Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz doubts President Donald Trump will pardon former campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
“I can’t imagine what incentive Trump would have to incur the political costs of granting a pardon when Manafort has been neutralized as a witness,” he told Newsweek.
Manafort is currently awaiting sentencing after being found guilty of financial crimes.
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s office has accused Manafort of violating a plea deal by lying to the FBI.
The New York Times reported that one of Manafort’s lawyers had met with attorneys for Trump to brief them on the Russia investigation. Legal experts cited by the newspaper speculated Manafort might be pursuing a presidential pardon.
And Trump said Wednesday, he would not take pardoning Manafort off the table.
Still, Dershowitz said he believes a pardon would be unlikely.
“(Manafort) has become, in many respects, an irrelevancy to the case,” Dershowitz told Newsweek. “So, it’s hard for me to see any reason why the president would grant a pardon unless he felt strongly about the injustice that he feels may have been imposed on Manafort.
“But it’s not a particularly sympathetic case for a pardon at this point.
“I think he’s going to get a long prison term and will probably have to serve it. I don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel for him unless there are things we don’t know.”
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