Dinesh D’Souza was arrested for violating campaign finance laws. Why hasn’t Obama been arrested too?
More than 20 years ago when I was in college, I attended a speech by Dinesh D’Souza. He said that he was born in India, and that he had moved to the U.S. because he “wanted to live in a country where the poor people are fat.” I thought that he was brilliant.
D’Souza was recently arrested for violating campaign finance laws. Politico reported:
Dinesh D’Souza, the conservative author and political commentator, was arrested and indicted on charges of campaign finance fraud on Thursday.
In a statement, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara’s office said that D’Souza made “illegal contributions to a United States Senate campaign in the names of others” and “[caused] false statements to be made to the Federal Election Commission in connection with those contributions.”
If these accusations are true, then there is no excuse for what D’Souza did, and I hope he feels ashamed and embarrassed over it.
So why is it that Barack Obama has not been arrested for his own alleged violations of campaign finance laws?
In October 2012, the New York Post reported:
The Obama re-election campaign has accepted at least one foreign donation in violation of the law — and does nothing to check on the provenance of millions of dollars in other contributions, a watchdog group alleges.
Chris Walker, a British citizen who lives outside London, told The Post he was able to make two $5 donations to President Obama’s campaign this month through its Web site while a similar attempt to give Mitt Romney cash was rejected. It is illegal to knowingly solicit or accept money from foreign citizens.
Walker said he used his actual street address in England but entered Arkansas as his state with the Schenectady, NY, ZIP code of 12345.
“When I did Romney’s, the payment got rejected on the grounds that the address on the card did not match the address that I entered,” he said. “Romney’s Web site wanted the code from the back of card. Barack Obama’s didn’t.”
In September, Obama’s campaign took in more than $2 million from donors who provided no ZIP code or incomplete ZIP codes, according to data posted on the Federal Election Commission Web site.
Why hasn’t Obama been arrested for that?
In January 2013, in a second case of Obama allegedly violating campaign finance laws, Associated Press reported:
President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign has been fined $375,000 by the Federal Election Commission for reporting violations related to a set of donations received during the final days of the campaign.
The fines are among the largest ever levied on a presidential campaign by the FEC and stem from a series of missing notices for nearly 1,200 contributions totaling nearly $1.9 million.
Campaigns are required to file reports within 48 hours on donations of $1,000 or more received during the final 20 days of the campaign. The fine was detailed in a conciliation agreement sent to Sean Cairncross, chief counsel for the Republican National Committee.
Why hasn’t Obama been arrested for that one either?
Also, why hasn’t Obama been arrested for his 2009 crime of stealing money from retired teachers and police officers? During the Chrysler bankruptcy, Obama violated the Fifth Amendment and more than 150 years of bankruptcy law by illegally treating secured creditors worse than unsecured creditors. Some of these secured creditors were retired teachers and police officers from Indiana. Richard A. Epstein, a law professor at New York University School of Law, wrote, “Upsetting this fixed hierarchy among creditors is just an illegal taking of property from one group of creditors for the benefit of another, which should be struck down on both statutory and constitutional grounds.” Todd Zywicki, Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law, wrote that Obama’s treatment of secured creditors was “dangerous to the rule of law.” The Economist wrote that Obama’s actions could “establish a terrible precedent. Bankruptcy exists to sort legal claims on assets. If it becomes a tool of social policy, who will then lend to struggling firms in which the government has a political interest?” Francis Cianfrocca, the CEO of Bayshore Networks, wrote that Obama’s actions were “an astonishingly reckless abrogation of contract law that will introduce a new level of uncertainty into business transactions at all levels, and make wealth generation more difficult going forward… An extraordinary uncertainty has been created when the most powerful man in the world can rewrite contracts and choose winners and losers in private negotiations as he sees fit. Since this is an unquantifiable uncertainty, and not a quantifiable risk, its effect on business and investor confidence will be large and unpredictable. As in the 1930s, a time when government also cavalierly rewrote private contracts, the prudent approach for business will be to invest minimally and wait for another administration.”
Also in 2009, when Inspector General Gerald Walpin discovered that one of Obama’s friends had embezzled money from the government, why did Obama fire Walpin, instead of praising him? In June 2009, Obama fired Walpin, after Walpin accused Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson, an Obama supporter, of misuse of AmeriCorps funding to pay for school-board political activities. In a letter to Congress, the White House said that Walpin was fired because he was “confused, disoriented, unable to answer questions and exhibited other behavior that led the Board to question his capacity to serve.” A bipartisan group of 145 current and former public officials, attorneys, and legal scholars signed a letter that was sent to the White House, which defended Walpin, said the criticisms of him were not true, and said that his firing was politically motivated. The letter can be read here.
Why does Obama have a double standard when it comes to enforcing the laws against killing endangered birds? In May 2013, it was reported that Obama had fined oil and electric companies for illegally killing endangered birds, but that he had never fined wind power companies even though they had broken the exact same laws.
Obama’s entire presidency is based on keeping his promise of:
“We’re gonna punish our enemies, and we’re gonna reward our friends.”
That is the only thing that explains Obama’s actions. He is not interested in keeping his presidential oath to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution. Instead, the only thing that consistently explains Obama’s behavior is that he is “punishing his enemies and rewarding his friends.”