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The Biden administration has spent the past two years reversing nearly every decision, executive order, or regulation that Donald Trump made on his behalf. This is not surprising in issues such as climate change, gender identity, and immigration that largely align with partisan lines. After all, elections have consequences. But Biden’s team has now taken a crusade to erase Trump’s legacy at absurd lengths, until it nullifies one of Trump’s lenient decisions.
Nowhere does the president have more power than when granting pardons or handing out prison sentences. The president will look to a lenient process to right the prosecution’s wrongs, as President Trump did in the case of Philip Esform. Now the Department of Justice is trying to revoke his pardon.
Esformes was indicted on 32 counts related to his healthcare business. During the trial, the magistrate strongly criticized the prosecutor’s unethical move to reveal and exploit information clearly covered by attorney-client privilege.
Winning a criminal case is easy if you know your opponent’s strategy. And that’s exactly what happened. Noting that the Justice Department blatantly broke the rules and tried to cover it up, the magistrate characterized the prosecutor’s conduct as “deplorable.” Surprisingly, the magistrate’s findings were ignored by the judge.
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The Justice Department was able to use its advantage of having illegal insider information to convict Esform on 20 counts. However, the jury was unable to reach a verdict on her six charges. Philip Esforms was then sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Religious groups brought the Esformes case to Trump’s attention. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft was certainly not someone that could be characterized as “criminally vulnerable,” but prosecutorial misconduct in the Esforms trial was “the most abusive” he had ever seen. “It is targeted.”
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Trump was asked to pardon Esforms on the recommendation of many respected lawyers, including former Attorney General Edwin Mies, Alberto Gonzalez, Michael Mukassy and former Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson. I was. These former law enforcement officers saw prosecutorial misconduct as fundamentally tainting Esform’s beliefs.
To right what was wrong, Trump commuted Philip Esform’s sentence to the time it was served.
The Justice Department, still frustrated by criticism of prosecutorial misconduct two years later, is working hard to overturn President Trump’s lenient decision. We plan to review Esformes for count of action.
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Prosecutors don’t like the president exercising lenient powers. They see amnesty as an unspoken criticism of their work. That was exactly the case with Esformes. This is an extraordinary move by a government lawyer whose pride has been hurt. No prosecutor in American history has tried to overturn a presidential change in this way.
In fact, Trump’s grant of the pardon was meant to end the government’s indictment of Philip Esform, according to those who understand the process. With a broader view of the
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By retrying Esformes, DOJ partisan operatives may further erode the legacy of the previous administration. They were able to rewrite the history of the case to cover up any wrongdoing identified by the magistrate. And it could set a precedent that fundamentally undermines the generous powers of future presidents.
The Justice Department’s move is bold. But to those who believe in a strong chief executive, this represents a startling attempt to undermine the president’s power to review criminal cases and deal with injustice, zeal, and other misjudgments. .
David Safabian is General Counsel and Senior Vice President of the Conservative Political Action Coalition.
