Manafort, Stone, Kushner pardoned
Also four men convicted in Iraq killings
U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday pardoned his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, associate Roger Stone and Charles Kushner, a real estate developer and the father of Trump's son-in-law.
Manafort, 70, was convicted as part of the special counsel probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election. The pardon spares the longtime Republican operative from serving the bulk of his 7-1/2-year prison term.
Trump had earlier commuted the sentence of Stone, who was convicted of lying under oath to lawmakers.
Kushner pleaded guilty in 2004 to 18 counts of tax evasion, witness tampering and making unlawful campaign donations. He was sentenced to two years in prison.
It was the second wave of pardons Trump has issued in two days and came just after he arrived in Palm Beach, Fla., for Christmas.
On Tuesday, Trump pardoned four U.S. security contractors convicted in the 2007 killing of 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians in Baghdad.
A White House statement said the pardons were “broadly supported by the public,” naming Fox News host Pete Hegseth and several conservative lawmakers.
One of the contractors, Nicholas Slatten, has been serving a life sentence for first-degree murder. Three others — Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard — were sentenced to between 12 and 15 years for manslaughter.
The four men, all veterans, worked for the now-defunct Blackwater Worldwide security firm, which had been contracted by the State Department to provide protection for U.S. diplomats in Iraq.
Investigators for the military and the FBI described the shootings, in which the contractors unleashed a blaze of gunfire and grenade explosions in a busy Baghdad square, as unprovoked and unjustified. Federal prosecutors said that many of the victims, including women and children, some with their hands in the air, “were shot inside of civilian vehicles while attempting to flee.”
The incident led to outcries in Iraq and the U.S. that private contractors — many of them former military personnel — were unsupervised and given unaccountable power in war zones.