My article from today’s FrontPage Magazine:
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| Dinesh D’Souza with Matthew Vadum, 2007. |
D’Souza’s Indictment and Double Standards
By Matthew Vadum
The Obama administration’s indictment of critic Dinesh D’Souza on campaign finance law violations is a reminder that it’s dangerous to be in the opposition when the president is a lawless strongman who knows the media will protect him no matter what.
Democratic malefactors remained at large on Friday as D’Souza pleaded not guilty to charges that he directed two individuals to each make $10,000 donations to the campaign of Wendy Long, an unsuccessful Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, on the understanding he would reimburse them, which he did not long after.
The court in New York reportedly imposed unusually tough release conditions on the bestselling conservative author, ordering him to post a $500,000 bond and not to leave the country.
D’Souza’s attorney told U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman that the facts were more or less not in dispute. “I think there’s a dispute over how it happened and whether what happened violated federal law,” Benjamin Brafman said.
As The Blaze reports,
Outside court, Brafman said there was no corrupt intent, a necessary component of the law, in his client’s actions, and he said the $20,000 in donations fell short of the $25,000 required to bring a criminal case. He said it was a situation that was normally resolved with a fine rather than criminal charges. He said there was no request by D’Souza that Long do anything, and the Senate candidate had no knowledge that campaign finance rules had been violated. Brafman said D’Souza and Long had been friends since college and “at worst, this was an act of misguided friendship by D’Souza.”
So why was D’Souza subjected to serial killer treatment, arrested, incarcerated, maybe perp-walked, for something that’s roughly the campaign finance law equivalent of a traffic ticket?
Could it be because D’Souza went too far in criticizing the notoriously thin-skinned Obama with his compelling, scathingly critical documentary, 2016: Obama’s America? The movie brought in an astounding $33 million in revenue, making it the second most popular political documentary in U.S. history behind Michael Moore’s lie-filled, anti-George W. Bush temper tantrum from 2004, Fahrenheit
9/11.
D’Souza is now arguably in trouble because Obama’s people promised retribution during the president’s second term. “After we win this election, it’s our turn. Payback time,” Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s close, trusted adviser, has been quoted saying in reference to the 2012 election. She warned:
“Everyone not with us is against us, and they better be ready because we don’t forget. The ones who helped us will be rewarded, the ones who opposed us will get what they deserve. There is going to be hell to pay.”
Some Obama apologists, incidentally, suggest the Jarrett quotation is apocryphal. They may be right.
Even if it is made up, it doesn’t matter. Chicagoan Jarrett is every bit as devious and vindictive an Alinskyite as Obama is. Whether Jarrett used those exact words or not, the quotation exquisitely encapsulates the beliefs of Obama’s inner circle, whether it’s Rahm Emanuel or Hillary Clinton bragging about the opportunities for change that a crisis presents, or Anita Dunn praising Mao Zedong, or Justice Department nominee Debo Adegbile proclaiming the innocence of cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Jarrett and Obama’s other advisers clearly think these Machiavellian thoughts every day.
Obama himself does not forgive and he does not forget. Obama threatened Congressman Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) during a meeting of the House Democratic Caucus soon after his first inauguration. “Don’t think we’re not keeping score, brother,” Obama said in an effort to keep DeFazio, himself a radical leftist, in line.
An old associate of Obama and Bill Ayers from Chicago, Mike Klonsky, wrote a blog post on Jan. 24 suggesting he has special inside knowledge about why D’Souza was indicted.
“Note to Dinesh D’Souza — You probably shouldn’t have Tweeted that racist remark about Obama and Trayvon Martin. Shit like that sometimes comes back to haunt you.”
What was this “racist” remark exactly? Two days before Thanksgiving, D’Souza wrote on Twitter, “I am thankful this week when I remember that America is big enough and great enough to survive Grown-Up Trayvon in the White House!”
