No sooner was Donald Trump’s corrupt pal Conrad Black pardoned, after writing a glowing book about the narcissist-in-chief, than Black got at least two opportunities to visit Fox News, play the victim, praise Trump and attack the FBI.
Thursday night, when Black appeared on The Ingraham Angle, he laughingly claimed that his book, “Donald J. Trump: A President Like No Other,” played no role in the pardon. Nobody said anything about the op-eds he has written in praise of Trump. However, he did say, without any challenge from host Laura Ingraham, “We found the prosecutors, including the FBI contribution, offering absolute untruths almost every day. There was never any sanction for it.” And yet, Trump failed to pardon Black’s two co-defendants, convicted by the same jury, at the same trial, of the same fraud crimes, as noted by Black’s prosecutor, Eric H. Sussman in a scathing editorial. “Nothing betrays the mockery that President Trump has made of our justice system more,” Sussman said.
To be clear, Black was “found guilty of mail fraud and obstruction in 2007 in a ploy to swindle millions of dollars from investors in his media company,” Politico reported. He was also a long-time friend of Trump’s.
But the swindled investors didn’t seem to be worth a mention either to Ingraham, who said she was “really happy” Black was pardoned, or to Neil Cavuto who also hosted Conrad Friday.
On his Your World show, Cavuto began the discussion by saying about Black, "He spent more than three years in prison for charges he said were trumped up and wrong and unfair, namely on wire fraud, obstruction of justice - we’ll get into the details in a second." But Cavuto did not really go into the details of the charges.
Cavuto did ask about the process of the pardon. Black told us he first thought the call from Trump was a prank. But once he realized it was truly Trump, “I told him he did me great honor by phoning and he couldn't have been more gracious," Black said.
Then Black worked in his attacks on the U.S. legal system. He said he had been “authorized” to say that Trump’s “motivation” for the pardon was that his legal team, along with Alan Dershowitz, had “looked through the material” and “concluded that I never should have been charged.”
"You probably had a common shared bond about overzealous prosecutors there,” Cavuto said helpfully. “Did he talk to you about that?"
Why, yes they did discuss that. Black said Trump spoke of "a few well known figures, at least one of whom he has described as a bad cop, came up and just by complete coincidence and on a very trivial level, I was contending with some of the same people who have been harassing him."
Cavuto was eager for more details. "Was James Comey among those people?" he asked.
"He figured prominently in that part of the conversation, yeah," Black said. Later, he underscored the point, saying, “You’ve got terrible problems in the justice system.”
Cavuto did not ask about Black’s co-defendants. However, he did try to dispel the notion that Black was pardoned because of his book. Although Cavuto called it “largely flattering,” he thought it important to note, “It wasn’t entirely all fawning.”
Watch Fox whitewash Trump’s corruption below, from the May 16, 2019 The Ingraham Angle and above from the May 17, 2019 Your World. We would not be surprised if Black gets a Fox News contract just to "comment" on the FBI.
Published with permission from News Hounds.