Trump Says He Will Pardon Dinesh D'Souza - and Possibly Rod Blagojevich and Martha Stewart

By Gregory Korte, USA TODAY

31 May 18

 

resident Trump pardoned conservative commentator Dinesh D'Souza for making illegal campaign contributions Thursday — and said he was considering presidential clemency of former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich and lifestyle guru Martha Stewart as well. 

"Will be giving a Full Pardon to Dinesh D'Souza today. He was treated very unfairly by our government!" Trump tweeted Thursday as he headed to Texas on Air Force One.

While in flight, he told reporters that Blagojevich's attempt to sell former President Barack Obama's Illinois Senate seat when he became president was "a stupid thing to say" but not worth 18 years in prison. Blagojevich, a Democrat, appeared on Trump's reality television show Celebrity Apprentice in 2010.

And he said a pardon of Stewart had also crossed his mind. Stewart, the head of a publishing and television empire who once hosted a spinoff of The Apprentice, was convicted of insider trading in 2004. 

"I think to a certain extent Martha Stewart was harshly and unfairly treated. And she used to be my biggest fan in the world — before I became a politician," he said. "But that’s O.K. I don’t view it that way."

Trump said he called D'Souza, who is serving five years probation for making illegal campaign contributions, to give him the news Wednesday night.

"I’ve always felt he was very unfairly treated. And a lot of people did," he said. "What they did to him was horrible.”

Trump said he didn't know D'Souza, but "I see him on television.”

On Twitter, D'Souza lashed out at Preet Bharara, the former U.S. attorney who prosecuted him and was later fired by Trump. 

"KARMA IS A BITCH," D'Souza said. He accused Bharara of destroying him to advance his career.

"Then he got fired & I got pardoned," he said.  "Obama & his stooges tried to extinguish my American dream & destroy my faith in America."

D'Souza credited a social media campaign and the intervention of Sen. Ted Cruz — a family friend — in bringing the case to Trump's attention.

D'Souza pleaded guilty of making "straw donations" in the names of others to support the candidacy of Republican New York Senate candidate Wendy Long, who lost to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. Those straw donations allowed him to give $20,000 in illegal contributions to the campaign, exceeding the $5,000 legal limit.

And though he once argued that he was being selectively prosecuted because of his attacks on Obama, he later backed off the claim at his sentencing.

"I'm sorry for what I did. I have never said otherwise," he said then. "I have never even said I am being selectively prosecuted. I feared that I was being."

The new round of pardons would continue Trump's use of clemency power to correct what he perceives as unjust, politically motivated prosecutions. But they also come amid investigations into his own campaign and inner circle — including a probe into whether his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, violated the law when he illegally paid off a porn star who said she had a relationship with Trump. 

Rick Hasen, a University of California, Irvine law professor who specializes in election law, said the pardon sends "yet another signal to Michael Cohen and others about the possibility of a Trump pardon — and this one, like potentially Cohen’s case — involves campaign finance violations."

The pardon marks the fifth full pardon granted by Trump during his presidency — all without going through the formal channels of the Justice Department. And it continues a pattern of politically motivated pardons that include former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio and former Bush White House aide Scooter Libby. 

Trump also pardoned Kristian Saucier, a former Navy submariner whose conviction for mishandling classified information became a conservative cause because of its comparisons to Democratic Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server. 

And just last week, Trump gave a rare posthumous pardon to Jack Johnson, the former heavyweight boxing champion convicted in 1913 of racially motivated charges related to his relationship with a white woman.

Like all of those cases, D'Souza did not apply for a pardon with the Office of the Pardon Attorney, the Justice Department unit that conducts investigations of pardon cases and sends recommendations to the president. Under Justice Department rules, D'Souza would be ineligible through that process because he's still on probation.

Neither Blagojevich nor Stewart have applied for clemency, either.

But the president's constitutional authority to pardon is not bound by those rules, and so Trump has granted politically charged pardons even as he's denied 180 applications from people who have applied through the Justice Department.

"The pardon power itself is incredibly broad, but what informs the use of that power is where the critical question is," said Andrew Wright, a Savannah Law School professor who handled pardon cases while working in the White House counsel's office under Obama. 

"He views it as an extension of his situational politics," he said. "The coin of the realm in the Trump administration is flattery and aggressive defense of him on cable television, and if you’re willing to do that, you will get a different set of laws applicable to you."

D'Souza, 57, is an Indian-born author and documentary filmmaker whose work has assailed President Barack Obama, Islam and multiculturalism. His most recent book is The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left. 

Previous work includes the book The Roots of Obama's Rage and the film 2016: Obama's America, both of which argue that Obama's politics were formed by the anti-colonial ideology of his Kenyan-born estranged father. 

Though he was spared prison time in the campaign finance case, his conviction has put him under court supervision. He's requited to undergo weekly counseling sessions and complete an eight-hour day of community service during every week of his five-year probation. That community service: Teaching English to Spanish-speaking immigrants at Catholic parishes.

He also had to receive permission from a judge to leave the country in January for a research project to Nuremberg, Germany — where Nazis were put on trial for war crimes after World War II.

White press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump had determined that D'Souza was "fully worthy of this pardon."

"Mr. D’Souza was, in the president’s opinion, a victim of selective prosecution for violations of campaign finance laws," she said. "Mr. D’Souza accepted responsibility for his actions, and also completed community service by teaching English to citizens and immigrants seeking citizenship."