Campaign Fraud Doesn’t Have to Be This Difficult, Dinesh D’Souza

How dumb do you have to be to get indicted for campaign finance violations in 2014? Under current laws, getting money—as much money as possible—to a candidate of one’s choice should be as easy if not easier than setting up a FlipTree®. But even though it’s only January, we already have an answer to that question: You have to be Dinesh D’Souza Dumb.

In 2012, the Election Act limited both primary and general election campaign contributions to $2,500 for a total of $5,000 from any individual to any one candidate. In August 2012, D’SOUZA directed other individuals with whom he was associated to make contributions to the campaign committee for a candidate for the United States Senate (the “Campaign Committee”) that totaled $20,000. D’SOUZA then reimbursed those individuals for the contributions. By directing the illegal contributions to be made, D’SOUZA also caused the Campaign Committee to falsely report to the FEC the sources and amounts of those contributions to the campaign.

How else could he have gotten twenty grand to his beloved college chum? The preferred vehicle these days is to set up a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” committee to not-back-but-secretly-back a candidate’s campaign. The joy of that is that you can donate as much money to it as you want. He could also have thrown a fundraiser for the candidate — surely he has enough wealthy conservative connections in New York to scrounge up $20,000. He could have donated directly to the Republican Party. Perhaps the trouble for him on the second and third options there was that, well, no one wanted to give a clear losing candidate like Long any of their own money. She only raised $785,000 total, after all. But surely the renowned scholar with the gifted ability to peer deep into the mind of President Obama and detail his historical resentments with such precision could’ve figured it out.

It would be fantastic and funny all-around if a clown like D’Souza went to prison. We root for it! Still, you have to laugh at the grandiose language from the U.S. attorney’s office here, which appears to think it’s nabbed some sort of big prize here:

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara stated: “As we have long said, this Office and the FBI take a zero tolerance approach to corruption of the electoral process. If, as alleged, the defendant directed others to make contributions to a Senate campaign and reimbursed them, that is a serious violation of federal campaign finance laws.”

FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge George Venizelos stated: “Trying to influence elections through bogus campaign contributions is a serious crime. Today, Mr. D’Souza finds himself on the wrong side of the law. The Federal Election Campaign Act was written to limit the influence of money in elections; the FBI is fiercely committed to enforcing those laws to maintain the integrity of our democratic process.”

Uh huh. Hey, guys? We’re talking about $20k here, to a useless candidate. Let’s not get all “maintain the integrity of our democratic process” just yet. Because the “democratic process” as currently written allows for the Koch brothers, the Chamber of Commerce, Karl Rove, and hundreds of other eccentric rich people around the country to throw hundreds of millions of dollars around, in secret, however they want. Legally. So. Let’s avoid the word “integrity” for a while. That the Justice Department is making such a big deal over $20k here instead of $20 million elsewhere itself exposes the comically narrow enforcement limits available under current law.