Kim Kardashian visited the White House on Wednesday and discussed criminal justice reform with President Trump. Specifically, she advocated on behalf of an elderly grandmother and an underage girl, two long-suffering, non-violent, first-time offenders serving life in prison. Thursday, Trump pardoned a political ally instead. He announced that a pardon is coming for Dinesh D’Souza, the convicted felon and right-wing provocateur whom he asserted had been “treated very unfairly by our government!”
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
This presidential proclamation is troubling for two reasons. First, it snubs the real suffering of those without political connections like Matthew Charles, who is being sent back to prison because of bureaucratic bungling. Second, it makes a liar out of D’Souza.
Remember that D’Souza was convicted in 2012 of running a straw donor scheme to make multiple illegal payments to Republican Senate candidates. He made $20,000 in contributions to Wendy Long under the names of a friend and a romantic interest. That is illegal and that is why D’Souza was sentenced to five years probation and eight months in a halfway house.
Trump, with his pardon, is retroactively wiping away that sentence. But Trump cannot absolve the legal guilt of D’Souza, who broke the law by his own admission.
In a five-page plea agreement submitted to the U.S. Attorney in 2013, D’Souza accepted the felony charges to avoid going to trial and risking imprisonment for up to five years. “The defendant hereby acknowledges that he has accepted this Agreement and decided to plead guilty,” his lawyers wrote and D’Souza signed, “because he is in fact guilty.”
It wasn’t just legal jargon either. D’Souza owned up in court telling prosecutors that he knew making campaign contributions under someone else’s name “was wrong and something the law forbids.”
Perhaps the punishment didn’t meet the crime as some conservatives have argued and Trump now suggests. But the president is trying to rewrite history (as is his habit). He wants the country to think that D’Souza is innocent. Unfortunately, D’Souza already told us otherwise and while under oath.
