Remember this?
William Barr, President Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general, said during his confirmation hearing Tuesday that it would be illegal for the president to pardon someone in exchange for that person’s silence.
Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy asked Barr if a president can “offer a pardon in exchange for the witness’s promise not to incriminate the president.”
“No, that would be a crime,” Barr replied.
It’s clear that Roger Stone was threatening to sell Trump down the river and Trump commuted his sentence (almost almost certainly with the promise to pardon him before he leaves office) and Barr was right in the middle of that cover-up, so so much for that promise.
You’ll note that he didn’t say it would be a crime if a president offered a pardon in exchange for a witness revealing information, so I’d imagine Barr has no problem with this either:
Lawyers representing the United States at Julian Assange’s extradition trial in Britain have accepted the claim that the WikiLeaks founder was offered a presidential pardon by a Congressman on the condition that he would help cover up Russia’s involvement in hacking emails from the Democratic National Committee.
Jennifer Robinson, a lawyer, told the court that she had attended a meeting between Assange, then Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, and pro-Trump troll Charles Johnson at Assange’s hide-out, the Ecuadorian embassy in London, on August 15, 2017.
Robinson said the two Americans claimed to be emissaries from Washington and “wanted us to believe they were acting on behalf of the president.” The pair allegedly told Assange that they could help grant him a pardon in exchange for him revealing information about the source of the WikiLeaks information that proved it was not the Russians who hacked Democratic emails.
“They stated that President Trump was aware of and had approved of them coming to meet with Mr. Assange to discuss a proposal—and that they would have an audience with the president to discuss the matter on their return to Washington, D.C.,” Robinson said.
The White House has denied that Trump took part in any such plan.
The claim itself is not new—Assange’s lawyers previewed the allegation in a pre-trial hearing in February—but this is the first time Robinson’s testimony has been heard in full. The WikiLeaks lawyer said Rohrabacher offered Assange the deal a year after emails that damaged Hillary Clinton in the presidential race had been published, when the Russia investigation was gathering pace. The stolen DNC emails posted by WikiLeaks were hacked by Russian operatives.
After Robinson read her testimony in a London courtroom on Friday, lawyers representing the U.S. accepted the witness statement as accurate and confirmed they had no intention of cross-examining the claim. They did dispute, however, that President Donald Trump gave his blessing for the pardon offer.
Sure. That’s all perfectly normal. A US Congressman and and internet troll offering pardons to people involved in sabotaging an election campaign if they lie and say Russia wasn’t involved. There’s nothing to see here at all.
Much of this has been reported before and Mueller certainly knew about it. But it would have been impolite to suggest that the president was dangling pardons. Which he has been doing from the beginning of this mess, in public and without shame. But, you know, no obstruction, no collusion and all that rot.