Topic: WorldNetDaily
An anonymous WorldNetDaily writer does a fine job of stenography in a May 7 article:
Conservative filmmaker and author Dinesh D’Souza is calling revelations that comedian Rosie O’Donnell made repeated, “oversized” donations to Democrats – using five addresses and four different names –”an egregious violation.”
In 2014, D’Souza was fined $30,000 and forced to serve five years probation and eight months in a confinement center after he gave $20,000 to Wendy Long’s run for the U.S. Senate. In a tweet Monday, D’Souza suggested there’s a double standard in how his case was handled in comparison to O’Donnell’s.
He tweeted: “Justice isn’t merely about whether you broke the law – it is also about whether others similarly situated receive the same penalty #Rosie.”
A New York Post investigation revealed Saturday that O’Donnell made large donations that exceeded legal limits to at least five Democratic Party candidates.
[...]
But D’Souza said the facts indicate O’Donnell knew she was breaking the law.
“It seems clear, from what we know, that Rosie broke the law and she broke the law five times,” D’Souza told Fox News.
“What makes it particularly sneaky on her part is that she used four different names and five different addresses,” he said. “It seems clear that she knew what she was doing and she tried to cover her tracks.”
D’Souza continued, “You exceed the campaign finance limit, and the law is the law whether you actually know it or not.”
In fact, D'Souza was pushing fake news -- so much so that other conservative outlets came to O'Donnell's defense. Becket Adams of the conservative Washington Examiner points out that O'Donnell's donations were effectively made under the same name, adding:
If her aim was to avoid detection, having her occupation (“comic”) and employer (“Showtime”) included on the receipts seems like an odd choice. And let’s not lose sight of the fact that her name is on every single filing (how do you think the Post and the Washington Examiner found them?). Lastly, it’s probably worth mentioning that it is common for the recipient of a campaign donation to fill out the necessary FEC forms.
Put more plainly, it's more likely that O’Donnell was careless rather than nefarious. She's also probably in the clear, especially considering that excessive contributions are routine, non-felonious issue for the FEC. They are so routine, in fact, that there’s a page on the agency’s website dedicated to this specific issue.
Adams then reminds us of what, exactly, D'Souza did and why he's full of crap:
Now, let’s compare all of this to D’Souza, who is playing the victim angle hard this week.
D’Souza pleaded guilty in May 2014 to using straw donors to funnel an estimated $20,000 to a New York Senate candidate. He enlisted the aid of two acquaintances, a friend and a woman with whom he was romantically involved, to carry out the illegal donations. D’Souza promised that he would reimburse them later. This is all illegal, which is why he was sentenced to serve eight months in “community confinement.”
[...]
There’s a significant difference between over-contributing, which is a routine matter, and using straw donors, the latter of which is a felony. D’Souza is guilty of the latter. There’s no real comparison between his $20,000 felony and O’Donnell giving a combined $5,400 in over-the-limit contributions to five candidates. D’Souza used personal acquaintances as donor mules, and now he’s playing the victim.
No thank you.
WND could have easily fact-checked D'Souza; it chose not to. Thus, WND is once again publishing fake news -- one of the things that contribued to its near-death experience earlier this year, even if Joseph Farah won't admit it.
