Donald Trump can not pardon his way out of this Paul Manafort mess
Now that a federal judge has sent Paul Manafort to jail for violating the terms of his house arrest, the mainstream media has once again begun beating the drum about Donald Trump pardoning Manafort and his other associates, and magically getting away with it all. But no matter how many times the media trots out the ratings friendly narrative about Trump-Russia pardons to keep you tuned in, it’s simply not a relevant conversation – because Trump can not pardon his way out of this, and could end up making things far worse for himself if he tries.
If Donald Trump tries to pardon Paul Manafort, most (not all) legal experts believe that the courts would end up striking it down. The legal logic is that pardoning your own alleged co-conspirator, in the hope of preventing that person from cutting a plea deal and testifying against you, would be an illegal attempt at obstructing justice. Even if such pardons were allowed to stand, it still wouldn’t matter.
It’s long been widely reported that New York State has been preparing parallel cases against people like Paul Manafort as an insurance policy. If Trump does somehow manage to pardon Manafort on federal charges, he’ll simply be arrested again and hit with state level charges, which Trump can’t pardon. Manafort would still be looking at spending the rest of his life in prison, and therefore would still be just as motivated to cut a plea deal. It gets even worse for Trump.
If Donald Trump did manage to pardon Paul Manafort, and then Manafort somehow got off the hook on state level charges as well, he would then be facing no legal jeopardy at all. This would force him to testify against Trump, because you can only invoke the Fifth Amendment to protect yourself, not to protect someone else. There’s a reason Trump hasn’t bothered trying to pardon any of his Trump-Russia people: even he understands that it wouldn’t do a bit of good. Maybe Trump will get desperate and try it anyway – but it wouldn’t change anything. The Trump-Russia pardon saga only exists within the confines of cable news discussions.
