Tag: Victoria Toensing

Trump has engaged his power three times already. The lawyer for recently pardoned Scooter Libby said pardons like the one for her client make the President happy and give him "a thrill." Pardon 1: Joe Arpaio, controversial sheriff, immigration hardliner, birther Trump rewarded a political backer and criticized the justice system as making a mistake when he pardoned former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio in August, sparing his longtime supporter a jail sentence for criminal contempt during Arpaio's time in office. Arpaio's specific crime was ignoring a court order to stop profiling Latinos. Trump spent much of 2016 saying Hillary Clinton should be in jail, but he gave Kristian Saucier a free pass. Trump has specifically used the case of Saucier, as recently as January, to call on his own Justice Department to go after Clinton. What might have further thrilled Trump about pardoning Libby is that he did it just days before James Comey's book was released -- the former FBI director was the man who authorized the special counsel in that case. Beyond breaking the seal on the pardon power much earlier in his presidency, publicly teasing them before carrying through, and so far using them for very political ends, Trump's pardons are also different because they have occurred one at a time. The idea of Trump doing something that neither Bush nor Obama would and being on the right side of a horrible law can't hurt Johnson's prospects. Political pardons are nothing new.

John Dowd, Donald Trump’s lead lawyer in the Mueller investigation into Russian election interference and alleged links between Trump aides and Moscow, resigned his role on Thursday while protesting his “love” for the president. Trump attacks Joe Biden amid reports of 2020 presidential run Read more In an email to the Guardian, Dowd confirmed his departure and said: “I love the president and wish him well.” The 77-year-old left Trump’s legal team days after the hiring of Joseph DiGenova, a cable news commentator and former US attorney who has claimed the Mueller investigation is an attempt to frame the president, carried out by the FBI and Department of Justice. The shake-up comes with special counsel Robert Mueller reportedly closing in on an interview with Trump and less than two weeks after the president insisted on Twitter he was “VERY happy” with his legal team and said his lawyers were “doing a great job”. Dowd attracted unwanted attention on Saturday, in the aftermath of the firing on Friday of the former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe. He then told Axios that Trump “didn’t have any problem” with his statement. Trump has been more aggressive in attacking the Mueller investigation, recently mentioning the special counsel by name for the first time. In December, he insisted “the president cannot obstruct justice” after Trump tweeted that he “had to fire [former national security adviser Michael] Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI”. The tweet raised questions about whether Trump had attempted to obstruct justice when he asked the then FBI director James Comey to halt an investigation into Flynn the day after he was fired. The former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort has pleaded not guilty to charges including money laundering and tax and bank fraud. As a result of Dowd’s controversial report, Rose was banned from baseball and made ineligible for induction in the Hall of Fame.