Conservative author and activist Dinesh D’Souza said Friday that his pardon from President Trump is proof that Trump wanted him to have “a bigger voice than ever” in the conservative movement.
In an interview with “Fox & Friends,” the former American Enterprise Institute scholar said Trump told him on a phone call that he felt a great “injustice” had been done to D’Souza in his 2014 New York conviction for illegal campaign donations.
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“The president said, ‘Dinesh, you have been a great voice for freedom,’ ” D’Souza claimed. “And he said that ‘I got to tell you man-to-man, you’ve been screwed.’ “
“He goes, ‘I have been looking at the case. I knew from the beginning that it was fishy,’ ” he continued. “Upon reviewing it, he felt a great injustice had been done and that using his power, he was going to rectify it, sort of clear the slate and he said he just wanted me to be out there, to be a bigger voice than ever, defending the principles that I believe in.”
Trump announced the conservative writer’s pardon on Thursday, claiming in a tweet that D’Souza had been treated “unfairly” by the Obama administration.
D’Souza on Friday maintained that argument, alleging that the Obama administration convicted him because the president and his team wanted to “make an example” of him through his prosecution for illegally donating $20,000 to a New York politician.
“I have become very familiar with these campaign finance cases over the past several years. No American in our country’s history has ever been indicted, let alone prosecuted, let alone locked up for doing what I did. There is just not a single case,” D’Souza said.
“So, what happened here is Obama and his team, [Attorney General] Eric Holder, [District Attorney] Preet Bharara in New York, these guys decided to make an example of me,” he charged. “This was a vindictive political hit that was kind of aimed at putting me out of business.”
Prominent Americans including the father of White House aide Jared Kushner, Charles Kushner, have been convicted of illegal campaign donations in the past and served high-profile prison sentences.