President Trump gave a full pardon Wednesday to Conrad Black, a former British newspaper publisher who wrote a book about Trump just last year.
According to a White House release, prosecutors accused Black—former owner of newspapers like the Chicago Sun-Times and the Daily Telegraph—of “several acts of mail fraud and obstruction” in 2007. The statement noted that the Supreme Court “overturned almost all charges in his case.”
According to BBC News, Black faced 13 charges at the time over claims that he stole $60 million from investors of his newspaper firm, Hollinger International. Despite the Supreme Court narrowing the scope of a law used to convict him, he was still sentenced to 42 months in prison. Black, who was born in Canada, moved back there in 2012 after his release from jail.
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The White House release praised Black—who as Baron Black of Crossharbour is a member of the British House of Lords, from which he is currently on leave of absence—as an “entrepreneur and scholar” who made “tremendous contributions to business... political and historical thought.” The statement noted that Black penned biographies of Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Richard M. Nixon, but notably omitted the fact that Black also authored a book about the current president.
Black’s book, titled Donald J. Trump: A President Like No Other, was published in May 2018. The Amazon description describes the over-250 page book as Black writing about his “friend” Trump and providing “the most intriguing and significant analysis yet of Trump’s political rise[.]”
In 2007, The New York Times wrote that Trump had been subpoenaed in Black’s trial and the publisher’s defense planned to use the then-real estate mogul as a witness. Trump was reportedly expected to bolster the claim that a surprise birthday party Black threw for his wife was actually a business affair, explaining why Black charged almost two-thirds of the $62,000 affair to Hollinger International.
The future president, however, was reportedly notified that he wouldn’t be called to the stand—with sources telling the Times the attorneys were concerned that the “circus atmosphere” around Trump would “work against their client.”
