'Spare Me Your Outrage': Benghazi Survivor Tears into Whiny Leftists Complaining About D'Souza Pardon
The office of the presidency allows a fairly wide berth — in fact, an almost unlimited one — to allow the pardoning of or granting of clemency to those convicted or even just suspected of crimes.
Presidents have used it for better and for worse over the years, often for pet causes. Former President Barack Obama, for instance, used it with relative abandon to release drug offenders he felt had been given onerous sentences. President Donald Trump, on the other hand, has saved his most high-profile pardons for those he feels have been politically targeted by the legal system.
The latest example of this was conservative pundit Dinesh D’Souza, who was convicted of a relatively minor campaign finance violation that typically results in a fine but was pursued with suspicious alacrity by federal authorities in New York state.
The pardon doesn’t actually bring restitution to Mr. D’Souza, or somehow magically gift him back the eight months he spent in a halfway house or the money he paid in fines. It merely wipes the crime from his official record. And liberals are losing their minds.
One survivor of the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, however, is sick of it — and in a tweet, he pointed to the hypocrisy over the outrage liberals saved for Barack Obama when he let five terrorists go free.
So, as for the reactions, NBC News’ Ken White said that D’Souza’s pardon “advances the narrative that some prosecutions — particularly those that can be connected, however tenuously, to former President Obama — are politically motivated and illegitimate, which is precisely the message Trump wants us to hear during special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.”
According to BizPac Review, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, was more conspiratorial, saying the pardon constituted “criminal obstruction of justice” because it was an attempt to “dangle” Trump’s powers of leniency “to showcase his own power to arbitrarily pardon whoever he wants” in order to keep defense lawyer Michael Cohen from turning state’s evidence.
Meanwhile, Benghazi survivor Kris Paronto had a message about another “pardon” he felt put the D’Souza affair into perspective.
https://twitter.com/KrisParonto/status/1002266241677967360
“Spare me leftists with your ‘outrage’ over @realDonaldTrump pardoning @DineshDSouza , where was the outrage when @BarackObama released 5 Taliban terrorists for traitor&deserter Bowe Bergdahl?! Y’all need to shut your dang pie holes,” Paronto tweeted.
Yes, in case you forgot, the former president traded five terrorists for an American soldier who was later convicted of deserting his post in Afghanistan.
In all fairness, Obama’s action was a bit more of a quid pro quo than an actual pardon, but here are the five men that Barack Obama thought were worth letting go in order to secure Bergdahl’s release, as per the Military Times:
- Mohammad Fazl, the former deputy defense minister, chief of staff and commander for the Taliban army: “Detainee is wanted by the U.N. for possible war crimes including the murder of thousands of Shiites. Detainee was associated with terrorist groups currently opposing U.S. and coalition forces,” a 2008 detainee assessment of Fazl read. “If released, detainee would likely rejoin the Taliban and establish ties with … elements participating in hostilities against U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan.”
- Khairullah Khairkhwa, former interior minister and military commander for the Taliban. Had direct ties with Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar.
- Mohammed Nabi, chief of security for the Taliban in Qalat, Afghanistan.
- Mullah Norullah Nori, senior Taliban commander in Mazar-e-Sharif during the battle with U.S. forces for that city. “Detainee continues to be a significant figure encouraging acts of aggression and his brother is currently a Taliban commander conducting operations against U.S. and coalition forces,” a 2008 assessment of Nori read.
- Abdul Haq Wasiq, former Taliban deputy minister of intelligence. “He was central to the Taliban’s efforts to form alliances with other Islamic fundamentalist groups to fight alongside the Taliban against U.S. and coalition forces after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks,” an assessment states. “Detainee utilized his office to support al-Qaida and to assist Taliban personnel elude capture. Detainee arranged for al-Qaida personnel to train Taliban intelligence staff.”
I don’t remember anyone at MSNBC complaining too heavily about this trade, or the wholesale shipment of Guantanamo detainees overseas during the final days of the Obama administration. Meanwhile, Maddow calls it “criminal obstruction of justice” and Chris Hayes whines like a stuck hippo and (falsely) calls D’Souza an anti-Semite because the president issues a pardon for a highly non-violent offender years after D’Souza served his halfway house sentence.
Nice priorities there. Solid work, MSNBC.
It’s also not a surprise that the vast majority of the outrage didn’t center around the crime that D’Souza had committed but either a) what the outraged party thought of D’Souza or b) what the outraged party thought about Trump.
The fact that crimes like D’Souza’s are almost never pursued to the extent that prosecutors did in this case — much less so publicly, as if taking down a pundit who’s only slightly more famous than Cenk Uygur and whose name only resonates among serious political junkies was somehow a massive victory for Lady Justice — kind of remained unmentioned, as did any real interest the state has in continuing to treat D’Souza as a criminal. Last I checked, he hasn’t taken the opportunity to go on a campaign finance violation spree. (I guess we can leave that to Rosie O’Donnell.)
Meanwhile, we have a very real interest in keeping high-level Taliban members behind bars for as long as possible. Remember that almost nobody twittering their outrage over D’Souza is losing any sleep over the fact the Taliban Five are now free men, all so that we could get a deserter back.
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