Trump pardons an unindicted co-conspirator: “Unprecedented, historic corruption”

• Editor’s note: President Trump has tweeted more than two dozen times since May 31, 2020, that he is the “LAW & ORDER” [in ALL CAPS] President. However, “Trump has issued a record-low number of pardons and commutations for the modern presidency, a remarkably high percentage of which were granted to a personal or political associate — 31 of 36 by the count of Goldsmith and Lawfare intern Matt Gluck.”

• The Friday night pardon of Trump friend and associate Roger Stone was such blatant Obstruction of Justice, that Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) tweeted accordingly on Saturday morning: “Unprecedented, historic corruption: an American president commutes the sentence of a person convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very president.”

• And the Framers of the US Constitution were so concerned about the pardon power that, “George Mason warned at Virginia’s ratifying convention in 1788 that the president ‘ought not to have the power of pardoning, because he may frequently pardon crimes which were advised by himself.'”

• “Stone was convicted of obstructing Congress, of perjury, of witness tampering — seven felony counts, all involving efforts to cover up his dealings with WikiLeaks and the Trump campaign, including Trump himself, about his efforts to obtain information about Democratic emails hacked by Russians seeking to help Trump win the 2016 election. If Trump did not, as Mason feared, advise Stone’s crimes, he benefited from them,” quoting Ruth Marcus, WaPo.

• Important stories you may have missed last week:

+ Mueller breaks his silence to defend Russia investigation and Stone prosecution

+ Former federal attorney on Roger Stone: Trump basically commuted a co-conspirator’s sentence

+ Since his election, Donald Trump has been a mirror, held up to us Americans and propelling us to ask: How did we get here? [Ed. note: a convergence of all the big issues of our time: health care, race inequality, coronavirus, and political corruption on high.]

+ Coronavirus deaths take a long-expected turn for the worse – while Trump calls record outbreaks “embers” and sidelines task force

+ Steve Schmidt on why many Republican voters are splitting from Trump: ‘He’s a profound threat to the security of the country’

+ The Trump campaign relies on a huge network of QAnon accounts to spread conspiracy theories and disinformation, data shows

+ Coronavirus will undermine trust in government, ‘scarring body and mind’ for decades, research finds

+ Trump’s push to amplify racism unnerves Republicans who have long enabled him

+ Trump ordered officials to find some reason to deny Vindman’s promotion—they found nothing

+ Joint Chiefs head says Confederate leaders committed ‘treason,’ base names have to go

+ [Even Trump’s sycophant] Republican governors who opposed mask mandates start to soften

+ The US Catholic church may be the largest recipient of federal coronavirus aid, with as much as $3.5 billion, AP analysis says

+ Trump DOJ Worked Secretly to Obtain Drugs to Resume Federal Executions

+ Barr ‘decapitates’ third U.S. attorney’s office looking at Trump

+ Trump echoes segregationist George Wallace on race in America

+ Jeff McCausland [retired U.S. Army colonel and former member of the National Security Council]: Trump, Vindman and a military leadership case study that will be taught for years