You’re a Criminal Now!
In the summer of 2012, conservative author Dinesh D’Souza scored big at the box office with his motion picture 2016: Obama’s America, which detailed the many radical influences on President Barack Obama and argued that these influences portended serious trouble for the United States if Obama were reelected. The film, based on D’Souza’s 2010 bestseller The Roots of Obama’s Rage, grossed over $33 million in the United States, making it the second highest-grossing political documentary since 1982. It also undoubtedly earned D’Souza the enmity of Obama, whose campaign labeled the film “an insidious attempt to dishonestly smear the president.”
About 18 months after the release of 2016, D’Souza was indicted by a federal grand jury and charged with two felony counts for a relatively small, isolated violation of federal campaign-finance law. D’Souza, it seems, had asked friends to contribute to New York Republican Wendy Long’s 2012 campaign for the U.S. Senate and then reimbursed them for their contributions, enabling him, in effect, to make contributions in excess of the legal limit. If convicted, D’Souza could have been imprisoned for up to seven years.
The U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, which brought the case, claimed D’Souza’s alleged crime had been uncovered in the course of a routine Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) review of Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings. Astute observers, however, smelled a rat.
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