Trump pardons Charlottesville truther and convicted white-collar criminal who wrote glowing book about him

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump pardoned Conrad Black, a Canadian-born newspaper publisher and member of the British House of Lords who was convicted amid allegations he stole $60 million from investors and sentenced to 42 months in prison.

Black published a book last May entitled Donald J. Trump: A President Like No Other, full of glowing praise for his "friend" Trump. The president, in turn, praised Black as an "entrepreneur and scholar" and stated that the Supreme Court "overturned almost all charges in his case."

Additionally, Black is noted for coming heavily to Trump's defense in the aftermath of the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where the president was broadly panned for insisting that there were some "very fine people" in with the neo-Nazis. In a heavily revisionist blog post in 2017, Black insisted Trump was correct, insinuating that most the neo-Nazis were really just there to peacefully celebrate Southern heritage and violent left-wing agitators from Antifa and Black Lives Matter instigated the violence. Robert E. Lee, he wrote, "would have been as disgusted as we are by the extremists of both sides."

Black is the latest in a series of deeply political pardons issued by the president, who has come to relish his use of the one presidential power that neither Congress nor the courts has any authority to review.

He has also pardoned former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a notorious racist who housed prisoners in self-described "concentration camps" and was convicted of contempt of court for profiling Hispanics; far-right author and documentary filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza, who pled guilty to a fraudulent campaign finance scheme; and Army Lt. Col. Michael Behenna, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison for murdering a detainee.