Friday, March 29, AD 2024 3:26am

Trump Pardons D’Souza

 

 

President Trump today issued a pardon to conservative gadfly Dinesh D’Souza.  D’Souza was convicted of a felony in 2014 in a donation bundling scandal when a friend of his was running for the Senate from New York and he contributed $20,000.00 to her campaign.  (As liberal Harvard Professor of Law Alan Dershowitz  noted at the time: “charging him with a felony for this doesn’t sound like a proper exercise of prosecutorial discretion…. I can’t help but think that [D’Souza’s] politics have something to do with it…. It smacks of selective prosecution.”)  When a House committee subpoenaed the criminal prosecution file of D’Souza during the Obama administration, the Department of Justice refused to turn it over.  D’Souza believes that his prosecution was political payback for his prior documentaries attacking Obama, and I think he is correct.

I have spent 35 years at the bar and been involved as a defense attorney, private and appointed, in hundreds of criminal cases involving misdemeanors and felonies, and two cases as a court appointed special prosecutor, and this prosecution stank  to highest Heaven.  The sum involved is ludicrously small for these types of cases, and D’Souza’s main offense was not setting up a political action committee to properly channel the donation.  A US Attorney would not normally waste his time with this type of “small fry” case.  The usual procedure would either have the prospective defendant come in for an interview with his attorney for a meeting, scare the hell out of him, and then grandly announce at the end that he is not being prosecuted although he should be, or to file a case as a felony and quickly plea bargain it down to a misdemeanor.  Instead, D’Souza had the book thrown at him in the prosecution.  When D’Souza decided to plead guilty on the eve of trial, the prosecution wanted to send him, a first offender with no criminal record, to prison for ten to sixteen months.  The Judge, Richard M. Berman, sentenced him to eight months of work release in a federal confinement center in San Diego, and five years probation.  During his probation D’Souza was also ordered to teach English to immigrants for eight hours each week as community service.  The Judge ordered that he receive psychological counseling.  In a truly Orwellian turn, the Judge ordered that the psychological counseling continue even though the counselor reported that D’Souza gave no signs of mental illness or depression and did not need psychological counseling.

The Obama administration weaponized the Federal government against its enemies and the prosecution of D’Souza was part of this weaponization.  Trump’s pardon sets right the scales of justice in this case.

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Nate Winchester
Nate Winchester
Thursday, May 31, AD 2018 12:54pm

I was hoping or about to ask if you had any thoughts on this! Thx, Don – your insight is always valuable.

Philip Nachazel
Philip Nachazel
Thursday, May 31, AD 2018 12:56pm

I appreciate D’Souza’s due diligence in his past documentary in 2012; Obama’s America 2016. Okay, he messed up and a pardon was most certainly in line.
I’m positive if the shoe was on the other foot, Micheal Moore making the same mistake, that with a Democratic POTUS, Micheal would of been given preferred treatment. Obama’s Administrations treatment of D’Souza was plain and simple…tit for tat.

D’Souza! Keep at it! Hillary’s America. On my list to see it. Good reminder.

Nate Winchester
Nate Winchester
Thursday, May 31, AD 2018 12:59pm
Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
Thursday, May 31, AD 2018 1:23pm

Nate W., Mark Shea to whose short post you linked is simply one of the poster boys for the Democratic Party – everything that any sane man would despise, loathe, abhor and detest. The words I have for him cannot be printed in public. Rather, it’s best I pray for enemies, whether those are enemies personal or enemies against the Republic and the Church. Note Shea’s use of the word Christianists. He soon won’t bother with the ist on the end. Why? Because his god is the Democratic Party, NOT Jesus Christ. I must stop. That man isn’t worth the rise in blood pressure straining the stents in my cardiac arteries.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Thursday, May 31, AD 2018 1:25pm

N.B. a federal judge was an accomplice in this travesty.

As for the Department of Justice, Congress needs to send well armed Marshals to arrest non-compliant officials and throw them in dungeons in the Capitol.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Thursday, May 31, AD 2018 1:31pm

We have a relation, now 68 years of age, who has been given a formal diagnosis of ‘moderate cognitive impairment’. The informal diagnosis from a close relation who practiced medicine in nursing homes is Alzheimer’s. Looking back, there were signs something was amiss with him 8 or 9 years ago. I believe Mark Shea is 61.

Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
Thursday, May 31, AD 2018 2:13pm

” Looking back, there were signs something was amiss with him 8 or 9 years ago. I believe Mark Shea is 61.”

Well, liberalism is a mental defect or disease. That would certainly mitigate culpability. Whatever the case may be, it’s really weird that a supposedly orthodox Catholic would support the party of the infanticide of the unborn and ignore all the facts that people like Dinesh D’Souza bring to light.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Thursday, May 31, AD 2018 4:27pm

Well, liberalism is a mental defect or disease.

No, it is not. But there’s been something not-quite-right about Shea for some time. A dozen years ago, I assumed that not-quite-right was his baseline and that editorial process supervised by Brian St. Paul and others cleaned up the debris. However, his problems seem to be getting worse, and not in a way that suggests normal aging.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Friday, June 1, AD 2018 2:17am

“The Judge ordered that he receive psychological counseling.”

In Scotland, such a case would never have gone to trial; the Procurator Fiscal would simply have had the accused sectioned under the Mental Health Act.

Mary De Voe
Friday, June 1, AD 2018 5:20am

May God bless President Donald Trump. I have prayed for this for many months. Political payback is not in the Department of Justice.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Friday, June 1, AD 2018 5:23am

the Procurator Fiscal would simply have had the accused sectioned under the Mental Health Act.

MPS, there’s nothing the matter with D’Souza’s head. He just made a straw donation to a congressional campaign. The judge was the accomplice of the U.S. Attorney, and Democratic U.S. Attorneys are lawfare artists.

Nate Winchester
Nate Winchester
Friday, June 1, AD 2018 6:25am

the Procurator Fiscal would simply have had the accused sectioned under the Mental Health Act.

MPS, there’s nothing the matter with D’Souza’s head. He just made a straw donation to a congressional campaign. The judge was the accomplice of the U.S. Attorney, and Democratic U.S. Attorneys are lawfare artists.

Yeah… there’s something disturbing about a nation that can apparently have someone committed to an asylum just because of who they support politically.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Friday, June 1, AD 2018 8:14am

Felicitations!

President Donald J. Trump gifted us with a “two-fer.”

He did the very-correct thing by Mr. D’Souza and he annoyed a bunch of idiot liberals [redundant] e.g., Mark-who.

Foxfier
Admin
Friday, June 1, AD 2018 8:21am

The Judge ordered that he receive psychological counseling. In a truly Orwellian turn, the Judge ordered that the psychological counseling continue even though the counselor reported that D’Souza gave no signs of mental illness or depression and did not need psychological counseling.

That judge needs to be charged with interfering with healthcare, patient/doctor relation, something.

Anzlyne
Anzlyne
Friday, June 1, AD 2018 8:45am

The “small fry” case of a man in the multitude letting his little light shine…

Mary De Voe
Friday, June 1, AD 2018 11:19am

“Yeah… there’s something disturbing about a nation that can apparently have someone committed to an asylum just because of who they support politically.”
The thought police and the gulag archipelago.

Mary De Voe
Friday, June 1, AD 2018 11:23am

“That judge needs to be charged with interfering with healthcare, patient/doctor relation, something” That judge needs to be removed from the bench for collusion, violating our Eighth Amendment against cruel and unusual punishment and practicing medicine without a license.

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