Last updated on June 6th, 2014 at 12:44 am
Another one bites the dust. This time it’s the conservative who called President Obama a “grown up Trayvon.”
Dinesh D’Souza, author of the conspiracy laden “Obama’s Rage” which was made into the right wing tin foil fail “Obama’s America,” plead guilty in a Manhattan federal court on Tuesday to a campaign finance law violation, according to Reuters.
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D’Souza was charged with using straw donors in 2012 to give more to a Republican candidate and friend, Wendy Long, who was running against New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. He was also charged with a second count of making of false statements.
This second charge is noteworthy given his accusations against the President as false statements seem to be a thing with the conservative author. His accusations against the President were called the worst kind of smear by the Columbia Journalism Review. D’Souza was consistent in his accusations that Obama was going to deliberately destroy America as part of some Kenyan plot. Or aliens. Maybe it was the aliens from Bachmann’s FEMA camps. The Right is so nuts these days it’s hard to follow them down their numerous and varied rabbit holes.
This second charge will be dropped at sentencing, according to Reuters.
As my colleague Justin Baragona explained when D’Souza was charged, “Under federal campaign finance law, individual donors are only allowed to donate up to $2,500 to a candidates campaign. Federal prosecutors are stating that D’Souza donated a total of $20,000 to a candidate’s campaign. He had other people donate in their names and then reimbursed those people himself. Therefore, he was able to provide money to his friend who was running and make it look like others were contributing to skirt campaign finance laws. He is charged with making illegal donations and making false statements.”
The Right accused the Obama administration of going after D’Souza because of what he had said, as if funneling money illegally to a candidate is fine and should be excused, because after all, as D’Souza’s lawyer explained, he just was being a good friend.
Maybe one day someone will explain to D’Souza that when the President expressed that he could have been Trayvon, what he meant was that due to his black skin, he could have been the target of someone as bigoted as George Zimmerman or, clearly, Dinesh D’Souza. And following this logic, the notion that D’Souza expected that he could violate a serious law that impacts the democratic process for all citizens, not just him, and get away with it because he was “helping a friend” just shows that his prejudice against the first black president is steeped in the sort of presumed privilege seen among the Right these days.
You can understand why D’Souza would want to avoid a trial, given the mess he made with his “family values” affair with an also married woman, as he took a very public stance accusing President Obama of being Kenyan (having a Kenyan agenda; aka, illegitimate; aka, a birther dog whistle) and very angry (aka, “angry black man” dog whistle).
D’Souza is yet another alleged “conservative” facing accusations of criminal activity. (These people are anything but conservative, in point of fact. They are radical and often deluded.) This time it was making illegal contributions in the name of others, which is sort of like committing voter fraud only worse. Much worse.
Irony much? The party of law and order has become the party that will excuse any kind of illegal activity committed by a Republican, so long as the ends justify the means.
The Republican Party might want to examine why it so consistently attracts con artists selling paranoiac fantasies to the base, because once they whittle that tent down to just the easily conned and the paranoid, it’s going to make them sure that we are all out to get them. Yes, it can’t be that what they are selling is so rancid and full of fail that the only people willing to sell it are criminal con artists, deluded fanatics and the super greedy. Oh, no. It must be the rest of us.
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