Trump pardons 15, commutes 5 sentences

Former Republican congressmen Duncan Hunter of California and Chris Collins of New York received presidential pardons for financial crimes on Tuesday. President Donald Trump pardoned 13 others, including four former government contractors convicted in the 2007 killings of Iraqi civilians and two people implicated in Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. Despite speculation, the president did not extend clemency to anyone in his family, his attorney Rudy Giuliani, or himself.

Is this normal? George Washington started the tradition of presidents pardoning people on their way out of the White House. On his last day in office in 1797, he pardoned the leaders of the Whiskey Rebellion, a protest against one of the country’s first domestic taxes. It’s not uncommon for presidents to issue hundreds of pardons. So far, Trump has granted 47, three of which were posthumous.

Dig deeper: Read Kyle Ziemnick’s report in The Sift about Trump’s recent pardon of former national security adviser Michael Flynn.