Trump announces pardon for Dinesh D'Souza
'He was treated very unfairly by our government'
Published: 54 mins ago


President Donald Trump said in a social media statement Thursday he will be granting a pardon to Dinesh D’Souza, the filmmaker who repeatedly released projects that were critical of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

“Will be giving a Full Pardon to Dinesh D’Souza today. He was treated very unfairly by our government!” Trump tweeted.

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Will be giving a Full Pardon to Dinesh D’Souza today. He was treated very unfairly by our government!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 31, 2018

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D’Souza’s case set precedents in several ways, including that an agenda was revealed on the part of Democrats actually to jail their political critics.

At the time his campaign donations case developed, there was a report listing at least 16 recent situations where critics of the Obama administration were threatened.

The issue arose at the time because of then-GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump’s promise during a debate to have a special prosecutor look into Hillary Clinton’s email scandal, where she used a private, non-secure server to handle some of the nation’s classified security secrets. The FBI found she was “extremely careless” but it did not recommend a criminal prosecution.

That issue actually has been under investigation by an inspector general, and a report is due out as early as this or next week.

At the time of the debate, before all the details were revealed about Clinton’s payments for a political hit piece on Trump, the FBI’s decision to embed spies in Trump’s campaign, claims of a Trump campaign connection to Russia based on a Democratic operative’s statements, Democrats reacted with outrage that such an idea – jail for a criminal offense if there would be a conviction – would even be considered.

Former attorney general Eric Holder tweeted: In the USA we do not threaten to jail political opponents.

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In the USA we do not threaten to jail political opponents. @realDonaldTrump said he would. He is promising to abuse the power of the office

— Eric Holder (@EricHolder) October 10, 2016

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“I was very amused to see the tweet by Eric Holder waxing indignant about the idea of jailing your political opponents,” said Dinesh D’Souza, whose projects have included “Hillary’s America,” “America: Imagine the World Without Her,” “What’s so Great About Christianity” and more, at the time.

“Let’s talk about my case for a second. No American in the country’s history has been locked up for doing what I did,” he said. “This is typically handled not even as a criminal matter but as a civil matter by the SEC. It was highly unusual for the government to prosecute in this way.”

D’Souza was sentenced to overnights in jail and other penalties after he admitted arranging “straw donors” to contribute to the unsuccessful 2012 U.S. Senate campaign of Wendy Long, a college friend.

Obama administration prosecutors actually had told the judge they were insisting on 10 months in prison.

At the time, supporters of D’Souza saw a double standard, maintaining Holder’s Justice Department typically ignores similar technical violations in contributions to Democratic Party campaigns.

Gerald R. Molen, producer of D’Souza’s films, told WND the charges were “the equivalent of prosecuting a political dissident in the Soviet Union for jaywalking.”

“Yes, jaywalking in the Soviet Union is a crime, but it’s a minor crime,” he said.

D’Souza pressed the point, at that time.

“Given the facts [of my case] … this came on the heels of the movie about Obama. [Critics were justified] in saying this was a political vendetta.”

He said Obama, well known as a “narcissist,” was “very bitter about the movie, and was railing on his website.”

“My case revealed the real difference between the right and the left. Conservatives would never think of jailing Michael Moore, however offensive we might consider his movies. We might ridicule him, but we wouldn’t try to destroy his life,” he said then.

Trump’s comment came during a campaign debate conversation about Clinton’s email scandal. The GOP candidate promised, if elected, to have a special prosecutor look at the facts.

When Clinton claimed he should apologize to some of those he’s criticized, he responded, “When you talk about apology, I think the one you should really be apologizing for and this thing you should be apologizing for are the 33,000 emails that you deleted and that you acid washed and then the two boxes of emails and other things last week taken from an office and are now missing.”

Clinton claimed the statements were untrue and shot back, “It’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law of our country.”

“Because you’d be in jail,” Trump said, to cheering and clapping.

Holder’s response didn’t take long coming.

“In the USA we do not threaten to jail political opponents. … [Trump] said he would. He is promising to abuse the power of the office.”

He continued, “Be afraid of any candidate who says he will order DOJ/FBI to act on his command. This is dangerous, so is @realDonaldTrump – he’s not qualified.”

