Dinesh D'Souza Speaks Out for the First Time Since Trump Pardon - 'A Bigger Voice Than Ever'
President Donald Trump told conservative filmmaker and commentator Dinesh D’Souza that he wants him back in the public arena, D’Souza said Friday on “Fox & Friends.”
On Thursday, Trump announced he was pardoning D’Souza, who was convicted of violating campaign finance laws in 2014 and was sentenced to jail time. D’Souza and his defenders have argued that his conviction was a case of selective prosecution in retribution for an unflattering movie D’Souza made about former President Barack Obama.
D’Souza said Trump told him he wanted him to take an active role in America’s political struggles.
“He said he just wanted me to be out there to be a bigger voice than ever defending the principles that I believe in,” D’Souza said on Fox News.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, D’Souza said Trump sympathized with him.
“He said I was a great voice for America, then he says: ‘You were screwed,’ his word. He said, ‘These people went after you for a mere technicality. I’m going to set that right and clear your record so that you can be an even more visible voice for the country than you are now.'”
“He knows it was politically motivated,” D’Souza said. “I don’t want to put words in his mouth because I don’t remember exactly what he said, but he said: ‘They went after you, and they shafted you.’ Why would they do this? Obviously because I made a movie critical of Obama.”
Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Thursday that he called D’Souza Wednesday night to tell him about the pardon.
“He almost had a heart attack,” Trump said, according to CNN.
D’Souza was convicted of exceeding campaign contributions to U.S. Senate candidate Wendy Long, who was handily defeated by Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand in 2014, the Washington Examiner reported. D’Souza, however, said that he was really being targeted for his anti-Obama movie “2016: Obama’s America.”
“No American in our country’s history has even been indicted, let along prosecuted, let alone locked up, for doing what I did,” he said Friday on Fox, adding that the former president sought to “make an example out of me.”
“This was a vindictive, political hit, that was kind of aimed at putting me out of business,” he said.
D’Souza also took to Twitter to celebrate his pardon.
Obama & his stooges tried to extinguish my American dream & destroy my faith in America. Thank you @realDonaldTrump for fully restoring both
— Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) May 31, 2018
My heartfelt thanks to those who prayed for me, supported me & reached out on social media to President Trump to pardon me
— Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) May 31, 2018
In his interview with The Hollywood Reporter, D’Souza was asked about Obama.
“He’s revealed himself to be a petty, narcissistic guy. My movie didn’t just criticize him politically, it got into his life and into his head. So he unleashed his goons, in this case (former Attorney General) Eric Holder and prosecutor Preet Bharara, who tweeted today that I did voluntarily plead guilty. I tweeted back basically that you have to be naïve not to know that that’s not how the game is played,” he said.
“People who plead guilty voluntarily are not doing so ‘voluntarily.’ In my case they filed a charge that carried a maximum penalty of two years and another that carries five years and said they’d drop the second charge if I pled guilty to the first,” he added. “So the whole thing is a sham. They positioned it like a show trial where I broke down and confessed when actually I was bludgeoned.”
D’Souza also commented about the actions of Rosie O’Donnell, a Trump critic who, D’Souza said, has also violated campaign finance laws.
“She’s acknowledged giving five candidates, obviously all Democrats, in five districts more money than legally allowed, so there are five district attorneys that could go after her but there’s been no indictments. In a kinder, gentler world, she shouldn’t be prosecuted,” D’Souza said. “In the old days, a guy like Jimmy Carter would no more want to lock me up than George W. Bush would want to lock up Michael Moore.”
“But there was a gangsterization of America under Obama where he’d punish dissidents. If they’re going to do it to us, then we should do it to them. That’s the only way this will stop. In a world where Dinesh is prosecuted for one violation, why isn’t Rosie prosecuted for five?”
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