Trump's gaslighting former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski wants us to believe Trump wasn't sending a signal clear as day to Flynn and Manafort with his pardon of Dinesh D'Felon.
Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace asked Lewandowski about the recently released memo written by Trump's legal team in January that said the president has the power to pardon anyone he wants, along with Roger Stone's statement to The Washington Post:
Roger Stone, a longtime Trump associate and his former political strategist, who has come under scrutiny by Mueller’s team, said the president sent a clear message.
“It has to be a signal to Mike Flynn and Paul Manafort and even Robert S. Mueller III: Indict people for crimes that don’t pertain to Russian collusion and this is what could happen,” Stone said. “The special counsel has awesome powers, as you know, but the president has even more awesome powers.”
Lewandowski did his best to play a game of whataboutism with Bill Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich, which was quickly dismissed by Wallace, and did his best to downplay what we all know is coming with these pardons:
LEWANDOWDKI: Well Chris, the Constitution is very clear and the power of the president as defined by the Constitution allows him to pardon anybody he wants for federal crimes and no one is talking about the pardon of the heavyweight boxing champion, Jack Johnson that he pardoned. It was something that the Obama administration had the opportunity to do and others, but chose not to.
And so if people want to make this a political issue, the pardoning of Dinesh D'Souza was a one-off, but this president has pardoned, I think, 0.7 percent of the applicants in front of him, which is a far lower number than any previous president at this point, and so look, is he going to pardon the Marc Rich's of the world like the Clintons did? Of course not. Right?
Those are personal friends of the president back then, who had crimes committed against our government that were convicted, and they were pardoned for political expedience.
WALLACE: But Corey, if he were to pardon, and I emphasize, if, he were to pardon Michael Flynn or Paul Manafort, people that could conceivably give evidence against him, that's a lot worse than Marc Rich.
LEWANDOWDKI: Yeah, but Chris, there's absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the president has ever discussed having a pardon for Mike Flynn or Paul Manafort or anybody else for that matter, and with all due respect to Roger Stone, I don't think he has any idea what he's talking about.
This is not a sign. Look, I don't know the president's relationship with Dinesh D'Souza. I don't know... I have never met Dinesh D'Souza, so I don't think it was a strong relationship between the president and him, but he looked at that particular case, saw an injustice that was done, which, by the way Chris, was selective enforcement by the previous administration for a campaign finance violation, the same exact violation I think Roseanne Barr has admitted to, giving too much money to candidates, and we haven't seen a prosecution of her for that.
And so the president pardoned Dinesh D'Souza on a one-off opportunity, but never, ever, ever has this president said, to the best of my knowledge, he's even thinking about a pardon for Mike Flynn or Paul Manafort or anybody else associated with him.
WALLACE: But you are saying that he could do it if he wanted to?
LEWANDOWDKI: Well, yeah, of course under the Constitution he has the legal authority to pardon anybody. That's the power that lies strictly with the president of the United States. There's no question.
