Trump announces a blitz of pardons and commutations

President Donald Trump announced a host of pardons and commutations on Tuesday, ranging from Rod Blagojevich, the former Illinois governor jailed on corruption charges, to Bernie Kerik, the former New York police commissioner.

"Yes, we have commuted the sentence of Rod Blagojevich. He served eight years in jail, a long time," Trump told reporters before boarding Air Force One en route to Los Angeles.

The commutation was one of a flurry of legal actions Trump took Tuesday, including pardons for Kerik, financier Michael Milken and former San Francisco 49ers owner Edward DeBartolo Jr. And they came days before the scheduled sentencing of Roger Stone in federal court in D.C., amid wide speculation that the president might pardon his former longtime adviser.

Stone was at the center of last week's drama inside the Justice Department, with four career prosecutors quitting his case after Attorney General William Barr overruled their sentencing recommendation.

Stone's looming fate has drawn Trump's condemnation in recent weeks, with the president calling it a "miscarriage of justice!" on Twitter and excoriating the prosecutors and judge for their handling of the case. On Tuesday, he appeared to echo a Fox News contributor’s call for a new trial but told reporters that he “hadn’t given it any thought” when asked whether a pardon was in the works.

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