Trump could have saved allies after 2020 shenanigans — and 'no one' knows why he didn't
Prior to leaving office, Donald Trump's allies were asking for pardons for things they did on or around the 2020 election, but he never jumped in to help before leaving office on Jan. 20, 2021.
Now that lawyers Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, and other campaign aides and White House advisers are facing legal jeopardy, the question is coming up again. In fact, a number of Republican lawmakers asked for preemptive pardons, and it has never been explained why.
A documentary film crew following Roger Stone, the long-time Trump ally, showed him bailing out of Washington, D.C. when it became clear he wasn't going to be involved in the rally. Stone later asked for a pardon too.
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"So he knows that his gambit is unconstitutional and it violates the Electoral Count Act and he committed crimes before he seeks a pardon. He seems to be in deep doo-doo legally," said MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace in a panel discussion Wednesday.
New York Times reporter Glenn Thrush joked that "deep doo-doo" is a legal term, though he wasn't certain about the Latin.
"I think all you need to know is that, I believe, excerpts from — I could be wrong about this, I've read a lot of indictments over the past couple of weeks," he continued, recalling one of John Eastman's emails in Jack Smith's indictment. "And you even saw it in the courtroom on Monday, with John Lauro, Trump's attorney, essentially making the same kind of argument that you hear them make on cable TV? That they are being persecuted. So, they are appearing to be entirely convinced that making this larger political argument, whether it extends as far as the notion of Trump being re-elected and issuing a new set of pardons or influencing a jury pool perhaps. ... But I'm telling you, we've seen in court after court, judges are not accepting these arguments."
Wallace asked why Trump didn't pardon himself along with his co-conspirators.
"That is a really good question. I've read a lot about this and no one has an answer for that," confessed Thrush. "He could have done that. I think he probably didn't realize the extent of the trouble that he was in. I don't think, and I know this having spoken with people in his orbit, I don't think he thought the Justice Department would go after him. I think there was a general sense that he was going to be able to operate as he has in the past, being able to sort of get by without having these really big confrontations with the criminal justice system."
Former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade explained that it's the way that Trump breaks the law, openly and transparently. So, since it was done out in the open it must not mean he did anything wrong.
"I think it is part of the authoritarian playbook of showing, I'm above the law and I'm untouchable, and giving himself a pardon is an admission of guilt," McQuade said.
See their full conversation in the video below or click here.
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