Trump asserts ‘complete power to pardon’ amid election probe
PRESIDENT Donald Trump on Saturday asserted the “complete power to pardon” relatives, aides and possibly even himself in response to investigations into Russia’s meddling in last year’s election, as he came to the defence of Attorney General Jeff Sessions just days after expressing regret about appointing him.
Trump suggested in a series of early morning messages on Twitter that he had no need to use the pardon power at this point but left the option open. Presidents have the authority to pardon others for federal crimes, but legal scholars debate whether a president can pardon himself. Trump’s use of the word “complete” seemed to suggest he did not see a limit to that authority.
“While all agree the U.S. President has the complete power to pardon, why think of that when only crime so far is LEAKS against us,” he wrote on Twitter. “FAKE NEWS.”
The Washington Post reported in recent days that the president and his advisers had discussed pardons as a special counsel intensifies an investigation into whether associates of Trump and his campaign conspired with Russia to intervene in the 2016 presidential campaign.
Trump also responded on Saturday to an article by the Post reporting that Sessions may have discussed campaign activities and policy with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, last year, despite his public statements to the contrary. In the article, the Post cited intercepted communications between Kislyak and his home office in Moscow. Trump excoriated the newspaper and expressed no concern about his attorney general’s conduct.
“A new INTELLIGENCE LEAK from the Amazon Washington Post, this time against A.G. Jeff Sessions,” Trump wrote. “These illegal leaks, like Comey’s, must stop!”
The president was equating the report in the Post, which is owned by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, to a decision by James Comey, whom Trump fired as FBI director, to leak contents of a memo he wrote describing a conversation he had with the president. Comey has said the memo was unclassified and therefore not illegal to disclose.
The message about the Post story was quickly followed by one assailing the New York Times. “The Failing New York Times foiled U.S. attempt to kill the single most wanted terrorist, Al-Baghdadi,” he wrote. “Their sick agenda over National Security.”
Trump did not specify what he meant, but he may have been referring to a Fox News report, a version of which aired about 25 minutes before the president’s tweet, about comments by a top commander at a conference Friday.
General Tony Thomas, head of the military’s Special Operations Command, said at the Aspen Security Forum that US forces were “particularly close” to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Islamic State, after a 2015 raid recovered information about the militant group.
“That was a very good lead,” Thomas said, according to the Fox report. “Unfortunately, it was leaked in a prominent national newspaper about a week later and that lead went dead.”
Fox reported that the general appeared to be referring to a June 2015 report by the Times that said US intelligence agencies had “extracted valuable information” from the raid. The story reported that US forces had recovered “laptops, cellphones and other materials”, including 4 to 7 terabytes of data. It also said that al-Baghdadi and other Islamic State leaders had used their wives to pass information to one another to avoid electronic surveillance.
The Pentagon raised no objections with the Times before the story was published, and no se- nior US official ever complained publicly about it until now.
The Russian military said last month that it might have killed al-Baghdadi in an airstrike in Syria, but Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Friday that he believed al-Baghdadi was still alive. The White House made no comment when asked for clarification about the president’s tweet.
Trump’s posts came shortly before he flew to Norfolk, Virginia, where he presided over the commissioning of the Gerald R Ford, the nation’s newest aircraft carrier.
The Post reported that Kislyak told superiors in Moscow that he had discussed campaign-related matters, including policy issues important to Moscow, with Sessions during the campaign, contrary to Sessions’ public assertions. Sessions, who was advising Trump on foreign policy at the time, met at least twice with Kislyak and failed to disclose those contacts during his Senate confirmation hearings. After news reports about them were published, he said the meetings were not related to the campaign.
Sarah Isgur Flores, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said in a statement to the Post and other news organisations that she could not comment “on the reliability of what anonymous sources describe in a wholly uncorroborated intelligence intercept”. She added that Sessions “never met with or had any conversations with any Russians or any foreign officials concerning any type of interference with any campaign or election”. She did not deny that Sessions discussed campaign or policy issues more generally with Kislyak.