The source is New York Times anal-ysis, so at least you know from where it is coming:
"In commuting Stone’s sentence, Trump goes where Nixon was not willing" by Peter Baker New York Times, July 11, 2020
WASHINGTON — President Trump has said he learned lessons from President Richard Nixon’s fall from grace, but in using the power of his office to keep his friend and adviser Roger Stone out of prison, he has now crossed a line that even Nixon in the depths of Watergate dared not cross.
For months, some of Trump’s senior White House advisers warned him that it would be politically self-destructive if not ethically inappropriate to use his clemency power to help Stone, who was convicted of lying to protect the president, but in casting aside their counsel Friday, Trump indulged his own sense of grievance over precedent and restraint to reward an ally for his silence.
Democrats immediately condemned the commutation of Stone’s 40-month prison term and vowed to investigate, just as Trump’s advisers had predicted they would. Still, Trump’s action was too much even for some Republican critics of the president, who called it an abuse of power intended to subvert justice on his own behalf.
That would be Mitt Romney of Utah, and just change parties already!
While Trump has enthusiastically used his clemency power to help political allies and others with connections to his White House, he had until now deferred to advisers urging him not to use it for Stone or others caught up in investigations of the president’s campaign ties to Russia, recognizing that it would be politically explosive, but with Stone due to report to prison in the next few days, Trump opted not to wait any longer and the commutation could be a test case for what he could do next. If he judges that the political cost was not too high, he may be emboldened to help out others, although it may not be necessary since Manafort has now been released early and Trump’s Justice Department has moved to drop the case against Flynn even though he pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.
Flynn was entrapped and it's rather interesting who Trump has surrounded himself with.
While most elected Republicans remained silent about Stone’s commutation, some of the president’s staunch supporters who have likewise attacked the legitimacy of the underlying investigations into Trump and his associates cheered him on.
That would be Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee that never gets to the bottom of anything.
Other presidents have also generated blowback through disputed pardons, including some involving people close to them.
Just days before the 1992 election, Lawrence Walsh, the independent counsel investigating the Iran-Contra affair, filed a new indictment against Caspar Weinberger, the former former defense secretary, that made public notes contradicting President George H.W. Bush’s account of his involvement. Bush’s team considered that a dirty trick by Walsh intended to influence the election, and indeed the president was defeated days later.
Bush responded the next month to what he considered an illegitimate prosecution by pardoning Weinberger and five others in the investigation on Christmas Eve, prompting Walsh to complain that “the Iran-contra coverup, which has continued for more than six years, has now been completed.”
With the help of Bill Barr, so....
His successor, President Bill Clinton, waited until the final hours of his tenure in January 2001 to issue a raft of more than 175 pardons or commutations, including for his own half brother Roger Clinton, the financier Marc Rich, and several former administration officials.
Pre$$ cuts Clinton a pass on that.
Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor and former top Justice Department official under President George W. Bush, said those cases could be seen as parallels to Stone’s commutation but pointed to the larger pattern under Trump. In 31 of 36 pardons or commutations that Trump has issued, the act advanced the president’s political goals or benefited someone he had a personal connection to, whose case had been brought to his attention by television or was someone he admired for their celebrity.
“This has happened before in a way,” Goldsmith said, “but there has been nothing like Trump from a systematic perspective.”
One president who dared not use his pardon power to help his friends was Nixon, although not for lack of thinking about it. Nixon’s associates paid hush money and dangled the prospect of executive clemency to the Watergate burglars to buy their silence, but that was off the table once the Watergate story broke open.
Time to get a room.
Likewise, Nixon secretly promised a pardon to H.R. Haldeman, his chief of staff, on the day after Senate hearings opened, but he never followed through.....
--more--"
Also see:
Mueller defends Russia probe, says Stone remains a felon
Oh, our poor, persecuted president who has been swift-boated.
Just keep the checks coming, huh?
