Roger Stone’s supporters are making a pardon pitch everywhere President Donald Trump looks, including Fox News, InfoWars, Twitter, and the White House driveway. Michael Flynn abruptly hired a bombastic lawyer who spouts Trump-friendly theories about FBI duplicity that are widely seen as a pardon play. Paul Manafort has kept himself on Trump’s radar from behind bars by feeding the president’s personal attorney a conspiracy theory that Ukraine, and not Russia, interfered in the 2016 campaign. All believe they may receive clemency because the president has repeatedly been willing to ignore warnings from his advisers of political consequences. Recently, Trump cleared the records of three armed services members accused or convicted of war crimes over the objections of several of his top military brass, Politico reports.
“Like everything else with this president, you can’t look to history for precedent,” said former Trump aide. “If he felt Manafort and Flynn and others were deserving of pardons, he’d just do it.” Trump got involved in the military cases after being lobbied not only by lawmakers but Fox News personalities who spotlighted their stories. In Trump’s White House, few of his top aides see pardons for the likes of Stone, Flynn or Manafort as a good idea, at least not until after Election Day 2020. Stone is scheduled for sentencing Feb. 6.