If you don’t remember Dinesh D’Souza, he’s a former right wing newspaper writer and thinktank guy who directed a documentary called 2016: Obama’s America, which went on to gross more than $30 million from bussed in churchgoers by postulating that Obama was gradually turning America into a land where black families argued over Monopoly while Arab music plays. Sadly, it wasn’t all sunshine and puppy dogs for D’Souza after that. He was forced to resign as president of King’s College (a Christian liberal arts college housed inside the Empire State Building) after he had an affair with a student, and was sued by two different investors in the movie, who said he used funds meant for the movie to promote his books and speaking engagements.
And now, D’Souza has been indicted in federal court for using straw donors to illegally finance a senate campaign.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan said that Mr. D’Souza encouraged others to give $20,000 to a Senate candidate and reimbursed them for the donations. Election law prohibits such arrangements and caps donations at $5,000 per donor to any one candidate.
The Senate candidate was not identified in the indictment. Mr. D’Souza donated to only one federal candidate in 2012, giving $5,000 to Wendy Long, a New York Republican who lost her challenge to Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, a Democrat.
Prosecutors also charged Mr. D’Souza with causing the unidentified candidate’s campaign to unwittingly file false campaign documents. He is scheduled to be arraigned on Thursday in federal court in Manhattan.
It is not clear from the court documents what led investigators to Mr. D’Souza in a fund-raising case involving relatively small donations, in a race that ended in a blowout win for Ms. Gillibrand. Ms. Long raised about $785,000 in the race. [NYTimes]
Uh… can’t you just declare yourself a corporation or PAC and then donate however much you want? Getting busted for illegal campaign contributions in 2014 is like getting busted for drunk driving in 1958. As long as you don’t run over a fire hydrant and piss on a cop car while the cop’s still in it, you’ll probably be fine.
Gee, I wonder who D’Souza blames for all of this.