No. D'Souza knowingly reimbursed someone for making a contribution. It was a relatively trivial amount on behalf of a candidate, a personal friend, who had no chance of winning. D'Souza knew he was throwing his money away but wanted to support his friend's valiant though hopeless effort. So he arranged a straw man donation. This is clearly illegal.
The equity argument in D'Souza's case had to do with arbitrary and disproportionate punishment. Straw man donations are often made, but they are rarely prosecuted and are generally settled with an appropriate fine. The classic case is the wealthy man who makes the maximum contribution to a candidate ... as do his wife, all four children, his personal assistant, chauffer, housekeeper and cook, all the senior executives in his company, as well as the 13 year old neighbor girl who walks his dog and the 15 year old boy who mows his lawn. All of these people, of course, will assert if asked that they had made authentic, personal contributions with their own funds, when in reality they were all reimbursed in thinly disguised ways.
The whole area typically involves a lot of winks and nods, and slaps on the wrist when someone gets careless. Prosecutors threw the book at D'Souza and demanded jail time. It was clear a selective and vindictive prosecution.
Although the activity wasn’t really the emphasis of my post, I worked quite a few money laundering investigations attendant to other criminal investigations and helped more than a few US Attorneys and AUSAs prepare for trial. With respect to the criminal element of the story, the truth is that both cases (D’Souza and HVF) represent money laundering; laundering money for candidates and for criminal purposes may fall under different titles and statutes, since campaign donations are “cleaner” and “not really criminal activities” (claims I’ve heard from attorneys), but laundering a donation(s) through an individual or an organization is still laundering. One could certainly make the case that the HVF instance could probably be pursued as racketeering.
All that aside, my point of emphasis was precisely in line with your statement that “...the equity argument in D’Souza’s case had to do with arbitrary and disproportionate punishment” when I referred to our apparent “dual (or more)-tiered system of justice,” examples of which are being exposed on at least a weekly basis of late.
Cheers!