Given his leadership role at a Christian college, he might have handled the situation with as much grace and care as possible. Instead, his old recklessness took hold. In the summer of 2012, before any divorce papers were filed, he began secretly seeing Denise Odie Joseph II, a D’Souza groupie, married and 22 years his junior. She kept a blog called “I, Denise, Lust After … ” on which she called D’Souza “one of our favorite conservative activist philosophers.” He admits, “I was completely blown away.”

It was too dizzying a time to deal with the mundane obligations he’d taken on, like helping to fund-raise for Wendy Long, his old Dartmouth Review compatriot, in her Senate race. The campaign was hopeless, “a joke,” according to D’Souza, and she kept asking him to do tedious tasks, like meeting with groups of wealthy Indian doctors in Westchester to ask for their support. He completely blew it off but was starting to feel guilty.

He’d already reached the legal donation limit by giving $10,000, on behalf of himself and his estranged wife. But there was a lot more needed. So he asked his new lover and her husband to contribute $10,000 and said he’d reimburse them. He asked the same of his young assistant, Tyler Vawser, and Vawser’s wife. Vawser was concerned; according to court documents, D’Souza assured him it was fine. If anyone should ask about it, D’Souza said, Vawser should say that he knew Long and that he supported her candidacy. When Long later asked D’Souza about these unusually large contributions, D’Souza assured her that the individuals had the means. Despite the trail of untruths, D’Souza casts the act as one of generosity of spirit and misguided friendship. “All of my friends supported Wendy Long, but none of them supported her like this. Why? They were too smart to do it.... I felt inwardly that I should do more. I felt an obligation to do more.” Not so obligated, it should be said, that it was worth fund-raising the legal way—like traveling to Westchester to meet with a group of Indian doctors.

D ’Souza felt indestructible, and he was on a roll. Weeks after orchestrating the illegal contributions, he brought Joseph along to a conference in South Carolina. The subject was how to apply a Christian worldview to one’s life, and D’Souza was the keynote speaker. He introduced Joseph as his fiancée to several people, even though both of them were still married to others. Alas, a reporter named Warren Cole Smith from the Christian publication World Magazine discovered that he and Joseph were sharing a room. Six days later, Smith called D’Souza to ask how he could be engaged when he was still married. D’Souza replied that he had filed for divorce “recently.” When Smith checked, it turned out that D’Souza had filed for divorce that very day.

D’Souza maintains that he was the victim of a vendetta: Marvin Olasky, the editor of World Magazine, who had been provost at the King’s College, had fought against D’Souza’s appointment. The reporter, Smith, had been a consultant to the King’s College until D’Souza ended his contract. In addition, says D’Souza, the suggestion that he was committing adultery and lying about it to his employers was disingenuous; he says that he’d already told then King’s College board chairman Andy Mills that his marriage was effectively over before taking the job. Mills, however, disputes D’Souza’s account. “I had no sense that the marriage was over, no sense that he’d separated,” says Mills. “On the contrary, it was, ‘We’re having difficulties, but we’re working on it.’ In fact over the next year, the reports [about their marriage] were quite positive…. So it was a great shock to me when we found out about the ‘separation from his wife’ and this girlfriend. That was completely out of left field.” D’Souza was promptly asked to resign. As for Joseph, “here she is, emblazoned all over the Internet, and people are discussing her breasts…. It put a strain on our relationship,” recalls D’Souza. They broke up soon after. Things were about to get worse.