Trump is 'rewarding' his cronies for 'refusing to cooperate' with federal prosecutors: CNN's Evan Perez

On Wednesday's edition of CNN's "OutFront," senior justice correspondent Evan Perez tore into outgoing President Donald Trump's new batch of pardons.

"One of the things, when you step back and look, especially at the two Russia investigation figures here, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone, the president is essentially rewarding these two men for refusing to cooperate with prosecutors," said Perez. "In the case of Paul Manafort, according to the Mueller report, he spoke to another witness, Rick Gates, and said he had conversations with the president's lawyers and had been told that they were going to be taken care of. In the end, that's one of the reasons why prosecutors said that, even though he signed a plea agreement, he ended up not providing full cooperation during that."

"As for Roger Stone, he went to — he was sentenced to prison for lying on behalf of the president, to protect the president. That's what the court said," said Perez. "So both men essentially went to the ends of the earth to protect President Trump, and he is rewarding that."

Watch below: