Conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza’s indictment for alleged campaign finance violations in the 2012 U.S. Senate race in New York is coming under scrutiny by a team of four Republican senators questioning whether the prosecution is politically motivated.
D’souza was indicted in late January for election fraud for allegedly using straw donors to contribute $20,000 to the losing New York U.S. Senate campaign of his friend, Wendy Long. Facing a maximum of two years in prison, D’Souza pled not guilty and made $500,000 bail. “I’m going to proceed with my work and my ideas and the film will be unimpeded by whats going on,” D’Souza told The Daily Caller before embarking on a publicity tour for his upcoming documentary, “America,” which will be released in June.
Republican Sens. Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Chuck Grassley and Jeff Sessions recently signed a letter to FBI director James Comey asking for clarification on the “routine review by the FBI” of the 2012 New York Senate race that yielded the indictment against D’Souza. The letter quoted Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz’s statement that D’Souza appears to be the victim of “selective prosecution.”
Preet Bharara, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York which includes Manhattan, announced the indictment against D’Souza and is handling the filmmaker’s prosecution. Bharara’s office declined to tell TheDC whether anyone else has been charged or is expected to be charged as a result of the “routine review.”
Bharara is an Obama appointee and Obama inaugural donor, records reveal. The man who has positioned himself as an anti-Wall Street corruption crusader cut his teeth as a protege of Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer and is now a top prospect for an Attorney General gig in a Hillary Clinton administration. Here are seven facts you need to know about Bharara:
1. Donated to Obama’s inauguration four months before earning an Obama appointment to his current job as U.S. Attorney
Bharara, then based in Bethesda, Maryland, contributed $324 to Obama’s 2009 inauguration, according to a database maintained by the Center for Responsive Politics. Obama nominated Bharara to be U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York on May 15, 2009. Obama called Bharara and his fellow May 15 nominees “fair, tenacious and respected attorneys throughout their careers” who “will serve their country with distinction as U.S. Attorney.”
2. Was rumored to replace Eric Holder as Attorney General in the Obama administration
Bharara was the subject of growing February 2012 speculation in Washington, D.C. that he would replace Holder as Attorney General if Obama won re-election. A Bharara spokesperson declined to deny the speculation but said that Bharara is uninterested in leaving his U.S. Attorney job “so long as the President will have him.”
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