President Donald Trump has signed a full pardon for former media mogul Conrad Black, convicted in 2007 of fraud and obstruction of justice.

Black, 74, was found guilty in the United States in 2007 of scheming to siphon off millions of dollars from the sale of newspapers owned by Hollinger Inc. Black served nearly 42 months in prison after he was convicted.

“Lord Black’s case has attracted broad support from many high-profile individuals who have vigorously vouched for his exceptional character,” the White House said Wednesday in a statement announcing the pardon.

Black said in a statement that Trump called him last week.

“He could not have been more gracious and quickly got to his point, that he was granting me a full pardon, that would ‘expunge the bad rap you got,’” Black said. “He had followed the case closely and offered to come to give evidence at my trial in Chicago in 2007 on one of the counts that was later an acquittal.”

Black said Trump told him there’d be some controversy “but you can handle that better than anyone.”

He said Trump checked with his lawyer to see if he could say that reversing an unjust verdict was his motive behind the pardon.

“We’ve known each other a long time, but that wasn’t any part of the reason,” Trump is said to have told Black. “Nor has any of the supportive things you’ve said and written about me.”

In 2007, Black was convicted of three counts of fraud and one of obstruction of justice in a Chicago court and sentenced to six and a half years in jail — more than twice the sentence handed to David Radler, his longtime partner who agreed to testify for the prosecution.

Two of the criminal fraud charges were dropped on appeal. But a conviction for felony fraud and obstruction of justice were upheld in 2010 and he was re-sentenced to 42 months in prison and fined $125,000.

When he was released he was deported back to Canada. He is still a British citizen.

He remains banned by the Ontario Securities Commission from acting as a corporate director or officer of a public company in Ontario. He was also removed from the Order of Canada.

Born in Montreal, Black gave up his Canadian citizenship in 2001 after a dispute with then-prime minister Jean Chretien over his nomination to Britain’s House of Lords.

Black has written biographies of several American presidents, as well as a history of Canada.

Press secretary Sarah Sanders said Black “has made tremendous contributions to business, and to political and historical thought.”

Black’s media empire once included the Postmedia chain of newspapers in Canada and he was the founding publisher of the National Post. He also owned prominent titles such as the Chicago Sun-Times, The Daily Telegraph of London and The Jerusalem Post.

“My long ordeal with the U.S. justice system was never anything but a confluence of unlucky events, the belligerence of several corporate governance charlatans, and grandstanding local and American judges, all fanned by an unusually frenzied international media showing exceptional interest in the case because I was a media owner,” Black said.

In 2018 he published Donald J. Trump: A President Like No Other, a flattering political biography of the president.

In it, he said “Americans will likely and rightly judge (Trump) a success, despite his lapses of suavity … he is a man of his times, and his time has come.”

Trump has also pardoned Patrick Nolan, a former Republican leader of the California State Assembly. Nolan has been a vocal advocate for criminal justice reform since he spent more than two years in federal prison during the 1990s.

With files from The Canadian Press

Read more on Conrad Black from the Star archives:

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Opinion | Jennifer Wells: Conrad noir

Opinion | Rosie DiManno: Conrad Black, a life

Bungles that helped topple Black

Blacks' lavish lifestyle not a factor, juror says

Read more about: