Reporters just uncovered a backroom scheme by Trump to pardon key witnesses in Mueller’s Russia investigation

It seems like hardly a day goes by without some new report of stunning corruption or barely concealed criminality emerging about the Trump administration. Like clockwork, the pile of clear ethics violations grows higher and higher, and it’s only a matter of time before the whole thing comes crashing down and destroys this disastrous regime once and for all.

Now, The New York Times reports that in the summer of 2017 an attorney working for President Trump contacted attorneys representing his former Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort and disgraced former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn to discuss the possibility of presidential pardons for their crimes.

Flynn has pleaded guilty making false statements to the FBI. Manafort has pleaded guilty to numerous crimes including fraud and conspiracy against the United States and has already voided his plea deal by lying to investigators.

“The discussions raised questions about whether the president was willing to offer pardons to influence their decisions about whether to plead guilty and cooperate in the Mueller investigation,” reports The Times.

The fact that the administration even entertained the idea of extending pardons to two obviously guilty men — with Manafort in particular seeming by all indications to be a vile, lifelong criminal — shows just how desperate Trump was and presumably still remains to save himself from the Mueller investigation.

If the president was worried about what Flynn and Manafort might tell the Special Counsel, it seems a safe presumption that they knew some damning things about the president himself, possibly about collusion with the Russian Federation to steal the 2016 election. With reports that Mueller will soon conclude his probe and release his findings, it’s only a matter of time before we finally find out the whole truth. Judging by Trump’s repeated suspicious behavior, he’s terrified of that fact.

Natalie Dickinson

Natalie is a staff writer for the Washington Press. She graduated from Oberlin College in 2010 and has been freelance blogging and writing for progressive outlets ever since.