AINSLEY EARHARDT (CO-HOST): Why do you have like you were singled out by the Obama administration?  

DINESH D'SOUZA (AUTHOR & FILMMAKER): Well, here's the important thing, and that is that justice is not simply a matter of, “Hey, did you break the law?” It's also a matter of was the penalty proportion (sic) to the crime? And did other people who do the same thing get the same penalty? Now, I've 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's just not a single case. 

And so, what happened here is that Obama and his team, Eric Holder, [former United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York] Preet Bharara in New York, these guys decided to make an example of me, and I think that the reason for this was Obama's anger over my movie that I made about him. I know that Obama was upset about the movie because he was raging about it on his own website, BarackObama.com. And so, this was a vindictive political hit that was kind of aimed at putting me out of business, essentially making -- destroying my credibility, making it impossible for me to make movies, write books. In that sense, it failed, but it still left a cloud over me. I would be a lifelong felon, I would never be able to vote, and never have my full rights. And so I'm very grateful to President Trump for giving me those rights back. 

PETE HEGSETH (CO-HOST): Now, Dinesh, of course the so-called mainstream media says this is symbolism, it's signaling, this is not real justice. What do you say to those who look sideways at this?

D'SOUZA: Well, I think it's important to just look at what happened. Preet Bharara, my prosecutor, tweeted out yesterday and he goes,“Let's just face the facts, Dinesh D'Souza voluntarily pleaded guilty to this offense.” Now, this word “voluntarily” needs to be put into quotation marks because, in reality, this is how this kind of thing happens. The government says to you, “We're going to charge you with violating the campaign finance law. Are you going to plead guilty or not guilty?” You say, “I'm thinking of pleading not guilty.” Then the government says, “Well, all right. We're now going to put a second charge on top of that. This is called filing a false document.” You say, “Well did I do something else wrong?” They go, “No, no. It's the same thing we're just describing it in a different way and appending a second charge, but this one carries five years in federal prison. So essentially, we're going to destroy your life. Now, if you plead guilty to the first charge, we'll drop the second one.” The point I want to make here is that this kind of legal bludgeoning tactic is used not only against the guilty but also against the innocent. It's a way of, in a sense, forcing you to submit and then, of course, they put on a very solemn robe and say, “Well he voluntarily pleaded.” The voluntary issue here is highly dubious. 

...

D'SOUZA: When you look in [my FBI] file, you see that I'm red-flagged as a prominent conservative critic of the Obama administration. Now, why is that in my file? Well, it's in my file because the FBI is signaling to the Holder Justice Department, “Hey, here's a guy you might want to go after. Here's a guy who's one of your political enemies,” and so this is the kind of way the signaling works. The signaling is within the government targeting me for selective prosecution.

Related:

CNBC: Trump will pardon conservative pundit Dinesh D'Souza, who was convicted of campaign finance violation

Previously:

The staggering corruption of Dinesh D’Souza’s pardon

The Fox News pardon pipeline

Fox's Napolitano: Trump pardoning conspiracy theorist Dinesh D'Souza is “a marvelous act of justice. Not mercy, justice”