The conservative author and documentary filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza was spared prison time on Tuesday after pleading guilty earlier this year to violating federal campaign finance laws.
Judge Richard M. Berman of Federal District Court in Manhattan handed down a probationary sentence - including eight months in a so-called community confinement center - and a $30,000 fine, bringing to a close a high-profile legal battle that started with Mr. D'Souza's indictment in January for illegally using straw donors to contribute to a Republican Senate candidate in New York in 2012.
Mr. D'Souza, who has accused President Obama of carrying out the 'anticolonial' agenda of his father, initially argued that he had been singled out for prosecution because of his politics. In April, his lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, filed court papers contending that Mr. D'Souza's 'consistently caustic and highly publicized criticism' of Mr. Obama had made him a government target.
A month later, however, on the morning he was scheduled to go on trial, Mr. D'Souza pleaded guilty. 'I deeply regret my conduct,' he told the court.
Even with his fate hanging in the balance, Mr. D'Souza plowed ahead with his thriving career as a right-wing provocateur. Over the summer, while awaiting his sentencing, he published the book 'America: Imagine a World Without Her,' which reached No. 1 on The New York Times's nonfiction hardcover best-seller list, and a companion documentary film that has made $14.4 million at the box office.
The government charged Mr. D'Souza, 53, with illegally arranging to have two people - an employee and a woman with whom he was romantically involved - donate $10,000 each to the campaign of an old friend from Dartmouth College, Wendy E. Long, with the understanding that he would reimburse them in cash for their contributions. Ms. Long was challenging Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand, a Democrat.
According to prosecutors, Mr. D'Souza lied to Ms. Long about the donations, reassuring her that 'they both had sufficient funds to make the contributions.' Ms. Long pressed Mr. D'Souza on the issue after the election, and he acknowledged that he had reimbursed the two people, the government said, but told Ms. Long not to worry because she had not known about it.
When Mr. D'Souza entered his guilty plea, Judge Berman said he could face up to two years in prison. The federal sentencing guidelines call for 10 to 16 months, but the final decision is up to the judge's discretion.
'Judges are all over the map on these reimbursement cases,' said Robert Kelner, a campaign-finance lawyer at Covington & Burling.
Mr. D'Souza's lawyers asked for leniency, arguing in a court filing that their client had 'unequivocally accepted responsibility' for his crime. 'We are seeking a sentence that balances the crime he has regrettably committed with the extraordinary good Mr. D'Souza has accomplished as a scholar, as a community member and as a family member,' they wrote, requesting that he be sentenced to probation and community service at the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater San Diego.
The government rebutted Mr. D'Souza's claims, highlighting both the seriousness of his offense and what it called 'the defendant's post-plea failure to accept responsibility for his criminal conduct.'
According to the government, Mr. D'Souza assumed a different posture with respect to his case when he was not before the court. It cited a television interview he gave two days after his plea in which he 'repeatedly asserted that this case was about whether he was selectively prosecuted.'
In its sentencing memo, the government cited several other campaign-finance cases in which the defendant was imprisoned.
Lawyers for Mr. D'Souza rejected those cases as legitimate precedents, arguing that in each instance the government's memo had omitted key 'aggravating factors.'
Mr. D'Souza dealt briefly with his indictment toward the end of his new film. He was depicted in handcuffs as a voice-over from the Fox News host Sean Hannity described him as 'the latest victim to be targeted by the Obama White House.'
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