U.S. Secret Service and Mar-a-Lago security members stand at the entrance of former President Donald Trump’s house in Palm Beach, Fla., Aug. 9.
Photo:
Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg News
The raid on
Mar-a-Lago residence this week was political theater, pure and simple. It was an attempt by the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to tarnish the current president’s political enemy by misusing the power of the federal government.
But while the media feasted on images of agents toting assault rifles outside Mr. Trump’s home, a team of federal prosecutors have been working out of sight to exploit a legally dubious loophole to undermine a core tenet of the Constitution: the president’s authority to grant clemency.
Like every modern president, Mr. Trump used that constitutional power to pardon convicts and commute sentences. He did so 237 times, a low figure compared with recent predecessors. President Obama used the power nearly 2,000 times. President Clinton pardoned or granted clemency to 456 people, including 140 on his last day in office.
Philip Esformes,
a South Florida nursing-home operator, was among those to whom Mr. Trump granted clemency. In 2019 Mr. Esformes was convicted of a massive Medicare fraud scheme and sentenced to 20 years in federal prison despite a magistrate judge’s holding that federal prosecutors had improperly obtained and handled evidence in the case. Judge
Alicia Otazo-Reyes
said she “found the government’s attempt to obfuscate the evidentiary record to be deplorable.”
Mr. Esformes is pursuing an appeal, but in December 2020 Mr. Trump granted clemency and commuted his prison sentence. The reprieve was short-lived. Not long after President Biden’s inauguration, the Justice Department announced that it would attempt to retry Mr. Esformes. In the original trial, the jury failed to…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at RSSOpinion…