Indicted Filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza Claims Obama Is A ‘Vindictive Guy’ [Video]

Author and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza has suggested that the campaign finance fraud charges against him may be a form of retaliation for his criticism of President Barack Obama.

The pundit was hit with a criminal indictment for allegedly funneling $20,000 to the failed US Senate campaign of his friend Wendy Long in violation of federal law. He has entered a not-guilty plea.

By political corruption standards, $20,000 is chump change. Even if you have low regard for Dinesh D’Souza for ideological reasons, or perhaps never heard of him, the fact that the feds would deploy their limited resources on this minor miscue seems fishy. A more reasonable approach would to have D’Souza agree to a stipulation of some kind and pay a fine if the evidence warranted it. In fact, four US Senators have demanded that the FBI Director explain how the investigation against D’Souza got started in the first place.

Dinesh D’Souza produced the successful documentary 2016: Obama’s America. Although it took a while to catch on with audiences, the documentary went on to make $33 million at the box office and is said to be the second-most-popular political documentary in US history. His new film, simply called America, has a July 4 release date.

In an interview with Megyn Kelly on FNC’s The Kelly File, D’Souza initially explained that for legal reasons he can’t comment on the case itself.

Continued D’Souza:

But I will say that I made a film very critical of Obama. I know for a fact he was very unnerved, upset about the film. I’m about to release this year a new film called America, and if Obama was unnerved by 2016, wait ’till the new film comes out. So I am a public critic of the president, and I do recognize that this has made me to some degree vulnerable to some forms of counterattack … I had heard that Obama was a very vindictive guy …”

D’Souza then talked about others who have come under possibly improper politically motivated government scrutiny:

Let’s remember that right after 2016 came out, my partner, Jerry Molen… the producer of Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List, he was contacted rather coincidentally by the IRS, and they had questions of him. So this IRS targeting which has been focused on the Tea Party groups somehow seems to have extended to the guys who made 2016. I think it is the broader pattern here of going after people who are critics. Not just me… So I think there is a sense here that Obama treats his critics not merely as people who disagree, but as enemies …

In the discussion, D’Souza also mentioned the Friends of Abe organization, a group of conservative or libertarian individuals in the Hollywood film industry whose nonprofit status application is apparently being stalled by the IRS. He also claimed that the Obama administration, following the lead of community organizer Saul Alinsky, in general engages in demonizing its opponents.

Separately, it appears that the unconstitutional harassment of Tea Party and other groups may have extended to those who already received their 501(c)(4) nonprofit status from the federal government rather than just those who applied for it. According to US Rep. Dave Camp, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, “Additionally, we now know that the IRS targeted not only right-leaning applicants, but also right-leaning groups that were already operating as 501(c)(4)s. At Washington, DC’s direction, dozens of groups operating as 501(c)(4)s were flagged for IRS surveillance, including monitoring of the groups’ activities, websites, and any other publicly available information. Of these groups, 83 percent were right-leaning. And of the groups the IRS selected for audit, 100 percent were right-leaning.”

Do you think politics and/or a Nixon-style enemies list could be behind the Dinesh D’Souza election fraud indictment?

[image credit: Gage Skidmore]