Dinesh D’Souza? Really?
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The handful of pardons that President Trump has granted so far may appear to be scattershot, but they’re beginning to show a distinct pattern — not just of who he believes is worthy of mercy, but of how he thinks about the justice system as a whole and about his power to bend it to his will.
On Thursday, Mr. Trump pardoned Dinesh D’Souza, the right-wing troll known for, among other things, posting racist tweets about President Barack Obama, spreading the lie that George Soros was a Nazi collaborator and writing that “the American slave was treated like property, which is to say, pretty well.”
In 2014, Mr. D’Souza pleaded guilty to making illegal campaign contributions, although he claimed that he had been targeted for political reasons. Last year, President Trump fired Preet Bharara, the federal prosecutor who handled Mr. D’Souza’s case. “KARMA IS A BITCH,” Mr. D’Souza exulted on Twitter Thursday, with his trademark graciousness. Mr. Bharara, he added, “wanted to destroy a fellow Indian American to advance his career. Then he got fired & I got pardoned.”
Mr. Trump, who told reporters that Mr. D’Souza “was very unfairly treated,” has the authority to pardon anyone he likes, for almost any reason. But pardons send a message. What message can we take from Mr. Trump’s executive clemency?
Maybe the president is sending a signal of loyalty and reassurance to friends and family members who may soon find themselves facing similar criminal charges in connection with the special counsel’s Russia inquiry. That could help explain Mr. Trump’s interest in Mr. D’Souza (campaign-finance violations), as well as two other big names he hinted on Thursday he might grant clemency to — the lifestyle maven Martha Stewart (lying to federal authorities) and former Gov. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois (corruption and bribery) — and a previous Trump pardon, Scooter Libby, former Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff (perjury and obstruction of justice).
Or maybe Mr. Trump is wielding his pardon power against his perceived enemies in federal law enforcement. Besides Mr. Bharara, there’s James Comey, who prosecuted Ms. Stewart, and Patrick Fitzgerald, who prosecuted both Mr. Blagojevich and Mr. Libby, and is a friend of Mr. Comey’s.
And let’s not forget Joe Arpaio, the former Arizona sheriff and hunter of undocumented immigrants, whom Mr. Trump pardoned last summer for contempt of a federal court order — Mr. Trump clearly was thumbing his nose at the federal court that found Mr. Arpaio guilty.
Or perhaps Mr. Trump simply is dealing another hammer blow to the legacy of Mr. Obama, who focused his own clemency efforts on reducing the lengthy sentences of thousands of low-level drug offenders with no personal connection to the White House.
The tendency of presidents of both parties to reward cronies with clemency — from Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton’s of the financier Marc Rich — is one Washington tradition that we’d welcome Mr. Trump smashing. Alas, it’s one that he shows every sign not only of continuing but of embracing: Mr. D’Souza told The Daily Caller that Senator Ted Cruz of Texas engineered his pardon with a personal plea to the president, even though Mr. Trump told reporters, “Nobody asked me to do it.”
One thing is becoming clear: Donald Trump uses whatever power he has to attack the people he feels have wronged him, and he will do what he feels he must to protect himself. For him, pardons are a means of vengeance. Those he’s issued to date are only a small hint of what could be coming as the Russia investigation heats up. Last year, John Dowd, Mr. Trump’s lawyer at the time, discussed the prospect of pardons for two of the president’s former top advisers, Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort, with their lawyers.
As Vox’s David Roberts wrote on Twitter, “Pardoning is basically the one presidential power that works the way Trump thought ALL of being president worked. He’s gonna use the [expletive] out of it.”
That is the real message of these pardons — and that, more than Mr. Trump clearing the record of some noxious clown, is what should really worry us.
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