It was the Federalist where writer Bre Payton listed those 16 cases where Democrats have, in fact, tried to jail political opponents.

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That D’Souza is a critic of Democrats is unquestioned.

His website supporting his book “Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party,” got a lot of attention.

He had warned, leading up to the 2016 election: “We are on the brink of losing our country forever. After eight years of Obama, four years – or possibly eight years – of Hillary Clinton as president of the United States would so utterly transform America as to make it unrecognizable.”

He warned if Clinton would win the presidency, America will no longer be a land of opportunity.

“Hillary as president will complete the transformation of America into a land of rapacious crony capitalism, run solely for the benefit of friends of the Obamas and the Clintons and the Democratic Party,” D’Souza stressed.


http://www.wnd.com/2018/05/trump-announc...-dinesh-dsouza/

On a side note, last week:

Citing Obama Failure, Donald Trump Pardons Boxer Jack Johnson Posthumously
Thursday, May 24, 2018.

President Donald Trump issued a pardon for boxer Jack Johnson, a decision that he said was partially due to actor Sylvester Stallone bringing the issue to his attention.

“We have done something today that was very important because we righted a wrong. It was a wrong, and a lot of people knew it,” the president said after signing the pardon on Thursday. “Jack Johnson was not treated fairly and we have corrected that.”

Linda Haywood, the maternal great-great niece of Jack Johnson was present for the ceremony that took place in the Oval Office.

“My family, now, can go forward knowing that the shame and the pain has been erased, and history will be rewritten,” Haywood said to Trump. “And I sincerely thank you, sir.”

Although he was the first black heavyweight world champion of boxing, Jackson had a difficult history, convicted of violating the Mann Act by transporting a woman across state lines “for immoral purposes” while he had relationships with white prostitutes. Jackson fled the country to escape prison but returned in 1920 to serve his sentence, spending ten months in prison. He died in a car accident in 1946 at the age of 68.

“I am taking this very righteous step, I believe, to correct a wrong that occurred in our history, and to honor a truly legendary boxing champion, legendary athlete, and a person that, when people got to know him, they really liked him and they really thought he was treated unfairly as a human being and unfairly as a champion,” Trump said at the event.

A posthumous pardon for Jackson has drawn the support of many political leaders, including Sens. John McCain and Harry Reid. In 2015, Congress passed a resolution supporting the pardon. Former Presidents, George W. Bush and Barack Obama did not issue a pardon, despite requests from lawmakers and influential promoters of the sport of boxing.

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http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/...n-posthumously/

Quote: Cincinnatus wrote in post #3

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In the same vein:

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WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Thursday he's considering commuting the sentence of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was convicted of corruption, and pardoning lifestyle entrepreneur Martha Stewart, who served a stint in federal prison after being convicted of charges related to a stock sale.

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http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/t...3KtL?ocid=ientp

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Some interesting quotes from:

Trump weighs leniency for Martha Stewart and Blagojevich, will pardon conservative Dinesh D'Souza
The president told reporters aboard Air Force One that he is considering pardons or commutations for Stewart and Blagojevich; earlier, he tweeted his plan to pardon D'Souza.
by Jonathan Allen / May.31.2018 / 9:45 AM ET / Updated 1:05 PM ET

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""There’s another one that I'm thinking about, Rod Blagojevich," Trump told reporters Thursday on Air Force One, saying that Blagojevich had received a lengthy sentence "for being stupid and saying things that every other politician, you know, that many other politicians say."

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"There was a lot of bravado … plenty of other politicians have said a lot worse. And it doesn't, he shouldn't have been put in jail. And he's a Democrat. He's not my party. But I thought that he was treated unfairly.”"

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"Trump also suggested he was more interested in "curtailment" of Blagojevich's sentence than in granting a full pardon."

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"Former FBI director James Comey, who was fired by Trump, had brought the charges against Stewart"

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Trump has granted four pardons to date:

Joe Arpaio, an Arizona sheriff who is a favorite of immigration hard-liners; I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the aide to former Vice President Dick Cheney who was convicted of obstructing justice and lying to authorities during an investigation into the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame; Kristian Mark Saucier, a Navy sailor who kept classified materials; and Jack Johnson, the African-American boxing legend who was convicted under a law that was used as a deterrent to interracial dating.

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https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politic...d-souza-n878851