Dinesh D’Souza, the filmmaker behind a record breaking anti-Obama documentary, has been indicted on Thursday on federal charges of campaign finance fraud.
D’Souza was at the height of his career after his documentary, “2016: Obama’s America,” became the highest-grossing documentary since the 1980s, but he’s now on a rapid downward spiral that could end his career for good.
According to the indictment filed in U.S. District Court in New York, D’Souza “willfully and knowingly” donated more than $5,000 in 2012 to the campaign of Wendy Long, a candidate for U.S. Senate.
Surpassing the campaign donation limit wasn’t enough to help Long claim victory against New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand, but D’Souza may still have to reap the consequences of the fraudulent donations.
Both D’Souza and his wife each donated $5,000 to Long and he then encouraged others to donate to Long with the promise that he would reimburse them.
According to the indictment, he ended up reimbursing others for $20,000.
D’Souza’s lawyer is currently writing the incident off as an act of “misguided friendship” and doesn’t believe his client acted with “any corrupt or criminal intent whatsoever.”
D’Souza and Long are longtime friends and both were students at Dartmouth College where they worked on a conservative campus newspaper called The Dartmouth Review.
The federal indictment is just the latest in a string of controversy that has plagued D’Souza’s career.
A few months after his film skyrocketed to success, D’Souza was forced to resign from his position as the president of the King’s College in Manhattan when reports surfaced that he was engaged to a 29-year-old woman despite still being married to his wife of 20 years.
After he resigned, even the Conservative community failed to support his literature – not because of the alleged affair but simply because his work was not living up to their standards.
Many of his controversial works lacked what some Conservatives referred to as “reputable scholarship.”
Later, D’Souza was actually sued by the producer of his anti-Obama documentary after he was accused of mismanaged the funds and making crucial decisions without consenting with partners first.
The lawsuit was eventually thrown out after a judge claimed the charges “lacked specificity,” but the legal battle was still enough to further damage D’Souza’s reputation.
In addition to campaign finance fraud, D’Souza is also being accused of causing “false statements to be made to the Federal Election Commission.”
He is scheduled to appear in court tomorrow for arraignment.
