Fox News:

President Trump announced Thursday he will pardon conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza, who was convicted of making an illegal campaign contribution in 2014.

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

D’Souza pleaded guilty in 2014 for donating $20,000 to New York politician Wendy Long, allegedly going over the limit by directing other donors to give to her. He was sentenced to five years of probation and eight months in a halfway house, and paid a $30,000 fine.

Despite his guilty plea, D’Souza and his allies have claimed for years that he was unfairly singled out for prosecution, and unfairly treated by the Obama administration.

The conservative filmmaker in 2012 made a hit anti-Obama documentary called “2016: Obama’s America.” The film examined then-President Obama’s past and early influences that may have shaped his political ideology.

D’Souza’s 2014 indictment was announced by then-U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who was appointed by Obama, and fired in 2017 by Trump. The indictment stated that D’Souza was charged with one count of illegally donating to a Senate campaign and one count of causing false statements to be made to authorities in connection with the contributions.

I did not vote for Trump in 2016. But, if he runs for re-election in 2020, he definitely has my vote.

Trump has the guts to stand up and call a partisan prosecution unfair and then use his presidential power to undo it. He pardoned Scooter Libby and he’s going to pardon Dinesh D’Souza. In my book, that makes Trump a lot better president than George W. Bush whose deferential attitude toward the operations of government, even when democrats were using the system corruptly, made him into a passive patsy.

Trump’s willingness to pardon victims of partisan bogus prosecutions is actually a very important application of the constitutional principle of Checks and Balances, and on the level of practical politics will tend to suppress use of that cruel and nefarious tactic in the future. If democrats are obliged to recognize that the next Republican president will call them out, and simply cancel what they did with a stroke of the pen, the game will be seen to be not worth the candle. Good going, Trump!

Andrew looks smug in his Atlantic logo illustration. It’s nice having friends in high places.

Remember George W. Bush?

We used to have a president so rigidly righteous that he actually refused to pardon Lewis Libby for defending his own administration and thus becoming the target of a special prosecutor and winding up convicted of perjury (in a case where no crime was really ever proven to have occurred) by a DC jury.

Now we have Barack Obama, who is not like that at all.

Intimidate voters, brandishing billy clubs in Philadelphia? You don’t get prosecuted if you were an Obama supporter. Eric Holder’s Justice Department will overrule career prosecutors for you.

Are you a governor or state official taking campaign contributions in exchange for contracts? If you’re a democrat, you are OK. Eric Holder’s Justice Department will drop the investigation.

Suppose you are a homosexual leftwing blogger, who also happens to be a non-US-citizen, in danger of getting into trouble with immigration if you are convicted of a misdemeanor for smoking marijuana on a Cape Cod Beach? You have a Get Out of Jail Free card, if you are, as Andrew Sullivan is, a faithful defender of Barack Obama and his policies. The US Attorney’s Office will go right on prosecuting non-Obama-supporting-bloggers coming before the court for the identical complaint, but will shock the court by giving you a special pass.

Andrew himself is declining to comment on the advice of counsel.

Boston Globe

Some News Agency

John Hinderaker has a comment.

The Wall Street Journal reports that a high percentage of the small number of pardons issued by George W. Bush so far have gone to ordinary people eager to regain the right to own firearms for sport or recreation.

On the surface, the list of the 14 people pardoned by the president this week shows few common denominators in terms of time served, geographic location or even type of crime, except that the felonies were non-violent. But a closer look at some of the newly pardoned shows many of them are church-going, blue-collar workers from rural areas (and ardent Bush supporters) who had little trouble finding jobs after their convictions. There is another common thread: the important role firearms once played in their lives.

President Bush has pardoned fewer people — 171 — than any president since World War II, with the exception of his father, who pardoned 74. Presidents don’t discuss their reasons for issuing pardons, with few exceptions. Nor do they tell petitioners why their wish was granted. The Justice Department’s “pardon attorney,” who reviews hundreds of petitions a year and recommends candidates to the president, had no comment.

Coincidentally or not, at least seven of the 14 pardoned on Monday are former hunters or shooting enthusiasts. In interviews, five of them said they wrote in their petitions to the government that a desire to win back the right to bear arms was a chief reason for wanting a pardon.