Monday, July 24, 2017

So...No Pardons, Then?


John Dowd, the lawyer now leading President Trump’s personal legal team, denied on Friday that the outside legal team has been looking into the president’s pardon power.

[...]

“It's completely false. It's not happening, never has happened. Someone made it up. It's just a lot of mischief going on,” Dowd said.

[...]

Dowd sharply criticized the press in the interview, saying that “every single day I've been on this case, I've dealt with absolute fabricated, false news by the major media, and it is disgusting.” He also called a New York Times report that the president’s lawyers and aides were doing research on special counsel Robert Mueller III’s team to look for information they could use to discredit the office’s work “nonsense.”

But Trump himself raised the possibility of such work, telling the New York Times on Wednesday that Mueller had “conflicts” because he had been interviewed to potentially be Trump’s FBI director. Trump added: “There were many other conflicts that I haven’t said, but I will at some point.”

[...]

Asked if any White House advisers or anyone outside the White House had conversations or did research on the pardon issue, he replied via email, “Same answer.”

In a phone interview with BuzzFeed News on Friday, Dowd said, “There is nothing going on on pardons, research — nothing.”

  Buzzfeed
Right. He asked. They looked into it. They realized it might be a bad idea.

They'll spin it to look like Trump is a stand-up guy. But I still wouldn't put it past him to hand out at least some pardons. At least to those he doesn't care if they can't claim the 5th.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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