President Trump is shocked — shocked, I tell you — that anybody would ask him about pardoning Michael Cohen, his longtime attorney, who faces a serious criminal investigation that culminated in his home and office being raided two weeks ago.
“Stupid question,” Trump shot back Tuesday when ABC News’s Jonathan Karl asked him whether a pardon was on the table. According to the pool report, the president “glared” at Karl for having the gall to ask it.
But Trump protests way too much. There is plenty of reason to believe that a pardon could be on his mind.
The discussions came as the special counsel was building cases against both men, and they raise questions about whether the lawyer, John Dowd, who resigned last week, was offering pardons to influence their decisions about whether to plead guilty and cooperate in the investigation.
…
Mr. Dowd’s conversation with Mr. Flynn’s lawyer, Robert K. Kelner, occurred sometime after Mr. Dowd took over last summer as the president’s personal lawyer, at a time when a grand jury was hearing evidence against Mr. Flynn on a range of potential crimes. Mr. Flynn, who served as Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser, agreed in late November to cooperate with the special counsel’s investigation. He pleaded guilty in December to lying to the F.B.I. about his conversations with the Russian ambassador and received favorable sentencing terms.
Trump has also shown a clear interest in his pardon power as it relates to special counsel Robert S. Mueller’s probe. In July, The Washington Post reported that he had asked, in the context of the investigation, whether he had the power to pardon aides, family and even himself.
Trump responded to that report by tweeting that his pardon power was absolute — while playing down the possibility of offering pardons.
While all agree the U. S. President has the complete power to pardon, why think of that when only crime so far is LEAKS against us.FAKE NEWS
All of this suggests that pardons have been on Trump’s mind, at least to some degree. We don’t know whether Dowd was acting on Trump’s authority when he floated the idea of pardons for both Flynn and Manafort. But as I wrote at the time, it’s almost worse if Trump didn’t know about Dowd floating the possibility — because that would be a clear sign that it was intended to influence their cooperation with Mueller’s team. More likely, it seems, Trump and Dowd had been discussing pardons to some degree and Dowd was dangling that possibility in front of Flynn and Manafort. And, at the very least, this is something Trump’s attorneys have been examining.
Cohen finds himself in a very similar situation. Like Manafort, who was also raided, it’s pretty likely that this ends with some kind of criminal charges. The Cohen raid, in fact, was even more extraordinary than Manafort’s, given that Cohen serves (nominally) as Trump’s attorney and attorney-client-privilege issues are at play. Flynn also seemed to be in a heap of trouble given his misstatements about discussing sanctions with the Russian ambassador during the presidential transition period, but it wasn’t clear that he would actually be charged.
Given Cohen’s clear legal jeopardy, a president and a legal team that have shown an interest in pardoning figures in the Mueller probe would be pretty Pollyannaish not to start asking whether one should be invoked in this case. And you can rest assured that it has crossed their minds.
Still, the killings raised fears about Toronto’s vulnerability to a terrorist attack. The marauding van evoked memories of deadly vehicle rampages carried out by extremists in a number of major Western cities in recent years, including New York, London, Stockholm, Berlin, Barcelona and Nice, France.
At his court hearing Tuesday, asked by the judge, Stephen Weisberg, whether he understood the conditions of a court order not to contact any survivors, Mr. Minassian replied in a clear and loud voice, “Yes.”
He was dressed in a white jumpsuit with his hands cuffed behind his back. Seven uniformed police officers surrounded him in the hearing room.
Mr. Minassian was represented at the hearing by a court-appointed lawyer with whom he had an extended, whispered conversation from a prisoners box.
He is being held without bail.
A man who appeared to be Mr. Minassian’s father attended the hearing but offered no comment to reporters other than saying he had not spoken with him.
Witnesses and amateur cellphone videos that captured the rampage and the suspect’s arrest showed a horrific scene that traumatized Toronto, a showcase Canadian metropolis.
PhotoVic Minassian, the father of the suspect, Alek Minassian, attended a court hearing on Tuesday but offered no comment to reporters other than saying he had not spoken with his son. Credit
Lars Hagberg/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
David Alce, a 53-year-old network engineer, was waiting at a traffic light at Yonge Street and Finch Avenue on his way to the park to enjoy a sunny day off when he saw a white van careening across the intersection.
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
Around 1:20 p.m., Mr. Alce said, his initial disbelief turned to shock and then horror as the speeding van cut through the intersection, mounted the curb and began to swerve and mow people down.
Mr. Alce saw the driver ram four people, he said, and then another four. One woman was thrown several feet into the air. A man was hit midsection before falling. Another was smashed in the head. The van made a roaring sound.
Newsletter Sign Up
Continue reading the main story
Thank you for subscribing.
An error has occurred. Please try again later.
You are already subscribed to this email.
View all New York Times newsletters.
See Sample
Manage Email Preferences
Not you?
Privacy Policy
Opt out or contact us anytime
“At first I thought the driver was having a heart attack before I realized what was happening,” Mr. Alce said.
“I watched the car for a good two blocks,” he said. “I didn’t see the driver’s face. There was a loud bang as he hit the curb. There was confusion. Some people tended to the wounded. Others were on their cellphones. One woman was sobbing uncontrollably on the corner.”
Mr. Alce, for his part, went to see whether could help, rolling over some of the victims to see whether they were alive and administering CPR.
Mr. Alce, an Ottawa native, said he moved to Toronto about 20 years ago, drawn by the city’s peaceful atmosphere and lack of crime. He said the attack had destroyed the innocence of a multicultural, humanistic city.
“This is the first time I have seen something this horrific,” he said. “It is a loss of innocence. Toronto is peaceful. That is why I love it here.”
Other Torontonians, still in shock, were adamant that the city would quickly recover. On Tuesday morning, commuters heading to work were hunched over newspapers. “Carnage in Toronto,” said the front-page headline of The Globe and Mail.
As well-wishers continued to gather at an impromptu memorial near the scene of the attack, hazardous material cleanup teams wearing respirators and jump suits were using absorbent powder to remove bloodstains from the sidewalk.
Nancy Brooks, 56, who works in human resources for the Ontario government, often jogs through the area where the episode occurred. She said that in Canada, which prides itself on diversity and a spirit of tolerance, it was particularly jarring.
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
“This is not something that happens here,” she said. “We always think we are insulated from this kind of thing. We like to think we are like Switzerland.”
