President Donald J. Trump tweeted that he “[w]ill be giving a Full Pardon to Dinesh D’Souza today. He was treated very unfairly by our government!” Why did the U.S. Department of Justice in 2014 prosecute D’Souza, a prominent political conservative who pleaded guilty to charges that he reimbursed friends for $20,000 in contributions they made to a 2012 New York U.S. Senate candidate? (We blogged about the prosecution in 2014 here.) The answer lies mainly in an amendment to the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, offered by a Republican Senator in response to earlier campaign finance scandals involving Democrats.