Pardoned Criminals like Manafort MAY still be prosecuted, says Andrew Weissmann

[OnDoutside]

As we keep saying, thank God that the Trump administration was so consistently incompetent !

Some people pardoned by Trump can still be tried, an ex-Mueller prosecutor argues.

The moment that Donald J. Trump’s presidency ended, a former prosecutor from the special counsel’s office in the Russia inquiry publicly unveiled an argument that Mr. Trump’s White House had erred in a wave of contentious pardons last month — leaving some recipients vulnerable to new prosecutions. “If the Biden administration’s Department of Justice wants to rectify some of Trump’s abuse of the pardon power, there are now options at its disposal,” the former prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann, wrote in an essay posted on the legal website Just Security just after noon.

Mr. Weissmann argued on Wednesday that the wording of Mr. Trump’s pre-Christmas pardons was “oddly” drafted. The pardons narrowly covered the recipients’ convictions — rather than broadly relieving them of all potential liability for their actions. Many of the recipients could be charged with more crimes than those for which they were convicted, he said.

For example, he noted, Mr. Manafort admitted as part of a plea deal over reduced charges that he was guilty of other crimes for which he was never convicted. They included 10 counts of financial crimes over which a jury in a Virginia trial had hung, and others offenses like witness tampering that had been laid out in an indictment in a District of Columbia case.

It would be “unusually simple” to bring new charges against him, Mr. Weissmann argued, in part because prosecutors could use Mr. Manafort’s sworn admissions of his guilt as evidence.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/20/us/politics/some-people-pardoned-by-trump-can-still-be-tried-an-ex-mueller-prosecutor-argues.html

[Maraya1969]

1. Would love to see this nice man prosecuted again.

( Mr. Weissmann observed that other pardons Mr. Trump granted just before Christmas, including to his longtime informal adviser and friend Roger J. Stone Jr., and to Philip Esformes — “the single largest health care fraudster in history” — were similarly narrow )

Philip Esformes acquired a $1.6 million Ferrari and a $360,000 Swiss watch and traveled around the United States on a private jet, a spending spree fueled by the spoils from what federal prosecutors called one of the largest Medicare fraud cases in history.

“Philip Esformes is a man driven by almost unbounded greed,” Denise M. Stemen, an agent in the F.B.I.’s Miami field office, said last year after Mr. Esformes, 52, a nursing home operator, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the two-decade scheme that involved an estimated $1.3 billion worth of fraudulent claims.

That prison term ended suddenly this week, when President Trump commuted what remained of Mr. Esformes’s sentence.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/24/us/politics/trump-pardon-clemency-access.html

[Trueblue Texan]

8. Medicare won't even pay for a tub transfer bench anymore...

...a $60 item that saves lives, but Medicare paid for Esformes to jet around the US in his own plane and cruise around in a Ferrari. Infuriates me. Lock him up!

[Maraya1969]

2. The wording of Steve Bannon's is not public yet. Here's hoping. eom

[Bernardo de La Paz]

3. Plus, you can prosecute others and force them to admit guilt IN COURT by using their pardons.

I know, expensive use of court time, but I think it could be a public good.

The pardon is a bunch of black marks on a piece of paper until it is proffered to avoid a trial or a sentence.

See Burdick at SCotUS, 1915.

[Ford_Prefect]

4. Book-em Dano!

[LittleGirl]

5. Lock them up! eom

[quakerboy]

6. In addition, it doesnt cover future crimes

So call him to testify re trump, and when he lies, perjury charges apply

[mitch96]

7. Knowing his connections in Eastern Europe/Russia if he just gets a wiff of a prosecution

He would blow out of this country toute suite.... да товарищ?
m

[OnDoutside]

9. In retrospect, he might have been happier to serve out his sentence at home, under house arrest.