People have noticed that after making these pardons, Trump made his threat to veto the government spending bill just passed by Congress, unless the amount of direct payouts is increased, after he had told Congress he would sign the bill. This threat has taken attention off the pardons.
\https://news.yahoo.com/blackwater-guards-trump-pardoned-were-131513384.html
The Week
Peter Weber
Wed, December 23, 2020, 8:15 AM EST
The 15 people President Trump pardoned Tuesday evening include the first two congressmen who endorsed him for president — former Reps. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.) and Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), both convicted of financial crimes — two people jailed in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, and four private guards working for Blackwater who were serving long sentences for an unprovoked and unnecessary 2007 massacre of civilians in Baghdad's Nisour Square that left 17 Iraqis dead, including two boys, ages 8 and 11.
Blackwater, since sold and renamed Academi, is a private military contractor outfit headed at the time by Erik Prince, brother to Trump's education secretary, Betsy DeVos. The Nisour Square massacre marked a low point in U.S.-Iraqi relations after the 2003 U.S. invasion, and federal prosecutors spent years bringing the four Blackwater guards — Nicholas Slatten, Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, and Dustin Heard — to justice.
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