Given that Obama famously likened himself to Trayvon Martin, it’s difficult for rational people to understand what the fuss is all about. D’Souza merely threw Obama’s own words back at him. The tweet may be biting or mordant but there is nothing even remotely racist about it.
Whiny Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post was typical of the leftist lynch mob as he condemned the tweet as “vile” and having “racist implications” but didn’t bother explaining what exactly those racist implications were. Among today’s radical left-wingers, racism is in the eye of the beholder, and if you can’t see it for yourself, then presumably you’re part of the problem.
Republican D’Souza may be feeling the fury of an angry Democratic president, but there are plenty of Democrats who have escaped investigation/prosecution for the wrongdoings attributed to them.
Here are just a few of such individuals:
1) Eric Holder.
Purveyor of unequal justice for all.
Obama’s attorney general is so contemptuous of the rule of law and the constitutionally-prescribed oversight authority of Congress that the House of Representatives –including almost two dozen Democratic lawmakers– voted to find him in contempt of Congress on June 28, 2012. A hateful man who rhetorically spits on conservatives, Holder is a law enforcement chief who has made it clear he considers it his job only to protect the rights of minorities and left-wingers. If you’re not on his side or your skin is the wrong color, don’t even think about getting justice from his Justice Department.
As New York Times bestselling author of Injustice, J. Christian Adams, writes
“The havoc Holder has created goes far beyond corruption on any single issue. The damage he has done crosses all components of the Department of Justice, and has trickled down to infect the systems of law and legal jurisprudence throughout the country. He has tried to transform the federal agency intended to be above politics into an institution advocating radical change and extreme remedies.”
The litany of prosecutorial abuses and selective prosecutions under Holder grows. There is the DoJ’s refusal to take up cases involving alleged civil rights victims when the victim is white. There is also: the crackdown on Gibson Guitars; the overzealous, possibly malicious, prosecution of investigative journalist James O’Keefe III; using federal resources to agitate for a state-level prosecution of George Zimmerman based on trumped up charges; using federal resources to help anarchists and activists from the violent Occupy Wall Street movement agitate at the Republican National Convention in 2012; the DoJ vendetta against Fox News and reporter James Rosen; and the DoJ’s flagrant manipulation of the 2012 election.
Holder also spearheaded an attack on the Second Amendment and lied to Congress about it. He flooded the U.S. border with Mexico with illicit firearms, leading to the deaths of a U.S. border patrol officer and many Mexican nationals.
2) Maxine Waters.
Race hustler and corrupt-o-crat.
Few politicians combine ignorance, obstinate self-righteousness, racial demagoguery, and extremism quite as perfectly as the congresswoman from South Central who has become a major force shaping federal banking policy. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), a longtime cheerleader for Fidel Castro, was only too happy to use the 1992 Los Angeles riots as a political advertisement. She viewed the 53 deaths, thousands of injuries, and $1 billion in property damage as a shining example of participatory democracy. The word riot never escaped her lips. She called the unrest a “rebellion” and “a spontaneous reaction to a lot of injustice and a lot of alienation and frustration.”
“She is one of the most self-serving, hate-filled, race-obsessed politicians in America,” says columnist Michelle Malkin. “The Democratic Party doesn’t just embrace her. It kneels at her feet.”
A few years ago Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW) named Waters as one of the 13 “most corrupt” members of the U.S. Congress. CREW cited a Los Angeles Times investigation disclosing how a number of Waters’s relatives had made more than $1 million during the preceding eight years by doing business with companies, candidates, and causes that Waters had assisted. The lawmaker has had frequent run-ins with House ethics authorities.
3) Harry Reid.
Senate Majority Leader and rich guy.
For someone with a relatively clean reputation among the press, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) certainly has been involved in a lot of shady deals. Reid has allegedly illegally accepted gifts, commingled personal and campaign funds, and made a handsome profit a decade ago on a questionable land deal. He misreported the transaction on congressional disclosure forms and stonewalled when pressed for details.
