President Donald Trump pardoned his longtime friend, biographer, and sycophant Conrad Black on May 15, 2019.
https://www.justice.gov/pardon/page/file/1163776/download
Black had served three years in federal prison for fraud and obstruction of justice and had been deported to his home country of Canada.
“We’ve known each other a long time,” Black said Trump told him. “But that wasn’t any part of the reason. Nor has any of the supportive things you’ve said and written about me.”
The pardon came a day after Black wrote a column for the National Review that appeared under the headline, “Smooth Sailing Ahead for Trump.”
The column said that Trump would easily win re-election in the 2020 Presidential Election and compared Trump with such giants as Ronald Reagan and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
“This president will have a stronger argument for reelection next year than any president since Richard Nixon in 1972 after his extraordinarily successful first term,” Black said, “if not Franklin D. Roosevelt’s double reelections in 1936 and 1944.”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/who-is-conrad-black-meet-the-man-pardoned-by-president-trump/
This was just one of many columns that Black wrote about Donald Trump.
https://www.nationalreview.com/author/conrad-black/
Trump tweeted a link to one column, “Trump Is The Good Guy.”
“[W]hat an honor to read your piece,” Trump said. “As one of the truly great intellects & my friend, I won’t forget!”
.@ConradMBlack, what an honor to read your piece. As one of the truly great intellects & my friend, I won't forget! https://t.co/3FGB0NyfaO
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 15, 2015
Trump couldn’t tell the difference between an intellect and a genuflect.
Trump didn’t forget.
Black’s columns were so fawning and obsequious they could’ve been written by one of Trump’s imaginary press agents, John Barron or John Baron or John Miller or David Dennison.
Black’s columns were so fawning and obsequious that they could only have been written by someone who wanted something in return.
Black, who had known Trump for years, knew Trump wouldn’t give a homeless person a dollar unless he would get $1.25 in return – and would then keep the $1.25 without handing over the dollar.
But Black’s columns had nothing to do with why Trump pardoned Black, whose fraud led to the demise of one of the world’s largest newspaper chains.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/who-is-conrad-black-meet-the-man-pardoned-by-president-trump/
How could anyone question Trump’s honesty or sincerity?
A year before the pardon, Black wrote a fawning and obsequious biography about Trump called, Donald J. Trump: A President Like No Other.
The book title was meant to be taken literally.
The National Post, a Canadian newspaper, included this excerpt from Black’s book:
“The great majority of anti-Trump activity in the first year of his administration was devoted to the propagation of falsehoods, which were then justified by the selective and intentional misinterpretation of Trump’s careless and ambiguous statements,” it said. “Distaste for Trump’s straight-shooting and sometimes vulgar style caused otherwise intelligent people to withhold any benefit of the doubt, and pathologically to interpret anything he said or did in the worst possible light. He is not, in fact, a racist, sexist, warmonger, hothead, promoter of violence, or a foreign or domestic economic warrior.”
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/conrad-black-why-donald-j-trump-is-truly-a-president-like-no-other
Donald Trump . . . “a racist, sexist, warmonger . . . (a) hothead, promoter of violence?”
Pish posh!
How could anyone think such a thing?
Black and Trump had a long business relationship.
Black sold the Chicago Sun-Times building to Trump, who transformed it into what is now Trump International Hotel and Tower Chicago.
“Mr. Black is entirely deserving” of the pardon, the White House responded in a statement that praised him for having made “tremendous contributions to business, as well as to political and historical thought.”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/who-is-conrad-black-meet-the-man-pardoned-by-president-trump/
Black’s second most significant contribution was building a newspaper empire worth billions of dollars.
His most significant contribution to business was destroying a newspaper empire worth billions of dollars.
Here is Black’s contribution to historical thought:
Donald J. Trump: A President Like No Other.
Black grew up in Montreal, Canada, in incredible wealth, the scion of brewing and newspaper empires. Black lived the high life on his inherited money. He was once often described “as a millionaire who lived like a billionaire.”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/who-is-conrad-black-meet-the-man-pardoned-by-president-trump/
Black and his partner David Radner turned an investment in a single newspaper into a chain of three hundred newspapers, including the Chicago Sun-Times and the London Daily Telegraph.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged Black and Radner with a “fraudulent and deceptive scheme” from their company, Hollinger International,
https://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/lr-20510
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/who-is-conrad-black-meet-the-man-pardoned-by-president-trump/
Black was sentenced to six and a half years in prison but was released after three years. He was deported to Canada.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/may/04/conrad-black-released-prison
Black described his “ordeal with the U.S. justice system” as “never anything but a confluence of unlucky events, the belligerence of several corporate governance charlatans, and grandstanding local and American judges,” followed with intensity because he was a media owner.
Sound familiar?
