Posted on 01/26/2014 6:48:03 PM PST by SeekAndFind
The indictment of a major critic of the president has elicited little more than yawns from the media.
This is a case where you don’t even have to connect the dots. Just read a little history:
After news broke Thursday that federal prosecutors had charged conservative commentator, author, film-maker and professional Obama-basher Dinesh D’Souza with violating campaign finance laws, Walter Olson at the Overlawyered blog posted on the relatively mild civil sanction meted out to a “big-league trial lawyer” who’d done pretty much the same thing D’Souza is accused of. D’Souza has been indicted for allegedly paying $20,000 to reimburse straw donors to the campaign of Republican Senate candidate Wendy Long, who lost a 2012 contest against incumbent Kirsten Gillibrand. Arkansas trial lawyer Tab Turner, as Overlawyered recounted in 2006, reimbursed donors of $8,000 to John Edwards’ 2004 presidential campaign and just had to cough up a $9,500 civil fine. By highlighting the contrast in his post Thursday, Olson seemed to be suggesting that D’Souza has been selectively targeted for prosecution because he’s so critical of the Obama administration.
Former acting U.S. attorney general George Terwilliger of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius raised the same suggestion in an interview Friday. Terwilliger, who served in the administration of two Republican presidents and later defended noted Los Angeles lawyer Pierce O’Donnell against campaign finance charges similar to those leveled against D’Souza, told me there are “legitimate questions that could be asked about the political motivation for bringing the case.” Want more conspiracy theorism? Dominic Gentile of Gordon Silver, who represented Nevada campaign finance defendant Harvey Whittemore, conducted exhaustive research on so-called conduit payments of the sort D’Souza is accused of making. In Whittemore’s sentencing memo, he documented civil and criminal penalties in “straw donor” cases. “Twenty thousand dollars?” Gentile told me. “I’ve never heard of a $20,000 criminal case” for campaign finance violations.” And at D’Souza’s arraignment Friday in Manhattan federal court, his own lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, told U.S. District Judge Richard Berman that whatever D’Souza did, his conduct wasn’t criminal.
This thing stinks to high heaven of political motivation.
First, there is this very curious note in the DoJ press release on how D’Souza’s crime was discovered:
The Indictment is the result of a routine review by the FBI of campaign filings with the FEC by various candidates after the 2012 election for United States Senator in New York. Mr. Bharara praised the investigative work of the FBI.
How is it possible that a measly $20,000 in donations could leap out at investigators during a “routine review”? Most people charged with this crime front hundreds of thousands of dollars — and end up with far lesser charges. And are we to believe this “routine review” only snared Mr. D’Souza? If $20,000 in contributions leapt out at the FBI, are we to believe that D’Souza is the only contributor guilty of setting up straw donations? Where are the other lawbreakers?
And why refer to D’Souza as a “former college president” rather than what he’s vastly more famous for — a conservative writer and filmmaker — if not to attempt to obscure the political nature of the prosecution?
The press release goes out of its way to mention D’Souza could go to jail for his crimes:
D’SOUZA, 52, of San Diego, California, is charged with one count of causing $20,000 in illegal campaign contributions to be made to a candidate for the United States Senate in calendar year 2012, which carries a maximum sentence of two years in prison. He also is charged with one count of causing false statements to be made to the FEC in connection with the illegal campaign contributions, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.
But as the Reuters blog points out, prosecuting and sending someone to jail for funneling $20 grand illegally to a campaign is unheard of.
Armed with this kind of information, you would think one — or maybe two — beat reporters at Justice would bestir themselves to at least ask Holder’s hack press secretary some questions along the lines of those raised above. Perhaps a talk with the FBI might be in order as well.
In both instances, they will get the usual runaround (“we don’t comment on open criminal cases”). But this case is apparently so unusual that you would think someone inside DoJ might be willing to fill in some blanks.
There’s nothing new about politically motivated prosecutions. But this particular prosecution seems so petty, so petulant, that only someone schooled in Chicago Way politics would approve it.
Does that bring anyone to mind? Bueller? Bueller?
Leftists have made a lot of racist remarks about him. Nobody seems to have noticed.
To update the “White House Ties” graphic, you could substitute White House Press Shill Jay Carney for Nides, since he is married to ABC correspondent Claire Shipman. Or there are probably (and sadly) scores of other examples....
Got a little mixed metaphor thing goin' on there.
Maybe Rush will pick up on that and repeat them in a way that the media will react to...like he did with the "magic negro" comment.
Its all about stopping his new movie, “America”, trailer
http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/473006-dinesh-dsouza-america-trailer-released-video/
Beware the media-political complex.
Wonder why the GOPe never pushed for an investigation of commander zero’s campaign contributions? How much came from Soros, Saudis and other enemies?
“Pamela Geller (the Atlas Shrugs lady) has for sometime now (rightly) referred to the MSM as the “enemedia.””
That’s actually quite Joycean.
More like the enemamedia, considering what they’re full of.
Yeah. It’s got multiple allusions. That’s why it’s Joycean.
He probably showed up on the other end of some transactions that a probe of someone else turned up.
Why do you think that in the same week as this arrest, and also in New York of all places, James O'Keefe announced that he is being investigated by New York's Dept. of Labor, and they are demanding 3 years of his financial records?
I say that the NY Dept. of Labor doesn't reallyy care about O'Keefe's finances; they only want to know who he's doing business with, so they can persecute those people too. People like D'Souza.
Something ugly is going on in New York these days.
