THE APPRENTICE
‘ YOU ’ RE PARDONED!’ EDITION
Want to be absolved for a crime? It helps to have appeared on "The Apprentice." After announcing he was pardoning Dinesh D'Souza, President Trump said he was considering the same for former contestant Rod Blagojevich and spinoff host Martha Stewart.
“Pardoned” is the new “fired.” President Trump pardoned campaign-finance fraudster Dinesh D’Souza on Thursday and then promptly said he was mulling the same for two other cons — former “Apprentice” cohorts Martha Stewart and ex-Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
Trump — famous for uttering, “You’re fired,” on his old reality show, “The Apprentice” — issued a full pardon to D’Souza, who copped a plea in 2014 to funneling $20,000 in straw-donor donations to Republican Wendy Long while she challenged US Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand for her New York seat in 2012. The incumbent Democrat won re-election.
D’Souza was sentenced to five years’ probation, including eight months at a “community confinement center” in San Diego, and ordered to pay a $30,000 fine.
As he left Washington to fly to Texas, Trump tweeted, “Will be giving a Full Pardon to Dinesh D’Souza today. He was treated very unfairly by our government!”
D’Souza, an outspoken critic of former President Barack Obama, had claimed his prosecution was politically motivated, but the presiding federal judge said D’Souza had failed to prove it.
Trump explained his decision before boarding Air Force One.
“I’ve always felt he was very unfairly treated. 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,” he said, adding he never met D’Souza.
Trump later shared with reporters on the flight that he was mulling a pardon for Stewart and con- sidering commuting the sentence of the incarcerated Blagojevich.
Both had connections to Trump’s “Celebrity Apprentice.” Blagojevich was a contestant in 2010, and Stewart hosted the short-lived 2005 spinoff series, “The Apprentice: Martha Stewart.”
The federal prosecutor who oversaw Stewart’s case in New York was James Comey, one of Trump’s principal antagonists and the man he fired as FBI director last year.
The prosecutor who led the case against Blagojevich in Chicago was Patrick Fitzgerald, a Comey friend. Fitzgerald also was the special counsel leading the
case against I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the Bush administration official pardoned by Trump last month.
Blagojevich, who is serving 14 years in prison for trying to sell Obama’s Illinois Senate seat, did 11 episodes of “Celebrity Apprentice” in 2010.
“Because what he did does not justify 18 years in a jail. If you read his statement, it was a foolish statement, there was a lot of bravado,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.
“Plenty of other politicians have said a lot worse. And it doesn’t, he shouldn’t have been put in jail.”
Stewart was found guilty in 2004 of conspiracy and making false statements to investigators amid an insider-trading investigation into her sale of ImClone stock just before it plunged in value.
“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 OK, I don’t view it that way.”
Trump was listed as an executive producer of Stewart’s illfated 2005 “Apprentice” spinoff and is credited for a single appearance on the show.
But Stewart boiled Trump’s blood a year later when the lifestyle diva revealed that she hoped the Trump-hosted “Apprentice” would get the ax so they didn’t have to compete.
Trump wrote an open letter bashing Stewart and nettling her over the insider-trading probe.
“Essentially, you made this firing up just as you made up your sell order of ImClone. The only difference is — that was more obvious. Putting your show on the air was a mistake for everybody — especially NBC,” Trump seethed in an open letter.
A former federal prosecutor who investigated President Bill Clinton said the pardons will send a message to Trump’s embattled personal attorney Michael Cohen and former cam- paign manager Paul Manafort not to cooperate with investigations into Trump-Russia collusion.
“My first thought is: Trump likes to do stuff where he can do it without asking anyone permission, and the pardon is the quintessential presidential power that is unreviewable. It makes him feel like a king, which is what he wants,” said Paul Rosenzweig, who served as senior counsel under special prosecutor Ken Starr during the Whitewater investigation and now works at the DC think tank R Street.
“He also probably thinks it’s a not terribly subtle but reasonable, effective message to guys like Cohen and Manafort and all the oth- ers that he’s got their back — provided they stay loyal to him.”
Cohen is being probed for bank fraud and campaign-finance violations regarding $130,000 in hush money he paid to porn star Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet about her alleged affair with Trump before the election.
Manafort is charged in Virginia with tax evasion and bank-fraud for allegedly taking payments from the Ukrainian government and hiding them while failing to register as a foreign agent. He has pleaded not guilty.
It helps to have a friend in the Oval Office if you want your record cleaned — especially if you’ve ever been on his TV show or were prosecuted by one of his foes.
President Trump has started handing out pardons to people with very specific personal connections. And while the Constitution gives the president that power, he should know that he’s playing with fire.
Trump on Thursday gave a full pardon to conservative gadfly and conspiracy theorist Dinesh D’Souza, convicted in 2014 of recruiting two friends to act as straw donors to a New York campaign for the US Senate.
Then he said he’s strongly considering commuting the sentence of Illinois ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich, now serving a 14-year term for numerous blatant acts of corruption — including trying to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat. He also said he might pardon lifestyle guru Martha Stewart, who served time for lying to investigators about a stock sale.
Blagojevich was on “Celebrity Appearance”; Stewart hosted an “Apprentice” spinoff.
And D’Souza was prosecuted by then-US Attorney Preet Bharara (who became an anti-Trump obsessive after the prez fired him), Stewart by another Trump nemesis, James Comey; and Blagojevich by close Comey pal Patrick Fitzgerald.
Completing the circle, Fitzgerald also prosecuted Lewis (Scooter) Libby, the Dick Cheney aide recently pardoned by Trump. That pardon, at least, was wholly justified (we’d long called for such a move), as was Trump’s posthumous pardon of boxing champion Jack Johnson.
But he’s also pardoned anti-immigrant hero Joe Arpaio (who didn’t remotely deserve it) and a former Navy sailor found with classified photos on his cellphone who’d compared his case to Hillary Clinton’s e-mails.
Nearly all these pardons were issued without Department of Justice vetting — something last done by President Bill Clinton in his last day in office, and widely seen then as a flagrant abuse of power.
Trump needs to stop winging it and set up some far less personal process — or be seen as using pardons merely to reward his cronies and punish his foes. A long string of self-indulgent pardons can only raise serious worries that he’ll start making abitrary use of more fearsome presidential powers.