By Maggie Haberman and Michael S. Schmidt

WASHINGTON – In an audacious pre-Christmas round of pardons, President Donald Trump granted clemency Tuesday (22) to two people who pleaded guilty in the special counsel’s Russia inquiry, four Blackwater guards convicted in connection with the killing of Iraqi civilians and three corrupt former Republican members of Congress.

It was a remarkable assertion of pardon power by a president who continues to dispute his loss in the election and might well be followed by other pardons in the weeks before he leaves office Jan. 20.

Trump nullified more of the legal consequences of an investigation into his 2016 campaign that he long labelled a hoax. He granted clemency to contractors whose actions in Iraq set off an international uproar and helped turn public opinion further against the war there. And he pardoned three members of his party who had become high-profile examples of public corruption.

The 15 pardons and five commutations were made public by the White House in a statement Tuesday night. They appeared in many cases to have bypassed the traditional Justice Department review process — more than half of the cases did not meet the department’s standards for consideration — and reflected Trump’s long-held grudges about the Russia investigation, his instinct to side with members of the military accused of wrongdoing and his willingness to reward political allies.

Hundreds if not thousands of clemency seekers have been looking for avenues of influence to Trump as he weighs pardons before leaving office. The statement highlighted a number of prominent Republicans and Trump allies who had weighed in on behalf of those granted clemency. Among them were Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general and lobbyist who helped defend Trump during his impeachment, and Pete Hegseth, a Fox News commentator who has pushed for previous pardons of service members.

One of the most notable pardons went to George Papadopoulos, who was a foreign policy adviser to Trump’s 2016 campaign and who pleaded guilty in 2017 to making false statements to federal officials as part of the investigation by the special counsel, Robert Mueller.

Alex van der Zwaan, a lawyer who pleaded guilty to the same charge in 2018 in connection with the special counsel’s inquiry, was also pardoned. Both he and Papadopoulos served short prison sentences.

The Mueller-related pardons are a signal of more to come for people caught up in the investigation, according to people close to the president.

Trump has already pardoned his first national security adviser, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty twice to charges including lying to the FBI. in connection with the Russia inquiry. In July, the president commuted the sentence of Roger Stone, his long-time adviser who was convicted on a series of charges related to the investigation. Both men have maintained their innocence.

Trump’s list of pardons Tuesday included four former US service members who were convicted on charges related to the killing of Iraqi civilians while working as contractors for Blackwater in 2007.

One of them, Nicholas Slatten, had been sentenced to life in prison after the Justice Department had gone to great lengths to prosecute him. Slatten, had been a contractor for the private company Blackwater and was sentenced for his role in the killing of 17 Iraqi civilians in Nisour Square in Baghdad — a massacre that left one of the most lasting stains of the war on the United States. Among those dead were two boys, 8 and 11.

The three former members of Congress pardoned by Trump were Duncan Hunter of California, Chris Collins of New York and Steve Stockman of Texas.

Hunter was set to begin serving an 11-month sentence next month. He pleaded guilty in 2019 to one charge of misusing campaign funds.

Collins, an early supporter of Trump, had been serving a 26-month sentence after pleading guilty in 2019 to charges of making false statements to the FBI and to conspiring to commit securities fraud.

Stockman was convicted in 2018 on charges of fraud and money laundering and had been serving a 10-year sentence. Sidney Powell, the lawyer and election conspiracy theorist whom Trump considered making a White House special counsel to investigate election fraud, argued that he was a candidate for a pardon.

The president also granted full pardons to two former Border Patrol agents whose sentences for their roles in the shooting of a suspected drug trafficker had previously been commuted by President George W. Bush.

Trump’s moves Tuesday support the notion that he has used his pardon power more aggressively than most presidents for personal and political purposes. Under the Constitution, the president is the ultimate emergency brake on the criminal justice system.

A tabulation by the Harvard Law School professor Jack Goldsmith found that of Trump’s 45 pardons or commutations before Tuesday, 88% went to people with personal ties to the president or to people who furthered his political aims.

The pardons “continue Trump’s unprecedented pattern of issuing self-serving pardons and commutations that advance his personal interests, reward friends, seek retribution against enemies or gratify political constituencies,” Goldsmith said Tuesday. “Like his past pardons, most if not all of them appear to be based on insider recommendations rather than normal Justice Department vetting process.”

The pardons of the Blackwater contractors have direct links to two of Trump’s close allies: Erik Prince, the former head of Blackwater, and Prince’s sister Betsy DeVos, the education secretary.

Prince’s own conduct was investigated by the special counsel’s office. During the 2017 transition, Prince planned to meet with a Russia-sanctioned banker in the Seychelles to come up with ways the Russian government and the incoming Trump administration could cooperate. For reasons that remain unclear, the meeting never occurred.

By nullifying the legal consequences of convictions in the Russia inquiry, Trump escalated a long campaign, aided by his departing attorney general, William Barr, to effectively undo Mueller’s investigation, discredit the resulting prosecutions and punish those who instigated it in the first place.

The White House continued to chip away Mueller investigation’s legacy in the statement released Tuesday night. It made a point of saying that the inquiry “found no evidence of collusion in connection with Russia’s attempts to interfere in the election,” and it dismissively referred to Papadopoulos’ crime as “process related”.

-New York Times