Pardon Watch: Will Trump Spite Durham With Rowland Pardon?

Grievance-ladened Donald Trump turned his holiday bile hose on Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham Saturday morning. Durham also serves as special counsel to investigate the origins of the probe into Trump’s 2016 campaign and its many contacts with Russian assets. The saga, readers may recall, included a cover story about a foray into the plight of Russian orphans.

The aggrieved president unleashed his fury on Durham for not meeting the former Trump University chancellor’s expectation for an October surprise with some indictments to upend the presidential campaign. Now the defeated Republican will settle for something that would allow him to carry on his long geschrei through the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden on January 20th.

We will know Trump’s anger with Durham extends beyond a stream of tweets if he gives a pardon to John Rowland, the twice-convicted former governor of Connecticut. Durham led the team of federal investigators and prosecutors that revealed Rowland’s corruption. Rowland resigned from office in 2004 and took a plea deal several months later. He was sentenced to a year and a day in prison. Rowland was incarcerated a second time after a federal jury convicted him in a 2014 trial on a 2012 federal campaign finance scheme.

Durham’s 2003-2004 team included former federal prosecutor Nora Dannehy. She was working with Durham on the 2016 investigation until she resigned last summer after growing uneasy with the political pressure being applied the probe, according to The Hartford Courant.

UPDATE: A reader points out that Joe Ganim once enjoyed a cordial relationship with Trump. Ganim, now doing a second tour as mayor of Bridgeport after a long prison sentence for corruption at the start of the century, could also use a pardon. Trump and Ganim were allies in the frenetic casino expansion competition of the 1990s. The two enjoyed a reunion during the 2016 Republican primary campaign.