To get a pardon from President Donald Trump, it clearly helps to be famous.
As conservative filmmaker and author Dinesh D’Souza received clemency Thursday for a felony conviction for making campaign contributions through straw donors, Trump seemed to confirm that D’Souza’s high public profile — primarily in right-leaning media outlets — contributed to his case.
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“I’ve always felt he was very unfairly treated. And a lot of people did, a lot of people did, ” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. “I read the papers — I see him on television.”
Trump also floated two other high-profile convictions he is considering wading into, suggesting a commutation for former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat who’s serving a 14-year sentence for corruption, and a pardon for Martha Stewart, who served a short term in jail for lying to investigators during an insider-trading probe.
The string of six pardons and commutations Trump has issued in recent months initially buoyed the hopes of clemency advocates that Trump would dive into the backlog of more than 10,000 applications pending at the Justice Department. But some of those activists are now growing concerned that only the famous or well-known will get relief.
“I don’t want to criticize the robust use of the clemency power, but this is not the priority list we would have drawn up,” said Kevin Ring of Families Against Mandatory Minimums. “You see a lot of people who are oversentenced … I guess all we can do is hope this is the beginning, as he and the administration learn about some of the injustices.”
“Every president has done at least one of these special deals, but they’ve all also done more regular grants in addition,” said Margaret Love, a former Justice Department pardon attorney. “None has ignored the ordinary pardon caseload.”
White House spokesman Hogan Gidley told reporters Thursday that Trump was looking at “plenty of people” for pardons.
President Barack Obama’s use of the clemency power got off to a slower start than Trump’s, but Obama eventually delivered 1,715 commutations and 212 pardons — the highest tally of individual grants since President Harry Truman. Most of Obama’s actions came in his second term, after the administration invited nonviolent drug convicts serving long sentences to request commutations, triggering a flood of applications.
Trump’s clemency actions thus far have been in cases celebrated by right-wing activists or commentators, but also involving opportunities for the president to thumb his nose at his enemies and the ongoing special counsel investigation into his presidential campaign.
The pardon of D’Souza seemed to many like a rebuke of former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, whose office prosecuted the case and whom Trump eventually fired. In a statement announcing the pardon, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump considered D’Souza “a victim of selective prosecution.”
“The President has the right to pardon but the facts are these: D’Souza intentionally broke the law, voluntarily pled guilty, apologized for his conduct & the judge found no unfairness,” Bharara tweeted Thursday.
Likewise, Trump’s pardon last month of Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, — who the president said had been “treated unfairly” — was seen in many quarters as an attack on special prosecutors and on former FBI Director James Comey, who tapped the special prosecutor who pursued Libby as part of a probe into the leak of a CIA officer’s identity.
And Trump’s pardon of Navy sailor Kristian Saucier — another case publicized on Fox News — was an obvious slap at Hillary Clinton. In January, Trump complained on Twitter that Clinton and top aide Huma Abedin were never prosecuted over their handling of classified information, while Saucier was charged over taking photographs on a military submarine.
“Crooked Hillary Clinton’s top aid [sic], Huma Abedin, has been accused of disregarding basic security protocols,” Trump tweeted in January. “Remember sailors pictures on submarine? Jail!”
Other presidents have issued pardons and commutations to friends and have snubbed special counsels by pardoning individuals they charged. President Bill Clinton pardoned his half-brother Roger on a drug conviction and extended relief to a slew of targets of special prosecutors. President George H.W. Bush pardoned six Iran-Contra defendants, including former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger.
Perhaps the most famous pardon in modern American history, President Gerald Ford’s unconditional grant of clemency to former President Richard Nixon, was widely seen as a partisan political move at the time and may have led to Ford’s defeat in the 1976 presidential election.
But some observers say Trump’s string of score-settling pardons is a departure from history.
“I think they’re not political. They are very personal. It’s the most personal use of the pardon power in the last 150 years,” Love said.
“It’s not new to give favors to your friends,” said Mark Osler, a law professor at the University of St. Thomas in Michigan. “That’s been done in the past. What is new is using clemency to poke at your enemies.”
Whether less famous people or those with no obvious political angle to their cases will be granted Trump’s mercy remains to be seen.
In the case of Alice Marie Johnson, a 63-year-old serving a life sentence for a nonviolent drug crime, advocates are hoping a famous intermediary will do the trick. Reality TV star Kim Kardashian West met with Trump at the White House on Wednesday to lobby on Johnson’s behalf. The meeting was facilitated in part by Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, who has made criminal justice reform a top priority.
The meeting was “positive,” but Trump made no concrete commitments, according to Brittany Barnett, one of Johnson’s lawyers who was briefed on the meeting.
“I think we’re definitely making progress. The entire country is paying attention to this issue,” Barnett said. “He’s definitely taking it under consideration.”
Gidley, the White House spokesman, said Trump was looking at the case, describing the meeting with Kardashian West as “brief.”
Based on Trump’s recent pardons, just how much media attention the Johnson case garners could help determine her fate.
Regardless of his decision, Trump clearly enjoyed the opportunity to rub elbows with Kardashian West.
“Great meeting with @KimKardashian today, talked about prison reform and sentencing,” Trump tweeted Wednesday afternoon, including a picture of Kardashian West standing beside him at the Resolute Desk where he sat, beaming.
While Trump hasn’t approved any pardons or commutations through the normal process, he did deny a batch last month. Trump turned down 98 commutations and 82 pardons, according to rolls on the Justice Department’s website. As of the end of April, 2,108 pardon petitions and 8,833 commutation requests were on file at DOJ.
D’Souza did not have a pardon application on file with the Justice Department, a DOJ spokeswoman said, and he would not have been eligible to pursue a pardon that way because of a five-year waiting period. But the president is free to pardon individuals who don’t apply.
“The thing that bugs me is you’ve got the normal-process people who have followed the rules and put in their applications to the pardon attorney … and are facing life or 30 years for nonviolent narcotics crimes. Meanwhile, reality show people are getting access right away,” Osler said. “The fact is that he is granting based on who is on Fox News and what celebrity shows up in his office. That is something that is going to bother people.”
Democrats have applied some political heat over Trump’s decision to bypass the Justice Department with the clemency grants he’s issued thus far.
At a hearing last month, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) lit into Attorney General Jeff Sessions over the issue, pointing out that Sessions condemned Bill Clinton for leaving the Justice Department out of the loop with many of his own last-minute pardons.
“At the time, you made comments … saying that not going through that process was an abuse of power. So, my question to you is whether or not you think not going through the pardon attorney is an abuse of the power?” Van Hollen asked, citing the fact that Trump pardoned Libby and former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio — a supporter on the campaign trail who was awaiting sentencing for contempt of court — without consulting the Justice Department.
“There are opportunities that the pardon attorney can be utilized very effectively … but I don’t think it’s in any way required,” Sessions said.
The attorney general also argued that Trump’s one-off pardons were more justified than Clinton’s.
“The pardons that President Clinton made were stunning, shocking and unacceptable on the merits,” Sessions said. He added that Arpaio and Libby both had long records of service.
“They contributed greatly to America,” Sessions said.
Despite the criticism, some clemency advocates say that — intentionally or not — Trump is confirming their argument that the Justice Department application process for pardons and commutations is hopelessly broken and should be moved back to the White House or made a freestanding agency.
“There’s an opportunity here,” Osler said. “If Trump’s going to ignore that process, maybe he’ll scrap it and create something better and more direct …That would be a good outcome.”
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