Paul Manafort may have been serving a federal prison if Donald Trump hadn’t pardoned him in the last weeks of his presidency. Rather, now that he is free, Trump’s former campaign manager may assist his former boss in returning to national politics. In talks to support the RNC this summer, where Trump will formally be the party’s nominee for president once more, Manafort is involved. With Manafort’s expected involvement, the former president’s political resurgence would be aided by Trump’s newest act of clemency.
More than a dozen people pardoned of their crimes or who had their sentences commuted by Trump have since assisted the former president as he seeks a return to power. Some have donated their considerable wealth to the cause. A handful operate on the periphery of his political operation, promoting Trump’s false conspiracies about the 2020 election, like former top adviser Steve Bannon.
Others are outspoken backers with considerable followings, such as rapper Kodak Black, conservative writer and Trump biographer Conrad Black, and Phil Lyman, a former US representative now running for Utah governor.
One GOP consultant who received a pardon, John Tate, made more than $70,000 last year consulting for Trump’s presidential campaign, federal records show.
“It’s yet another wrinkle in an already very complicated legal and political landscape for Trump’s 2024 presidential bid,” said Jeffrey Crouch, an expert on executive clemency at American University.
Trump’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
As he seeks another four years in office, Trump is once again promising extraordinary use of his pardon powers. He has vowed to free those arrested in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol – potentially hundreds of people serving prison sentences – as he makes denialism of the bloody riots central to his campaign.
Manafort’s Return: Pardons Shape Trump’s Political Comeback
Manafort, the lobbyist who spearheaded Trump’s first presidential campaign, was one of the most well-known figures to be arrested as part of special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. He was found guilty in 2018 of pocketing millions of dollars from political consultancy services in Ukraine, not paying taxes on them, and defrauding the government and banks. He received additional punishment later on for impeding the administration of justice.
After receiving a 7.5-year prison sentence in 2019, Manafort was placed under home confinement in April 2020 as a result of the coronavirus epidemic. In December, one month following his defeat in the race for reelection, Trump pardoned Manafort.
Trump issued 237 acts of clemency during his four-year term – the majority coming after the 2020 election, including 143 during his last hours in office. Though Trump issued fewer pardons than many of his modern predecessors, when he did, he largely operated outside the Office of the Pardon Attorney, a nonpartisan agency inside the Department of Justice that assesses requests for executive clemency.
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Past presidents have certainly flexed their considerable clemency authority to benefit political allies and not without controversy. But even against that history, Trump’s pardons stood out, said Crouch.
What is unusual is how many of Trump’s clemency grants went to well-known Republicans, military figures, and celebrities rather than average, unknown people,” he said.
Without Trump’s intervention, it’s possible all four could have spent the 2024 election cycle serving federal punishments. Stone in 2020 was sentenced to three years in prison and two years of supervised release. Trump pardoned Bannon before he went to trial, but his three co-defendants last year received prison sentences ranging from three to five years. Flynn pleaded guilty but was never sentenced and faced a maximum of five years in prison.
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Instead, they’re now key players in the effort to reelect Trump, emerging as some of his most ardent defenders to their sizable audiences.
And then there’s disgraced former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a former contestant of Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice reality television show who was freed by the former president in early 2020. Blagojevich recently defended Trump’s courtroom antics in an interview with Politico, calling the former president “brave” while lauding his “chutzpah.”
Many pardoned by Trump had long ago served their time and are now aiding Trump from the other side of their amnesty.
Additionally, Charles Kushner, the father of Trump’s son-in-law, was effectively cleared of all charges after he entered a guilty plea to 16 counts of tax evasion, one count of retaliation against a federal witness—his brother-in-law—and one count of lying to the Federal Election Commission in the middle of the 2000s.
There is already mystery surrounding Peter Navarro’s whereabouts, another Trump friend. Navarro, a former Trump staffer in the White House, was recently sent to federal jail for his refusal to cooperate with a subpoena from the House Select Committee, which was looking into the attack on January 6. On Tuesday, Trump remained silent when asked if he would pardon Navarro should he return to the White House.
But his praise for his former aide echoed words he used to describe Manafort.
“Good man. He was treated very unfairly,” Trump said.
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