offering damaging information about Clinton during the campaign. Under federal law it is a crime to provide inaccurate or incomplete information on background check documents for security clearance.
In 2018, the White House counselor and chief of staff recommended that Kushner not receive a security clearance for highly confidential matters due to issues that had been discovered during his background check. Despite objections from Trump's advisers, the president unilaterally granted Kushner authorization.
