The staggering corruption of Dinesh D'Souza's pardon

[babylonsister]

https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2018/05/31/The-staggering-corruption-of-Dinesh-DSouzas-pardon/220345

The staggering corruption of Dinesh D’Souza’s pardon
A conspiratorial, racist fraud gets a reprieve from the like-minded president
Blog ››› May 31, 2018 1:07 PM EDT ››› SIMON MALOY

snip//

This is an obvious abuse of the president’s pardoning power and it follows a pattern of corrupt pardons. Trump pardoned former Maricopa County Sheriff (and current Republican Senate candidate) Joe Arpaio last year after he was convicted of criminal contempt of court for refusing to obey judicial orders to halt his department’s racial profiling of Latinos. Former Dick Cheney aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who was convicted of lying to federal prosecutors in the Valerie Plame affair, got a pardon after his Trump-loving attorney pleaded his case to the White House.

In all these cases, there are two common and related themes: Trump using his pardoning power to bestow favors on his cronies, and the insistence that the pardoned person was “treated unfairly.” Trump said Arpaio was “treated unbelievably unfairly,” his statement on Libby’s pardon said that “for years I have heard that he has been treated unfairly,” and his tweet announcing D’Souza’s pardon said he “was treated very unfairly by our government.” What’s clear in all these instances is that “treated unfairly” means that the convicted person did not receive the sort of preferential legal treatment that the president feels his allies should enjoy.

D’Souza’s pardon is also an expression of the corruption rotting away at conservative politics and the right-wing media. A healthy political movement would have long ago ostracized a bigot and fraud like D’Souza. He is a racist troll and inveterate conspiracy theorist who spends his days mocking school shooting survivors on Twitter. Leading up to the 2012 election he wrote a lie-filled book and produced a howlingly mendacious “documentary” arguing that Obama inherited a “Third World, anti-American” ethos from his absentee father. He wrote a book arguing that the “cultural left” was to blame for the September 11 attacks, and another book insisting that “the American slave was treated like property, which is to say, pretty well.”

Rather than booting this extremist to the fringes, conservative media turned D’Souza into a cause célèbre. He was a fixture on Megyn Kelly’s Fox News program during his campaign finance fraud trial, where he was given an open platform to assert his persecution at the hands of Obama. His idiotic conspiracy theories about Obama’s father garnered an enthusiastic endorsement from Newt Gingrich, who argued that you can understand the first black U.S. president only “if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior.” D’Souza is a regular guest on conservative talk radio and routinely hits the lecture circuit with the backing of right-wing activist groups.

Now this racist, conspiratorial fraud has been pardoned by another racist, conspiratorial fraud, and this long-simmering corruption is being lauded within the Republican Party -- Trump’s pardon of D’Souza was quickly celebrated by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who called D’Souza a “powerful voice for freedom.”

[greatauntoftriplets]

1. As bad as this pardon was,

I think that commuting Blagojevich's sentence would be even worse. The guy tried to shake down the CEO of a children's hospital before releasing state funds that had been set aside for the development of a new and larger facility. He tried to sell President Obama's Senate seat to the highest bidder. Up until Spanky took office, Blago defined political corruption. But, unfortunately, birds of a feather, etc. And, he was prosecuted by Comey's good friend and lawyer.

[quartz007]

2. Only reason he will Pardon Rod & others is...

they were all prosecuted by Mueller/Comey.
I think he is sending a message.

[greatauntoftriplets]

3. Oh, I agree that he's sending a message.

What he did to the state of Illinois still burns us, though. If he does get commuted, I hope he goes somewhere else.

[quartz007]

6. Rod B is finished in politics permanently

Even if he stays in Chicago area/Illinois, he will be a private citizen, and should not affect anyone's life.

[treestar]

4. Is that even necessary

Can’t he pardon whoever he wants? He seems to think he needs to assert they were treated unfairly. Of course he has no details to support the concept.

[bitterross]

7. It's necessary as his set up for pardoning Manfort and Cohen et al

He will just keep on pardoning people and saying they were treated unfairly. Goes right along with his witch hunt and spygate memes.

[JHB]

5. I don't know that I'd use the term "an expension" in...

..."an expression of the corruption rotting away at conservative politics and the right-wing media."

It's like saying full-on zombie rot is "an expression" of gangrene. It was rotten from the beginning, it's merely just lost its ability to maintain a polite facade at cocktail parties.