Trump offers full pardon to D’Souza
Rod Blagojevich, Martha Stewart also under consideration for clemency
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he would offer a full pardon to conservative pundit Dinesh D’Souza, who pleaded guilty in 2014 to violating federal campaign finance laws but later said he was targeted for his conservative views.
The president, who has issued several pardons in recent months, said he is also considering clemency in number of other cases, including those of former Illinois
Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat, and Martha Stewart, the author and television personality.
D’Souza, an author and filmmaker, was indicted on charges that he illegally used straw donors to contribute to a Republican Senate candidate in New York in 2012. He was sentenced to five years of probation, including eight months living under supervision in a “community confinement center” in San Diego, and a $30,000 fine.
Prosecutors said D’Souza had other individuals donate money to Wendy Long, a Republican challenging Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., in 2012, under the agreement that he would reimburse them for the donations.
Trump, who announced his plans for the pardon on Twitter, later told reporters traveling with him on Air Force One that he had long believed that D’Souza’s sentence was too harsh.
“I’ve always felt he was very unfairly treated,” Trump said. “And a lot of people did, a lot of people did. What should have been a quick, minor fine, like everybody else with the election stuff… . What they did to him was horrible.”
Trump also relayed that he is considering commuting the remainder of the sentence of Blagojevich, who was convicted in 2010 on charges relating to the selling of President Barack Obama’s former Senate seat.
“What he did does not justify 18 years in a jail,” Trump said. “If you read his statement, it was a foolish statement, there was a lot of bravado. But … plenty of other politicians have said a lot worse. And … he shouldn’t have been put in jail.”
Trump also cited the case of Stewart, who was convicted in 2004 of obstructing justice and lying to investigators about a well-timed stock sale.
“I think to a certain extent Martha Stewart was harshly and unfairly treated,” Trump said. “And she used to be my biggest fan in the world … before I became a politician. But that’s OK, I don’t view it that way.”
A senior White House official said as many as a dozen other pardons are under consideration by Trump, adding that most are likely to happen.
“There are going to be more,” said the official, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about the issue.
Blagojevich, who has been seeking assistance from Trump, wrote an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal earlier this week in which he echoed some of Trump’s concerns about the Justice Department and FBI, saying that “the rule of law is under assault in America.”
“I learned the hard way what happens when an investigation comes up empty after the government had invested time, resources and manpower,” Blagojevich wrote. “When they can’t prove a crime, they create one.”
Both Stewart and Blagojevich have ties to The Apprentice, Trump’s long-running reality television series on NBC.
Stewart was the host of a short-lived spinoff, The Apprentice: Martha Stewart, in 2005.
Blagojevich was a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice in 2010, after he was indicted but before his convictions. Trump praised Blagojevich at the time for having “a lot of guts” to appear on the program.
D’Souza claimed he was targeted by the office of thenU.S. Attorney Preet Bharara because he was an outspoken critic of Obama and a prominent conservative activist. In 2012, D’Souza released a movie titled 2016: Obama’s America, which took a highly critical view of Obama’s allegedly radical roots.
During an interview with syndicated talk show host Laura Ingraham on Thursday after Trump announced the pardon, D’Souza characterized prosecutors in the case as a “team of goons” who gave him a disproportionate sentence.
In an opinion piece published earlier last month by Fox News, D’Souza said that in the FBI file on his case, he was “red-flagged as a political conservative who made a movie critical of President Obama.”
But during his plea hearing in 2014, D’Souza acknowledged wrongdoing.
“I knew that causing a campaign contribution to be made in the name of another was wrong and something the law forbids,” D’Souza said in court. “I deeply regret my conduct.”