Between 2001 and 2004, Reid, in apparent violation of Senate ethics provisions, wrote at least four letters pressing the Bush administration to take action on issues important to Indian tribes that were clients of the notoriously corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff. CBS News reports that “starting in the mid-1990s, he [Abramoff] became a master at showering gifts on lawmakers in return for their votes on legislation and tax breaks favorable to his clients.” Eventually Abramoff was convicted in federal court of corrupting public officials, tax evasion, and fraud, and he served three-and-a-half years in prison.
During the 2001-04 period, Abramoff’s staff was in regular contact with Reid’s office. Whenever Reid wrote a letter on behalf of the Indian tribes, he reportedly collected donations from Abramoff’s lobbying partners and clients around the same time period. These donations totaled nearly $68,000, yet the Abramoff affair has been labeled a “Republican” scandal.
In August 2012, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that Reid was strong-arming NV Energy, Nevada’s primary electricity provider, to purchase more “green energy” from a Chinese solar company named ENN Mojave Energy LLC. This happened even though NV Energy had already exceeded its state-mandated quota for green energy (which generated higher electric bills for customers). “There’s another factor, however,” noted the newspaper, “one more personal to Reid: His son, Rory Reid, is one of the attorneys for the ENN Mojave Energy project…. [S]uccess for ENN in finding customers helps Rory Reid, and its failure could cost him a client.”
4) Lois Lerner.
Tax bureaucrat from Hell.
Former Obama IRS Exempt Organizations Division Director Lois Lerner remains at large after (improperly) taking the Fifth Amendment at congressional hearings. Lerner earned her place in infamy when she presided over her IRS division’s targeting of conservative and Tea Party groups. Right-of-center nonprofit groups were subjected to extra scrutiny under Lerner and their applications for tax-exempt status were routinely delayed. Lerner engaged in similar shenanigans when she ran the Enforcement Division of the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
5) Wade Rathke.
Shakedown artist and coverup expert.
Eric Holder’s Justice Department has not investigated the man who founded the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) in 1970 and ran it into the ground until its board fired him in 2008. Wade Rathke orchestrated a massive internal coverup after his brother Dale Rathke embezzled close to $1 million from ACORN around 2000. Some of the money was taken from ACORN employees’ pension funds.
Before it filed for bankruptcy on Election Day 2010, ACORN was an essential part of the Democratic Party’s voter fraud apparatus for decades so it’s not surprising that Rathke got off scot-free. Rathke has even been rewarded by the Obama administration. United Labor Unions (ULU) Local 100 in New Orleans, which Rathke heads, has received federal funding to enroll people in Obamacare exchanges.
6) David Brock.
Character assassin, gun-toting hypocrite, and Obama publicist.
Media Matters for America (MMfA) founder and George Soros lieutenant David Brock is an admitted liar who claims that Hillary Clinton’s enemies invented the Benghazi scandal to undermine her presidential run. But it’s not illegal to be a pathologically mendacious sleaze or to slither around on the same moral plane as a 9/11 truther conspiracy theorist.
Although MMfA constantly advocates for tougher gun laws, like many wealthy left-wingers, Brock doesn’t believe that gun laws apply to him. The Daily Caller reported that he told friends and co-workers that right-wing assassins were trying to kill him. Brock’s personal assistant reportedly carried a concealed Glock handgun around the District of Columbia, where it is illegal to do so, in order to protect Brock.
Because Brock is a friend of the Obama administration, no action has been taken against him. (Presumably if charges were to be pursued against Brock it would be done by the local government for the District of Columbia but it’s not as if the Obama administration has no pull with that Democrat-controlled local government.)
It is also not illegal to operate political propaganda machinery while suffering from serious mental illness though one has to question why donors would keep funding an organization run by such an unstable individual.
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Will any of these shady Democrats be investigated or prosecuted during the balance of President Obama’s term in office?
Don’t count on it.