Trump set to issue 100 pardons on Tuesday: Report

By Beyza Binnur Donmez

ANKARA (AA) - Outgoing US President Donald Trump reportedly is planning to issue about 100 pardons and commutations on Tuesday, his final full day in office.

Citing people familiar with the matter, CNN reported Monday that the White House held a meeting on Sunday to finalize the list of pardons and for now it is not expected to include Trump himself.

Trump is bracing for his second Senate impeachment trial, the first time in history a president has been impeached twice, over his role in the riot that saw lawmakers taken into lockdown as the president's supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Although aides told CNN that pardoning himself is off the table, for now, it remains unclear what Trump will do with his last bit of presidential power.

Pardons are expected to include "a mix of criminal justice reform-minded pardons and more controversial ones secured or doled out to political allies."

The final batch of clemency action should be completed before Wednesday's power handover to President-elect Joe Biden.

- US pardons war criminals

Trump late December announced a wave of pardons for American war criminals that were convicted of killing civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Trump's executive clemency kept adding controversial military figures after he pardoned four employees of an American private military company who killed civilians in Iraq and were found guilty by a US court in 2014.

Employees of Blackwater Security Consulting, now known as Academi, shot at Iraqi civilians, killing 17 and injuring 20 in Nisour Square, Baghdad on Sept. 16, 2007 as they were escorting a US embassy convoy.

The incident caused five investigations. The FBI found that at least 14 of the 17 Iraqis killed were shot without any cause, including 9- and 11-year-old boys.

Thirty witnesses from Iraq, the largest group of foreign witnesses to travel to US for a criminal trial, had described in the court that the four American men initiated unprovoked shooting at Iraqi civilians with heavy gunfire and grenade launchers.