Here are quotes from four legal experts saying Obama’s arrest of Dinesh D’Souza was politically motivated
In August 2012, Dinesh D’Souza released 2016: Obama’s America, a movie that was critical of Obama.
In January 2014, D’Souza was arrested for violating campaign finance laws. Two days ago, he pled guilty.
However, even though Obama himself had violated campaign finance laws on two different occasions (see here and here), Obama never had himself arrested.
Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz said of D’Souza’s arrest:
“This is clearly a case of selective prosecution for one of the most common things done during elections, which is to get people to raise money for you…If they went after everyone who did this, there would be no room in jails for murderers.”
“This is an outrageous prosecution and is certainly a misuse of resources. It raises the question of why he is being selected for prosecution among the many, many people who commit similar crimes… This sounds to me like it is coming from higher places. It is hard for me to believe this did not come out of Washington or at least get the approval of those in Washington.”
Former Federal Election Commissioner David Mason said of D’Souza’s arrest:
“What struck me first was that it is unusual in cases like these for the FBI to go out and actually arrest someone, simply because it is not necessary… And even less so in this case because [D'Souza] has enough prominence that it is fairly obvious that he is not a flight risk. White-collar indictments are made lots of times without an arrest being made.”
Commenting on D’Souza’s arrest, former acting U.S. attorney general George Terwilliger of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius said that there were
“legitimate questions that could be asked about the political motivation for bringing the case.”
Dominic Gentile of Gordon Silver, an expert on the enforcement of campaign finance law, conducted extensive research on other people who had done the same thing as D’Souza, and concluded:
“Twenty thousand dollars? I’ve never heard of a $20,000 criminal case for campaign finance violations.”