Former New York Gov. David Paterson, a Democrat, said that if he had the power, he would have wanted President Biden to consider pardoning President Donald Trump for his hush money conviction.
Patterson, Talk on Sunday Appearing on 77 WABC Radio’s “The Cats Roundtable,” Cats echoed Trump’s complaints that the case was “rigged.”
“There are a lot of things wrong with this trial,” Patterson said. “Some of the people involved worked in the White House and somehow ended up in the Manhattan district attorney’s office.
“When you add it all up, it looks exactly as the former president described it,” the top Democrat told host John Catsimatidis.
While a president cannot pardon someone who has committed a state crime, such as the felony offense involving falsifying business records for which Trump was convicted in a Manhattan court last week, Paterson said if the commander in chief could do so, he should have considered it in this case.
“As a leader, if you’re willing to put yourself at the center of bitterness and controversy, you’re going to be attacked on both sides,” the former governor said, referring to President Gerald Ford’s pardon of former President Richard Nixon following the Watergate scandal in 1974.
“But in a few years, they’re going to look back and look up to you,” Patterson said.
Trump also faces federal charges for the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol and for transferring national security documents to Mar-a-Lago, both of which would make him eligible for pardon if convicted.
Patterson said Biden should be “really careful” about boasting, especially with the president’s son, Hunter Biden, currently on trial.
Follow the latest on Donald Trump’s guilty verdict in hush money trial
Hunter goes on trial in Delaware on Monday on three federal charges alleging he made false statements on federal drug affiliation forms while purchasing and possessing a .38-caliber Colt revolver in October 2018. He faces up to 25 years in prison.
“There was a press release. [after former President Trump’s conviction] “The message coming from the White House is, ‘No one is above the law,’ and I think President Biden really needs to be careful. There’s an investigation going on right now against him and his son. That dog could come back to bite him,” Patterson said.
Former New York Republican Gov. George Pataki joined Paterson in slamming the prosecution of Trump, and both governors warned it could backfire on Biden and other Democrats.
Pataki said a conviction of a former president would be unprecedented and could lead to a tit-for-tat battle that could see conservative prosecutors indict Biden and other Democrats in the future.
“Once Biden leaves office, what’s to stop a district attorney in some rural county in Texas from suing him for millions of dollars in damages caused by illegal immigration because he failed to uphold his oath of office at the border?” the former three-term governor said.
“They’ve created a nasty problem that could happen anywhere,” he said of Democrats who want Trump convicted.
While Pataki said he was concerned a guilty verdict would do long-term damage to the justice system, he also said in the short term it would have a negative impact on Trump’s chances of returning to the White House.
He said Americans who aren’t closely following Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s successful prosecution will only see the result that Trump is a convicted felon.
“If you’re not familiar with Bragg’s partisan and ideological history, or the judges’ [Juan Merchan] “The partisan, ideological history … that’s going to have an impact on this election, and it’s not fair,” Pataki said.
Pataki predicts the Biden campaign will run attack ads against Trump, reminding voters that “by the way, he’s a convicted felon.” Meanwhile, an appeal of Trump’s sentence won’t be heard until after the election in the fall.
“This is not about convicting Trump. It is about damaging him electorally. It is shameful that our justice system is being used for such partisan political gain,” Pataki, the lawyer, said.
Trump, a presumed 2024 Republican presidential candidate, was found guilty of all 34 charges by a 12-judge Manhattan jury in an unprecedented criminal indictment against a former president, making him the first former U.S. president to be convicted of a felony criminal charge.
Bragg’s office accused Trump of illegally trying to conceal a $130,000 payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels as part of a scheme to cover up a sex scandal that threatened to derail Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Jurors found that Trump falsified business records throughout 2017 by falsely claiming to pay then-attorney and “fixer” Michael Cohen fees for bogus “legal services” when in reality he was repaying Cohen the hush money he paid Daniels to prevent her from speaking publicly about her 2006 sexual encounter with Trump in a Lake Tahoe hotel room.
