I usually don’t read Trump’s tweets because I don’t enjoy being lied to. But Tierney Sneed at TalkingPointsMemo just made a good point concerning his latest tweet about Paul Manafort:
Notice that he said “tough sentence for Paul Manafort.”
Only, as you surely know, Paul Manafort was not sentenced today. He hasn’t even been tried yet. He has one case coming up in July and the other in September. He was jailed today because of revocation of his bail agreement, stemming from his witness-tampering.
Now, couple that with the last two words, “Very unfair!”
Other people, besides myself, have conjectured that Trump has turned pardon-crazy lately, so that he can just conveniently throw Manafort (and Cohen) into his long list, and claim he only pardons people he feels were treated “unfairly.”
From TPM:
Trump’s tweet also comes after he’s issued a series of high-profile pardons, some for prosecutions he’s claimed were “unfair.” He used similar language when announcing his pardon of conservative activist Dinseh D’Souza, who pleaded guilty to violating federal campaign finance laws in 2014, as well as for Vice President Dick Cheney’s aide Scooter Libby, who was convicted of perjury in 2007 as part of special prosecutor investigation into the Valerie Plame leak.
If Trump is planning on pre-pardoning Manafort, it would make perfect sense to sway (dumber) Americans into thinking Paul had already been tried and “sentenced,” and that his sentence was “unfair.” Don’t believe people would swallow this? Take a quick glance at a FoxNews comment section.
So, in pre-pardoning Manafort, the trials would no longer be necessary, anything we would have learnt FROM those trials would never be known. Same goes for Cohen, if I’m not mistaken.
Not to mention eliminating the threat of either of them “flipping.”
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Trump just may be craven enough, stupid enough, and/or scared enough to try this out.
Or are Tierney and I just being ridiculous?