Trump mulls clemency for Stewart and Blagojevich
President pardons activist Dinesh D’Souza
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump said Thursday he was considering clemency for former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and lifestyle guru Martha Stewart after announcing he would pardon conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza for making illegal campaign contributions.
“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. The White House said later Thursday that the pardon had been granted.
Trump said Blagojevich’s attempt to sell Barack Obama’s Illinois Senate seat after Obama became president was “a stupid thing to say” but not worth 18 years in prison. Blagojevich, a Democrat, appeared on Trump’s reality TV show “Celebrity Apprentice” in 2010.
Trump said a pardon of Stewart also crossed his mind. Stewart, the head of a publishing and TV empire who 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 OK. 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.”
D’Souza pleaded guilty of making “straw donations” in the names of others to support 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.
The pardon marks the fifth full pardon granted by Trump – all without going through the formal channels of the Justice Department. They 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.
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.
D’Souza, 57, is an Indian-born author and documentary filmmaker whose work has assailed Obama, Islam and multiculturalism. His most recent book is “The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left.”
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump determined 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.”