Adam Schiff Says Trump's Pardons Show He Is 'Lawless Until the Bitter End'

[Auburn85 432]

https://www.newsweek.com/adam-schiff-trumps-pardons-show-lawless-until-bitter-end-1557109

 

 

Quote

 

Donald Trump's decision to pardon allies has sparked anger among lawmakers, with one senator within the president's own party describing the move as "rotten to the core."

Among the 26 people granted clemency on Wednesday was Charles Kushner, whose son,Jared Kushner, is Trump's adviser and son-in-law. Charles Kushner was jailed for tax evasion, witness tampering and making illegal campaign donations.

Trump also pardoned his former adviser, Roger Stone, convicted in November 2019 of lying to Congress in connection with its investigation into Russian election interference, witness tampering and obstructing an official proceeding.

On Thursday, a White House statement said "due to prosecutorial misconduct" Stone had been "treated very unfairly," and that his pardon "will help to right the injustices he faced at the hands of the Mueller investigation."

A pardon was also given to Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, who was convicted in 2018 on bank fraud and tax charges. He had been released from his seven-year sentence to home confinement in May due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Adam Schiff, who was the lead Democratic prosecutor during Trump's impeachment trial, took aim at the granting of clemency to Manafort in particular.

 

"During the Mueller investigation, Trump's lawyer floated a pardon to Manafort.

"Manafort withdrew his cooperation with prosecutors, lied, was convicted, and then Trump praised him for not 'ratting.' Trump's pardon now completes the corrupt scheme. Lawless until the bitter end," he tweeted.

The White House said that Manafort was a victim of "blatant prosecutorial overreach" and had been "the most prominent victims of what has been revealed to be perhaps the greatest witch hunt in American history."

In a follow-up tweet, Schiff who chairs the house intelligence committee, said: "Lie to cover up for the president? You get a pardon. Corrupt politician who endorsed Trump? You get a pardon.

"Murder innocent civilians? You get a pardon," adding, "elect a corrupt man as president? You get a corrupt result."

"Rotten to the core"

Illustrating that sometimes less is more, GOP Senator Ben Sasse (R-Neb), issued a terse six-word statement in response to the latest presidential pardons that said: "This is rotten to the core."

Sasse has been critical of Trump, taking aim at how he handled the COVID pandemic, his praise for Q-Anon supporters and his administration's foreign policy. Trump in turn has traded barbs on Twitter in October, calling him a "liability" to the GOP.

Former Republican and now Libertarian Party representative for Michigan, Justin Amash, tweeted: "I'm all for the pardon power, but it should be used in all instances to cure injustices, not to help friends and associates evade justice."

Meanwhile, Rep. Paul Mitchell, of Michigan, who said he would leave the GOP because of Trump's actions following the election shared Amash's message and wrote: "Absolutely. The pardons of the past 2 days are sickening distortions of pardon power."

Democratic Rep. Ayanna Presley (D-Mass) tweeted: "Only in America: impeached, lost the election & handing out pardons for his corrupt friends while also carrying out an unprecedented execution spree."

 

 

[homersapien 11,362]

But of course. 

What we are witnessing is exactly what we would see if the power to pardon was granted to a mafia leader.

Trump will never be held personally accountable.  But for the sake of the country, the truth needs to be revealed (see my thread on David Frum's essay in this forum).

[autigeremt 6,598]

6 minutes ago, homersapien said:

But of course. 

What we are witnessing is exactly what we would see if the power to pardon was granted to a mafia leader.

Trump will never be held personally accountable.  But for the sake of the country, the truth needs to be revealed (see my thread on David Frum's essay in this forum).

Go jump off a cliff into Jello! The truth will NEVER be revealed no matter who is CIC. Obama, Bush, Clinton......etc. The machine is in control and Trump is just throwing up his middle finger as he leaves office. The cycle continues. 

[homersapien 11,362]

5 hours ago, autigeremt said:

Go jump off a cliff into Jello! The truth will NEVER be revealed no matter who is CIC. Obama, Bush, Clinton......etc. The machine is in control and Trump is just throwing up his middle finger as he leaves office. The cycle continues. 

Hmmmmm..... Jello....

 

Seriously, there's a very strong legal case for charging Trump with obstruction of justice as a result of these pardons.  It clearly closes the circle for Trump's obvious "dangling of pardons" in exchange for keeping witnesses quiet.  

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/trump-continues-flurry-of-pardons-while-complicating-new-covid-relief

The question is what's really best for the country's interest?  Nihilistic attitudes such as yours is what happens when we simply ignore such behavior.  It destroys faith in our democracy. 

That's a pretty steep price to pay just to "move on".

 

[around4ever 4,139]

Who gives a schiff what Adam Schit says. 

[DKW 86 7,419]

Schiff wasted weeks of our lives with what we later learned was just short of nothing. The WSJ concluded that Schiff was basically a congenital liar that the American Public should not trust. 

Sally Yates
Susan Rice
Andrew McCabe
Lorretta Lynch
James Clapper
Ben Rhodes
Samantha Power
All stated under oath that there was nom proof of anything. Schiff knew all this while telling the American people that he had Trump dead in his sites. 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/all-the-adam-schiff-transcripts-11589326164

Now we know why. From the earliest days of the collusion narrative, Mr. Schiff insisted that he had evidence proving the plot. In March 2017 on MSNBC, Mr. Schiff teased that he couldn’t “go into particulars, but there is more than circumstantial evidence now.”

In December 2017 he told CNN that collusion was a fact: “The Russians offered help, the campaign accepted help. The Russians gave help and the President made full use of that help.” In April 2018, Mr. Schiff released his response to Mr. Nunes’s report, stating that its finding of no collusion “was unsupported by the facts and the investigative record.”

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NEWSLETTER SIGN-UP

Opinion: Morning Editorial Report

None of this was true, and Mr. Schiff knew it.

In July 2017, here’s what former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Mr. Schiff and his colleagues:
“I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting/conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election.”

Three months later, former
Obama Attorney General Loretta Lynch agreed that while she’d seen “concerning” information, “I don’t recall anything being briefed up to me.”
Former Deputy AG Sally Yates concurred several weeks later:
“We were at the fact-gathering stage here, not the conclusion stage.”

The same goes for the FBI agents who started the collusion probe in 2016. Most remarkable, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe admitted the bureau’s reason for opening the case was nonsense. Asked in December 2017 why the FBI obtained a secret surveillance warrant on former Trump aide Carter Page, rather than on George Papadopoulos (whose casual conversation with a foreign diplomat was the catalyst for the probe), Mr. McCabe responded: “Papadopoulos’ comment didn’t particularly indicate that he was the person that had had—that was interacting with the Russians.” No one else was either.

On it went, a parade of former Obama officials who declared under oath they’d seen no evidence of collusion or conspiracy— Susan Rice, Ben Rhodes, Samantha Power. Interviews with Trump campaign or Administration officials also yielded no collusion evidence. Mr. Schiff had access to these transcripts even as he claimed he had “ample” proof of collusion and wrote his false report.