Very interesting piece by our Investigations Desk reporter Tierney Sneed. The Special Counsel’s office does not leak and they’ve been famously good at keeping major components of their investigation totally under wraps. But in this piece, Tierney pulls together a series of hints and references in different court filings and arguments which seem to point to separate, on-going investigation into Manafort which is not connected to the various money laundering, bank fraud and failure to register charges he’s currently facing. Check it out here.
In the latest Episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast Adam Davidson and I do a deep deep dive into Trump, Russia, money laundering, 9/11 and the evolution of the commercial real estate business all which paved Trump’s decades long road to Moscow. Fascinating stuff and I learned a lot. Listen.
The issue of presidential pardons raises an important issue with “norms”. I have written many times over the years that Presidents don’t use the pardon power nearly enough. The pardon power is archaic and in some ways hard to reconcile with our modern concepts of justice and judicial process. But mercy is an important element of justice. Indeed, without a role for mercy there can be no justice. There are many people rotting in prison who shouldn’t be there, even if they were guilty of the crimes for which they were convicted. In the past, the pardon was used sometimes for reasons as simple as managing prison over crowding. Sentences do not need to be sacrosanct. The pardon power is a tool to cut through the harsh indifference of criminal law and right wrongs. Read More
The D’Souza pardon affirms a basic point: the heart of Trumpism is not any policy but performative cruelty, inflicting maximum harm on those outside the tribal fold, and extending the benefits of power and the powers of state for those inside the fold. D’Souza is a loyalist so he gets rewarded with the prerogative power at the President’s discretion. The rationale isn’t legal. It is not in spite of but because of D’Souza’s racism and aggression. It is as simple as that.
