Speaking to reporters at Mar-a-Lago Tuesday, President Trump was asked if he plans to pardon General Michael Flynn and Roger Stone.
“I haven’t thought about it," President Trump said. "He got hit very hard as did General Flynn and a lot of other people. And now they are finding out it was all a hoax.”
Will President Trump pardon Roger Stone and General Flynn? pic.twitter.com/rgR3IHgmZO
— ALX ???? (@alx) December 24, 2019
While Stone didn't officially work on the Trump campaign, he worked closely with the campaign and a number of political figures in 2016 to get Trump elected. General Flynn worked on the campaign and served as President Trump's National Security Advisor at the beginning of his White House tenure.
The questions about pardons come after the FBI was exposed by Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz for rampant wrong doing while obtaining FISA warrants on the Trump campaign. In a rare public statement, the FISA court called into question the FBI's application process for all warrants. Horowitz also revealed in a lengthy report about the abuse that FBI agents used defensive briefings to gather intelligence on Flynn during the campaign.
"The information loop was contaminated from the start and nobody at the FBI seemed to give a rip. They just wanted to continue the investigation into Trump. A part of that investigation included using defensive briefings for the Trump campaign as a means to collect information relevant to the Russia investigation and Flynn investigation," Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley recently said about the situation during a floor speech. "The FBI decided not to defensively brief the Trump campaign on alleged Russian attempts to interfere with the election – information that served as a predicate to opening the inquiry. But, the FBI did decide to use the briefings as intelligence gathering operations."
"Why wouldn’t the FBI simply give the Trump campaign a heads up on any and all threats? Why hide the ball? We know they did so for prior presidential campaigns. Again, the FBI had a plan and they’d do anything to keep it going," he continued.
Flynn and Stone were caught up in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, which arguably wouldn't have happened if the FBI had never falsified documents and omitted crucial information in order to get a FISA warrant on Carter Page. On the brink of bankruptcy, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. After pleading not guilty, Stone was found guilty by jury on all seven charged counts. This included lying to Congress, witness tampering and more. Both Flynn and Stone are waiting to be sentenced.
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