Conservative author and pundit Dinesh D’Souza charged in campaign finance case

“Mr. D’Souza did not act with any corrupt or criminal intent whatsoever,” Brafman said in the statement. “He and the candidate have been friends since their college days, and “at worst, this was an act of misguided friendship by D’Souza. . .It is important to note that the indictment does not allege a corrupt relationship between Mr. D’Souza and the candidate.”

If that's what his lawyer is saying, it sounds awfully like a confession. No denial of the facts alleged in the indictment; "I didn't do it with a corrupt intent" is not "I didn't do it."

You have a point. OTOH, an acquittal on the basis of “no harm, no foul” would be even more meaningful than, “He didn’t do it.”
But the real point should be that campaign finance “~~reform~~” regulation is unconstitutional. Under the First Amendment, no one thinks that The New York Times can be prosecuted for favoring particular candidates, even right before Election Day. That is because the NYT is part of the establishment press. The establishment press is actually pretty much co-extensive with the Associated Press and its member newspapers.
But since the Constitution forbids Congress or the states from granting titles of nobility, the Congress has no authority to grant those employed by the AP, and by member news organizations of the AP, right which it denies to you and me.
The First Amendment gives anyone the right to print his own opinion on his own press with his own ink, and that includes printing the opinion that the printer and/or his minions are objective. But neither the printers nor the government has the authority to enforce such claim of objectivity, and indeed believing any such thing is a grand illustration of Adam Smith’s dictum that b
The natural disposition is always to believe. It is acquired wisdom and experience only hat teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough. The wisest and most cautious of us all frequently gives credit to stories which he himself is afterwards both ashamed and astonished that he could possibly think of believing.
Claims of “journalistic objectivity” have precisely the same intent and effect as claims of wisdom - and the Greeks already understood that to be a mark of sophistry in classical times.
Since the vision of the Framers of the Constitution explicitly included (Article 1 Section 8) " . . . progress of science and useful arts,” there is no case to be made that the Constitution’s framers did not anticipate broadcasting or the Internet; if freedom in the use of such instruments of persuasion has proven to be a problem, Congress should instantly invoke Article V and submit a Constitutional Amendment to the states for ratification. In the mean time, the federal government has no constitutional authority to enforce the opinions of the AP or its members.
Adam Smith warned that
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.
That applies to journalists in the AP; the newswire is a continuous virtual meeting of all of “mainstream journalism.” The result is that journalists, the “people of the . . . trade” in question, are so immersed in “a conspiracy against the public” that they will be the last ones to recognize it. Just as, so it is said, “a fish will be the last one to discover water.”
Journalists conspire against the public to such an extreme that they actually think that “the public interest” is whatever is most congenial to them. The result is that whoever succeeds in providing a tangible service to the public, and gets credit for it from the public, is in the journalist’s mind a “rightful" target for the criticism which is the journalist’s function.

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