Former AG Whitaker. Overturning Trump Pardon ‘Abuse of Power’.
Former Attorney General Matthew Whitaker told Newsmax on Tuesday that the administration of Joe Biden’s attempt to retry Philip Esformes, who former President Donald Trump pardoned, is “an abuse of power.”
“This administration appears to not really be grounded by the Constitution,” Whitaker said Tuesday on “Wake Up America.” “The president’s ability to pardon folks is absolute under the Constitution. In this case, President Trump issued a pardon, commuted Mr. Esformes’ sentence, and now this administration wants to go back and re-prosecute the same case and put him back in jail, if they can, and it’s an outrageous abuse of power.”
Esformes, a nursing home owner, was convicted in 2019 in a $1.3 billion Medicare fraud scheme and sentenced to 20 years in prison, CNBC reported in January.
Trump commuted his sentence in 2020, but Esformes lost his appeal on prosecutorial misconduct earlier this year, which could allow him to be retried, the report said.
Whitaker said the Department of Justice under Biden has “gone berserk” with the case and that a presidential pardon should have ended the prosecution.
“Once the president has pardoned somebody for certain types of behavior, that’s usually what it should end in,” Whitaker said. “I can’t find an example where an administration is going back and prosecuted someone for the same crime. This is an extraordinary case. Obviously, it is personal for the prosecutors, which it should never be.”
Whitaker said the main motivation for trying for a retrial seems to be driven by the fact that the Biden administration wants the pardon overturned just because Trump issued it.
Whitaker also said Biden’s surprise visit to Ukraine on Monday to mark the first anniversary this week of Russia’s invasion into that country should have come sooner.
“Biden should have gone there well before the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion,” Whitaker said. “I think he is searching for a way, and a tone, to make this war compelling and interesting to the American people.”
Who else came out? Former AG’S John Ashcroft, Edwin Meese, Michael Mukasey, and Alberto Gonzales endorsed Esformes’ appeal before clemency was granted.
