Dinesh D’Souza got his FBI file from Ron DeSantis

As the likelihood of Ron DeSantis winning the Republican nomination in the Florida Governor’s race increases, one wonders how general election audiences will receive some of his more controversial right-wing ties.

One such tie: Conservative bomb-thrower Dinesh D’Souza.

During an appearance Friday on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, D’Souza told a national audience that DeSantis gave him his FBI file.

D’Souza offered a number of charges, including that his FBI file said he was a “right-wing conservative,” a “signal to the Justice Department that this is someone you’d want to go after.”

Despite being thwarted in earlier attempts to get the file directly, D’Souza was able to get it from DeSantis.

DeSantis has been a vocal defender of D’Souza, including objecting to what ended up being an unsuccessful campaign to get D’Souza removed as a speaker from this year’s GOP Sunshine Summit.

“Guys like me can make it clear, I would not have tweeted that,” DeSantis said. “[D’Souza] says a lot of things I disagree with and that’s just the reality of the situation.”

DeSantis’ take was the move to remove D’Souza was ideologically driven.

After the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, D’Souza offered a number of tweets mocking the students as they petitioned for political redress.

“Worst news since their parents told them to get summer jobs,” read one tweet.

“Adults 1, kids 0,” read another.

From there, he mocked the students’ grief as fake: “Genuine grief I can empathize with. But grief organized for the cameras — politically orchestrated grief — strikes me as phony & inauthentic.”

DeSantis’ Congressional office offered a defense of D’Souza Friday afternoon.

“National Security Chairman Ron DeSantis conducted oversight over the prosecution of Dinesh D’Souza during the 114^th Congress amid concerns that the prosecution was politically motivated,” wrote Elizabeth Dillon. “Based on the information gathered during this investigation, DeSantis believes the pardon of D’Souza was justified.”

Danny McAuliffe and Scott Powers contributed to this post.