WASHINGTON (US) – President Donald Trump on Tuesday pardoned George Papadopoulos, a former campaign aide who pleaded guilty in the probe into the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The president also granted pardon to Alex van der Zwaan, 36, the Dutch son-in-law of Russian billionaire German Khan.
Van der Zwaan was sentenced to 30 days in prison and fined $20,000 for lying to US Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators about contacts with an official in Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Their names were included in a wave of pre-Christmas pardons announced by the White House. Trump granted full pardons to 15 people and commuted all or part of the sentences of five others.
The list of pardons and commutations included three former Republican lawmakers. Also pardoned were former US service members – Nicholas Slatten, Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard – who were convicted of killing Iraqi civilians while working as contractors in 2007.
Papadopoulos, 33, was an adviser to Trump’s 2016 campaign. He pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to FBI agents about the timing and significance of his contacts with people who claimed to have ties to top Russian officials.
“The defendant’s crime was serious and caused damage to the government’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election,” a sentencing recommendation memo from then-U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller had said.
He served 12 days of a 14-day sentence in federal prison, then was placed on a 12-month supervised release.
The White House said Papadopoulos was charged with “a process-related crime, one count of making false statements,” as part of the Mueller probe, which Trump had denounced as a witch hunt.
“Today’s pardon helps correct the wrong that Mueller’s team inflicted on so many people,” the White House said.
The pardons were part of a flurry of such actions expected by the outgoing Republican president before Democratic President-elect Joe Biden takes office on Jan. 20. Trump, who has refused to concede, has made unsubstantiated claims of widespread voting fraud and pursued a series of unsuccessful lawsuits to overturn the result.