Why Paul Manafort would have reason to hope for a Trump pardon

(This article was first published on CNN’s website on August 17, 2018.)

Bernadette Meyler 1
Professor Bernadette Meyler

At Paul Manafort’s trial, his lawyers took the unusual step of not calling any witnesses for the defense, setting off speculation that Manafort is relying on the prospect of a presidential pardon. Friday morning, President Trump refused to address whether or not he would take such a step but he did say, “he happens to be a very good person. I think it’s very sad what they’ve done to Paul Manafort.”

President Trump’s use of the pardon power since he took office makes a pardon for Manafort, should he be convicted, quite plausible, but equally troubling. The jury has completed its second day of deliberations without a verdict in what is the first of the two trials Manafort is facing.

Unlike recent presidents, President Trump has avoided the Department of Justice’s mechanism for vetting pardons and has explicitly injected politics into the process. American history shows that political pardons aren’t necessarily a problem. But the political message sent by President Trump’s pardons is. (Continue reading this article on CNN’s opinion page here.)

Bernadette Meyler is Carl and Sheila Spaeth Professor of Law and Associate Dean of Curriculum at Stanford Law School and the author of Theaters of Pardoning (forthcoming 2019, Cornell University Press) and New Directions in Law and Literature (Oxford University Press, 2017). She holds a J.D. from Stanford Law School and a Ph.D. in English from UC, Irvine. Before entering legal academia, she clerked for Judge Robert Katzmann, now Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.