Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said Sunday that it would be a “terrible mistake” for President Trump to pardon former campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
“I think it would be a terrible mistake if he did that,” Rubio told ABC’s “This Week” when asked about Trump’s comments that he would not take a pardon for Manafort off the table, saying it could “trigger a debate as to whether pardon powers should be amended.”
{mosads}”Pardons should be used judiciously,” Rubio said. “They’re used for cases of extraordinary circumstances and I just haven’t heard that the White House is thinking about doing it.”
“I know he hasn’t ruled it out, but I haven’t heard anyone say, we’re thinking about doing it.”
“I don’t believe that any pardons should be used with a relation to these particular cases, frankly,” Rubio added.
“Not only does it not pass the smell test, I think it undermines the reason that we have presidential pardons in the first place,” he said.
Rubio made similar comments on CNN the same morning, calling it a “huge political mistake.”
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s office said in a heavily redacted filing Friday that Manafort lied to prosecutors about his contacts with the White House and an associate with suspected ties to Russian intelligence after signing a plea agreement with Mueller’s office.
The filing emerged more than a week after prosecutors accused Manafort of “committing federal crimes by lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the special counsel’s office on a variety of subject matters” in breach of his plea agreement.