George Papadopoulos just forced the issue and screwed up Donald Trump’s pardon scheme
Donald Trump’s strategy all along has been to try to prevent his own co-conspirators from cutting plea deals against him by tricking them into believing he’ll pardon them, only to end up not pardoning them. Although his plan hasn’t worked particularly well for him, he’s still counting on some of his desperate former advisers to take the bait. But now George Papadopoulos has just forced the pardon issue, and it’s backed immediately Trump into a no-win corner.
George Papadopoulos cut a plea deal with Robert Mueller nearly a year ago, and has been cooperating ever since. Mueller finally filed court papers two weeks ago, referring Papadopoulos for sentencing. So now Papadopoulos is about to go to prison. After Trump began tweeting yesterday about pardoning himself, Simona Mangiante Papadopoulos decided that she wants Trump to pardon her husband as well. She went on Fox News today and asked Trump to do precisely that.
If Trump had any intention of pardoning his former advisers, he’d have pardoned Michael Flynn and Rick Gates before they cut plea deals and testified against him. At this point he would gain nothing by pardoning them; that window already opened and closed. So we know that Trump isn’t going to pardon the likes of Roger Stone or Michael Cohen either. Trump is obviously saving his Trump-Russia pardons for himself and his family. He doesn’t want to risk screwing that up by pardoning other Trump-Russia people, and giving the courts the opportunity to step in and rule that he can’t pardon anyone in the scandal.
Donald Trump now has to make a choice: go ahead and pardon George Papadopoulos, or let him rot in prison. If Trump pardons Papadopoulos, it’ll prompt every other Trump-Russia player to immediately demand a pardon as well, and it’ll initiate a court battle over whether Trump can in fact pardon anyone in his own criminal scandal. If Trump refuses to pardon Papadopoulos, after Papadopoulos’ wife just forced the issue on Fox News, it’ll send a clear message to the other Trump-Russia players who are trying to decide whether to cut a plea deal: there are no pardons coming.
