Monday on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” conservative political commentator and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza said he was prosecuted for making an illegal campaign contribution because his film about former President Barack Obama was “emotionally damaging ” to “a narcissistic president.”

D’Souza said, “You have to look at the context of this. Let’s remember, just weeks before all of this went down I released a movie in the theater, 2,000 theaters about Obama and it wasn’t just a critique of his policies. I was in Kenya at his family homestead. I interviewed his brother in a slum in Nairobi. It was an emotionally damaging movie to Obama, and the president was very upset by it. I’m not just speculating. I know this because he was regularly denouncing me on his website Barackobama.com. So when that happens and a few later the FBI comes banging on your door.”

He continued, “Now look, I admit that I broke the law, and I demand that I receive the same penalties as everybody else who did what I did. But the point here is no American in this country’s history has been prosecuted, let alone locked up, for doing what I did. Typically these cases are prosecuted when there is a quid pro quo, or somebody commits a repeat offense, they do it all the time. So for these reasons, I became suspicious that part of the reason I was prosecuted is I did something very upsetting to a narcissistic president.”

Last week, President Donald Trump pardoned D’Souza.

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