Stealing America

Andrew McCarthy writes at National Review about Obama's prosecution of Dinesh D'Souza, who has a new book out entitled,

Stealing America: What My Experience with Criminal Gangs Taught Me about Obama, Hillary, and the Democratic Party. For his “experience with criminal gangs,” to which he alludes in the book’s subtitle, the prolific conservative author and filmmaker has the president to thank. The book, part memoir, part polemic, part prescription, and part Kafka, opens with an account — frightening because it is so verifiably true — of one of the grossest abuses of power by this lawless administration: the prosecution of D’Souza for a campaign-finance offense.

The case was not trumped up. D’Souza forthrightly concedes that he violated the law. Wendy Long, his good friend and Dartmouth classmate, was waging a futile campaign against incumbent U.S. senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D., N.Y.). With the press of business leaving him unable to be more of a campaign presence, D’Souza decided to provide financial support. He had, however, already donated the personal maximum of $10,000. So he convinced two friends to be nominal contributors, with D’Souza reimbursing them the combined $20,000.

The offense was foolish. There are simple devices, such as giving to political-action committees, to circumvent the personal-contribution limit. D’Souza’s ignorance of the byzantine campaign laws led him to do illegally what he could easily have done legally. The statute is clear, though: Exceeding the personal limit is a felony carrying a potential of two years’ imprisonment and a hefty fine.

Yet there were patent mitigating circumstances, starting with the fact that few people actually get prosecuted at all for this offense. Even in the case of gargantuan violations, such as the Obama 2008 campaign’s own millions of dollars in illicit contributions, the Justice Department allows cases to be settled with an administrative fine. Furthermore, in the few cases that are pursued criminally, there is unvaryingly a corruption angle — the donor is dodging the limits in the expectation of a quid pro quo.

In D’Souza’s case, there was nothing of the kind: He was trying to be supportive of a friend who had no chance to win (and, in fact, was trounced by 44 percentage points). Add to that the trifling amount involved and the fact that D’Souza had no criminal record (but a record of charitable good works), and it became obvious that this was no federal criminal case.

D’Souza had nevertheless, as Mrs. Clinton might say, made himself an enemy of Obama, a man as vengeful as he is powerful. In the stretch run of the president’s 2012 reelection bid, D’Souza released his documentary film 2016: Obama’s America, which drew heavily on his bestselling 2010 book, The Roots of Obama’s Rage, a chronicle of Obama’s upbringing in the radical Left. The film was extraordinarily successful and drew sharp rebukes from the White House and Obama allies.

Read more here.

Soviet style medicalization of dissent

Mark Steyn writes,

If I were looking at it objectively, the week after Mann filed suit I would have emptied my bank account, driven across the border and got on with my life somewhere else. But I've never ducked a free-speech fight, and here I will make my stand. Had I been in the situation of Dinesh D'Souza, however, I think I would definitely have scrammed. He was the target of a politically motivated prosecution and, bearing in mind that process-is-the-punishment shtick, he knew he couldn't win, so he cut a deal. Under the appalling hacks who pass for jurists in this system, D'Souza is now discovering that, when you cut a deal with the feds, the terms have a way of subtly evolving. For example, a man called Richard M Berman, who purports to be a US district judge, has just ordered D'Souza to undergo psychological counseling.

I should say, as I always do, that I have no use for Dinesh D'Souza. Nevertheless, he is the victim here of an abusive prosecutocracy and an out-of-control judge who disgraces his office:

The psychiatrists D'Souza was first ordered to see found no signs of depression, but U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman overruled their findings and ordered D'Souza see a new psychological counselor weekly.

The guy who needs psychological counseling here is Richard M Berman. It is a common tool of totalitarian societies to classify any opposition as mental illness. You don't have to like D'Souza to be utterly revolted when a thug operator posing as a judge starts using the medicalization of dissent with the enthusiasm of any old Soviet commissar.

D'Souza is in the horrible situation of having to weigh objecting to Berman against his urge to see family back in India and being denied freedom to travel - all for a campaign finance offense that is a barely discernible fraction next to what the Clinton Foundation, Lois Lerner's IRS and Obama's tax-exempt brother are pulling every hour of the day. The fact that d'Souza's freedom to see his family is even at issue testifies to what a vile system federal "justice" is.

Putting a troublesome critic on ice

Have you been reading about the government's prosecution of Dinesh D'Souza, who made a popular documentary film that was critical of Barack Obama and has now been singled out for criminal prosecution? Apparently D'Souza made a $15,000 campaign contribution that the government believes was illegal. For that, D'Souza

has been paraded in handcuffs, made to post bail of half-a-million dollars and hand over his passport, and cannot travel internally within the United States without the permission of a judge,

writes Mark Steyn.

Steyn adds,

It's certainly an effective punishment, and not just because the malign alliance of a corrupt bureaucracy and a politicized judiciary is unlikely to end well for D'Souza. Years before the eventual outcome will be known, he will have to devote enormous amounts of time and money to fending off Obama's prosecutors that he would have been able to devote to making more movies and books critical of Obama. In effect, this is the government version of a SLAPP suit - a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. Obama puts a troublesome critic on ice, and mutes many others.

Four Senators are pushing back a little against the F.B.I. Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, Charles Grassley, and Jeff Sessions are all members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. They have written a letter to the head of the F.B.I.