Conservative activist and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza pled guilty today to violating campaign finance law by making straw donations to a Republican U.S. Senate candidate. Earlier reports had indicated that D’Souza knew he was breaking the law and planned to initially plead not guilty “to get his story out there.”
“I knew that causing a campaign contribution to be made in the name of another was wrong and something the law forbids. I deeply regret my conduct,” he said today.
But Gerald Molen, who served as a producer for D’Souza’s anti-Obama films “2016” and “America” is still insisting that D’Souza was wrongly prosecuted by an administration that wants to throw its rivals in jail.
“This administration doesn’t see its opponents as dissenters but as enemies, and if they can’t refute you, they try to lock you up,” he said.
“Normally these types of offenses are resolved with fines or community service. I and the American people will be watching closely to make sure that justice is done in the sentencing portion.”
In January, Molen’s response to D’Souza’s indictment also was blunt.
“When Dinesh D’Souza can be prosecuted for making a movie, every American should ask themselves one question: ‘What will I do to preserve the First Amendment?’” Molen, the producer of “2016: Obama’s America,” told WND at the time.
…
Molen told WND in January that the prosecution of D’Souza “is the equivalent of prosecuting a political dissident in the Soviet Union for jay-walking.” “Yes, jaywalking in the Soviet Union is a crime, but it’s a minor crime. The real point is that you are a political dissenter and the government wants to put you away,” he said.
…
“This is not the America we grew up in,” Molen said at the time. “In the America I treasured, a president would go out of his way to protect those who disagreed with the president’s policy. That’s what the First Amendment is all about.”
