D'Souza said he knew what he did was wrong and illegal and that he deeply regrets it. D'Souza enters guilty plea

Conservative author and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza entered a guilty plea Tuesday to a charge that he used straw donors to make $20,000 in illegal contributions to Republican Senate candidate Wendy Long in 2012, officials said.

The unexpected guilty plea came on the same day the trial for the strident critic of President Barack Obama was set to open in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.


The single felony count D’Souza admitted guilt on carries a maximum prison sentence of two years, but the plea agreement D’Souza’s lawyers reached with the government says sentencing guidelines applicable to the case call for a sentence of 10 to 16 months.

Judges are not required to sentence defendants in accordance with the guidelines, but usually do. Both sides reserved their rights to argue for a sentence outside that range and D’Souza’s lawyer Benjamin Brafman indicated he plans to ask Judge Richard Berman not to send D’Souza to prison.

The plea deal calls for dismissal of a second charge D’Souza faced if he went to trial: causing Long to file a false report with the Federal Election Commission. That carried a potential sentence of up to five years behind bars.

“We are hopeful that Judge Berman will recognize Mr. D’Souza to be a fundamentally honorable man who should not be imprisoned for what was an isolated instance of wrongdoing in an otherwise productive and responsible life,” Brafman said in a statement e-mailed to reporters.

D’Souza’s case has become a cause celebre for conservative activists and lawmakers, who have complained that he was singled out by the Justice Department because of his views, including the apocalyptic film “2016: Obama’s America.” D’Souza also worked as a White House policy adviser under President Ronald Reagan.

“Dinesh D’Souza, who did a very big movie criticizing the president, is now being prosecuted by this Administration,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said in a portion of a January CBS interview edited out by the network but posted online by Cruz’s office. “Can you image the reaction if the Bush administration had went, gone and prosecuted Michael Moore and Alec Baldwin and Sean Penn?”

Cruz and three other senators, Mike Lee of Utah, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, and Jeff Sessions of Alabama, also sent FBI Director James Comey a letter in February seeking more information about prosecutors’ claims that D’Souza’s case arose from a routine FBI review of FEC filings, which show refunds and re-allocations of contributions to Long’s unsuccessful bid.

D’Souza moved unsuccessfully to challenge the charges on the basis of selective prosecution, but U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement Tuesday that the case was handled without any political bias.

“We will investigate and prosecute violations of federal law, particularly those that undermine the integrity of the democratic electoral process, without regard to the defendant’s political persuasion or party affiliation. That is what we did in this case and what we will continue to do,” Bharara said.

At the court hearing Tuesday, D’Souza admitted he knew what he did was against the law.

“I knew that causing a campaign contribution to be made in the name of another was wrong and something the law forbids,” D’Souza said, according to Newsday. “I deeply regret my conduct.”

Brafman added in his press statement: “Mr. D’Souza agreed to accept responsibility for having urged two close associates to make contributions of $10,000 each to the unsuccessful 2012 senate campaign of Wendy Long and then reimbursing them for their contributions. Given the technical nature of the charge, there was no viable defense.”

Berman set D’Souza’s sentencing for Sept. 23.

In addition to capping the amount of jail time D’Souza could face, the plea deal could help minimize attention to embarrassing aspects of the case that go beyond the illegality the author admitted to Tuesday.

Evidence disclosed in pre-trial motions indicated that two of the illegal donations were routed through D’Souza’s mistress, Denise Joseph, and her husband, Louis Joseph.

In 2012, D’ Souza resigned from his post as president of evangelical King’s College in New York following reports that he attended a South Carolina conference on Christian values accompanied by Denise Joseph and introduced her as his fiancee despite the fact that he was still married at the time to another woman.

He later said in a statement he’d been separated from his wife for two years and “had no idea that it is considered wrong in Christian circles to be engaged prior to being divorced, even though in a state of separation and in divorce proceedings.”