Can President Trump just cut the sentence to time served?
“If I were representing Manafort, I would consider asking for a commutation, not a pardon. In a commutation, the president can reduce the sentence down to time served and spare the person any further prison time on the offense. Yet, the convictions stand.”
McCarthy refers to that possibility. It keeps the conviction and under NYS law makes Vance’s indictment double jeopardy as it proceeds from the exact same crime he was convicted for by Mueller, and NYS’s own law prevludes that.
He can commute the sentence, which would leave the conviction — in fact, if Trump was going to do anything, that is what I would expect him to do, not pardon him, since the crimes were real.
And commutation of sentence wouldn’t allow the state to re-charge the crimes.
I think Bush commuted the sentence of Libby, rather than pardoning him.
Note Manafort is at an age where having a conviction on his record probably won’t matter anymore.
Can President Trump just cut the sentence to time served?
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Good idea! I think that’s called “commuting the sentence”.
Hopefully, that would frustrate the evil Democrats...