Conservative author and documentarian Dinesh D’Souza says he has been contemplating the possibility of going to prison ever since pleading guilty to a campaign finance law violation.
“Yes, I have thought about it. It is something that I have to cope with,” D’Souza told The Daily Caller in a recent interview about his new book, “America: Imagine A World Without Her.” “It’s certainly not an inevitability. It is in the hands of a judge who will make a decision about that at the end of September. I did something foolish and wrong, which is to say I exceeded the campaign finance limit and I take responsibility for that.”
D’Souza pleaded guilty last month to reimbursing associates of $20,000 they donated to D’Souza’s college friend’s 2012 long-shot Senate campaign, in violation of campaign finance laws. Sentencing is slated for September, where D’Souza could be sent to prison.
The New York Times reported in April that prosecutors were in possession of a recording in which one of D’Souza’s straw donors, who he had a relationship with, is caught on tape discussing the arrangement with her husband.
“Prosecutors also said they had obtained a copy of a recording made surreptitiously last October by the husband of a woman Mr. D’Souza was involved with romantically around the time of the donations, when Mr. D’Souza was separated from his wife,” the New York Times reported. “In making the recording, the husband was not acting at the government’s direction, prosecutors said. The woman, Denise Joseph, was one of the alleged straw donors.”
D’Souza told TheDC that prosecutors obtained the recording after he was already charged with the crime and therefore, his indictment was not the result of a lover’s triangle gone wrong. D’Souza said he believed that he was targeted for his outspoken criticism of the Obama administration, seen most notably in his 2012 documentary, “2016: Obama’s America,” which was the fourth highest grossing documentary of all time.
“Quite apart from me the Obama administration has shown itself quite willing to go after its adversaries and ignore in some cases the greater offenses of its own allies,” he said.
TheDC will be featuring more segments of its interview with D’Souza over the next week.