“Drain the Swamp” — a promise to clean up Washington politics of corruption and insider influence. So strict was his avowed purity that he presided over regular chants of “Lock her up!” aimed at his opponent, Hillary Clinton, for the infraction of using a personal email account for public business.
His departures in practice from that proclaimed principle have been widely remarked — from appointing
lobbyists to his administration, to putting his own children in key government positions and allowing them to
trade on his position for business gains, even to having
members of his administration use private email accounts for public business.
But in signalling the embrace of murky swampland politics, Tuesday’s use of presidential pardon and clemency power to release one of the most notorious swamp rats from jail stood out.
“We have commuted the sentence of Rod Blagojevich, he served eight years in jail,” Trump
told reporters. “That’s a long time.”
Donald Trump’s may using his presidential pardon power to pave the way to pardon his own cronies — Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, and Roger Stone.
www.thestar.com