On Tuesday, President Donald Trump issued 20 pardons and commutations as his term in the White House comes to an end.
George Papadopoulos, a former foreign policy adviser for Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, was pardoned after pleading guilty to making false statements to federal officials as part of the Mueller investigation. Trump also pardoned Alex van der Zwaan, a lawyer who pleaded guilty to the same charge in 2018.
Former California Rep. Duncan Hunter received a pardon after he and his wife, Margaret Hunter, pleaded guilty last year to misusing more than $250,000 of his campaign re-election funds for personal expenses between 2009 and 2016. Former New York Rep. Chris Collins was pardoned after pleading guilty in October 2019 to insider trading.
Also pardoned were Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, Dustin Heard and Nicholas Slaten, four former employees of the military contracting firm Blackwater Worldwide who were sentenced for their roles in a massacre in Iraq in 2007 that resulted in the deaths of 14 unarmed Iraqis.
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