-PJ
No, they’re called collaborators, and we know what happens to them in the end.
Looks like the FBI, under the new director Comy, has been totally compromised.
Then again, what did you expect?
This isn’t the FBI I used to work with. The Dems have so subverted and perverted it, that, like DOJ, its leadership is political corrupt or cowards.
Men like Asst. Directors Bill Sullivan and Ray Wannell, my old friends and acquaintances, would never have put up with this type of political corruption.
The KGB didn’t have to infiltrate to achieve this degress of emasculation, or did they?
Prediction: O’Keefe is next.
Can be referred to as Jo-whore-no-lists.
////////////////
If the shoe fits . . . .
That’s actually quite Joycean.
//////////////
Wow! Your erudition is showing! ;-)
“Your erudition is showing”
Thanks for letting me know.
I will cover it.
The D’Souza Arrest: Obama Adopts the Stalinist Style
Posted By Robert Spencer On January 27, 2014 @ 12:58 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 223 Comments
I’m no fan of Dinesh D’Souza, but this is ridiculous.
Dinesh and I locked horns a few years back when he attacked me in his book The Enemy At Home, saying that books like mine should not be written. His line was that Islam was a religion of peace, that pious, morally upright Muslims had been driven to lash out against the U.S. because of the immorality of our pop culture, and that American conservatives should ally with what he termed “conservative Muslims” against their common, amoral Leftist foe.
He and I debated this at CPAC in 2007 and on several radio shows, which grew increasingly heated as he charged me with “Islamophobia” (a term used by Muslim Brotherhood entities to stigmatize opposition to jihad terror) and invoked Saudi-funded Islamic apologist John Esposito as an authority.
The ensuing years have only shown more vividly what nonsense Dinesh’s position was, as “conservative Muslims” the world over wage jihad against America, and non-Muslims everywhere, more furiously than ever.
I rehash all this to show the falsehood of the line that has been circulating around in the Leftist media ever since Dinesh D’Souza was indicted: that only people who share D’Souza’s views are concerned about his indictment. As Tal Kopan put it in Politico, “In the wake of the indictment of conservative author and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza for alleged fraud, conservatives are crying foul that it is evidence of the Obama administration punishing its critics.”
Liberals should be as concerned about this as conservatives. Foes of jihad should be just as concerned about it as those who share D’Souza’s worries about “Islamophobia.” For the evidence is mounting that D’Souza has indeed been targeted for being a public and high-profile foe of Barack Obama – a development that should disquiet anyone who believes in the value of a stable, functioning republic with a loyal opposition. Pamela Geller notes here that D’Souza is not remotely the only conservative or Obama critic who has been targeted for prosecution, while Obama’s Justice Department has turned a blind eye to illegal campaign contributions from Gaza during Obama’s 2008 campaign. And then there was the Obama Justice Department’s dismissal of the New Black Panthers voter intimidation case.
What’s more, bail for D’Souza was set higher than that given to several people accused of attempted murder, rape, assault, and the like. To whom is Dinesh D’Souza more dangerous than a man who sexually assaulted a teenager, or a man who kept old men captive in a filthy “dungeon”?
This is something new in American politics. When I was six years old, I took notice of the presidential campaign, and asked my father who was the “good guy”: Richard Nixon or Hubert Humphrey. My father answered, “They’re both good men. They both want to do what is right for the country. They just disagree on what some of the right things to do may be.”
That kind of respect for the opposition was commonplace in America back in 1968, but it has all but vanished now. I remember being taken aback in college by the obscene, relentless, vicious hatred that the Left directed toward Ronald Reagan – I was at that time entirely sympathetic with their disdain for him, but the frenzy with which they expressed it, their wild furious contempt, shocked me. And that was nothing compared to what they had in store for George W. Bush. The Democratic Party as a whole, along with the entire Leftist establishment, adopted the Alinskyite tactic of ridiculing, mocking and smearing their foes instead of engaging them on the level of ideas. Leftists now routinely portray their opponents as simultaneously stupid and evil, idiotic but crafty; it’s practically a reflex.
Decades of this have poisoned the well of American politics, and paved the way for Obama to take the demonization to the next level by unleashing the law on them. Arresting prominent members of the opposition is the kind of behavior we have seen from the likes of Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler; it is a hallmark of authoritarianism, not (until now) of politics in the United States. Of course, Stalin and Hitler didn’t stop with arresting their foes; they had them murdered as well, usually after a show trial. Obama is not doing that, but is even one step down this road one that Americans want to take?
Leftist pundits who are waving away concern over the arrest of D’Souza should bear in mind that the worm could turn. They could, for some reason or another, find themselves somewhere down the line opposing the Obama regime or some other presidency that apes Obama’s strategy. Then those who are claiming that only believers in crazy “conspiracy theories” are concerned about the Obama Justice Department’s (to say nothing of the Obama IRS) clear pattern of singling out opponents of the President for prosecution while ignoring more serious crimes among his friends may find themselves on the receiving end of this tactic.
Civility and mutual respect are in dire need of restoration in the American public square, but two have to play at that game, and only one side is even interested in the game at all. With the arrest of Dinesh D’Souza, Barack Obama has adopted a key feature of the Stalinist style of politics. Before he or anyone else gets the idea of adopting anything else from the authoritarians’ playbook, Americans – Left and Right – would be well-advised to stand together to repudiate him and these tactics once and for all, and resoundingly.
But by relentlessly demonizing their opponents, Barack Obama and his cohorts have almost certainly already made that impossible.
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