Yahoo News Donald Trump goes on pardoning spree granting clemency for governor and former NFL team owner
President Donald Trump has granted clemency for a number of high profile figures, including an ex-NFL club owner convicted over gambling crimes and a state governor jailed for corruption.
Rod Blagojveich, a Democrat governor in Illinois, appeared on President Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice show in 2010 before standing he stood trial.
He was later handed 14 years imprisonment for political corruption, including trying to shake down a children’s hospital, but has now had his sentence commuted.
Edward DeBartolo Jr. was owner of the San Francisco 49ers before he admitted gamlbing related crimes in 1998 and was barred from running the team. He was pardoned on Tuesday.
The President also pardoned Bernie Kerik, a former New York Police Department commissioner who served three years in prison for tax fraud and lying to the White House while he was being interviewed for a job as Homeland Security secretary under George W. Bush.
Also on the receiving end of executive clemency was Michael Milken, a financier who admitted breaking US securities law and served two years in prison in the early 1990s.
Another four people were pardoned by the US leader.
It comes as the US Justice Department is at loggerheads with the Trump administration over the sentencing of the President’s ally Roger Stone.
The whole prosecution team resigned from the case after Attorney General William Barr - a Trump loyalist - overruled their sentencing recommendation.
Stone was convicted in November of a seven-count indictment that accused him of lying to Congress, tampering with a witness and obstructing the House investigation into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to win the 2016 election.
He is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday.
AG Barr's move became public after President Trump called the original sentencing recommendation of seven to nine years "horrible and very unfair."
The President added in a tweet: "Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice!"
Additional reporting by agencies.
