Conservative author and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza said that his faith in America was restored after President Donald Trump issued him a full pardon.
D’Souza was convicted of a campaign finance violation in 2014 that many viewed as a targeted prosecution by the Obama administration.
Prior to his prosecution, in 2012, D’Souza had produced a critical documentary of then-President Barack Obama. The documentary investigated Obama’s past to provide context for decisions already made as president and predictions for what Obama would do as a second-term president.
“These guys decided to make an example of me,” D’Souza told Townhall. “This was a vindictive political hit aimed at putting me out of business. Destroying my credibility, making it impossible for me to make movies, write books. In that sense, it failed.”
In 2016, after serving his sentence, D’Souza produced a documentary which presented a damning account of then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s history while exposing the history of racism within the Democratic party.
D’Souza said Trump’s call caught him by surprise.
“I did not know. I was just in my office working away and the operator came on the line and asked ‘Is this Dinesh D’Souza?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Hold the line for the President of the United States’ and there was Trump. He said, ‘Dinesh, you’ve been a great voice for freedom,’ and he said, ‘I’ve got to tell you man-to-man you’ve been screwed. I’ve been looking at the case and knew from the beginning it was fishy.’ But he said 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 wanted me to be out there to be a bigger voice than ever defending the principles I believe in.”
Most recently, D’Souza authored “The Big Lie,” a book drawing parallels between the ideology of the modern left and Nazism.
D’Souza wrote several messages on Twitter after Trump made the pardon public.
“My heartfelt thanks to those who prayed for me, supported me & reached out on social media to President Trump to pardon me,” D’Souza wrote.
“Obama & his stooges tried to extinguish my American dream & destroy my faith in America. Thank you [President Trump] for fully restoring both,” he added.
The author’s wife, Debbie D’Souza, pointed out that Sen. Ted Cruz was instrumental in bringing about the pardon and thanked him on Twitter.
“Bravo!” Cruz wrote on Twitter. “Dinesh was the subject of a political prosecution, brazenly targeted by the Obama administration [because] of his political views. And he’s a powerful voice for freedom, systematically dismantling the lies of the Left—which is why they hate him. This is Justice.”
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