Hillary Rodham Clinton used her clout as secretary of state to do favors for foreign donors who gave millions to her family foundation — and who paid millions more to her husband, Bill, in speaking fees, a new book charges.
Records show that of the $105 million the former president raked in from speeches over 12 years, about half came during his wife’s four-year tenure at the State Department.
The claims in “Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich” come just a week after she launched her presidential campaign.
They raise questions about shady foreign money flowing into the Clinton Foundation — and what actions Hillary took in her official capacity in exchange for the cash.
The Barack Obama campaign has raised a whopping $426.9 million
[….]
Under campaign finance laws, an individual can donate $2,300 to a candidate for federal office in both the primary and general election, for a total of $4,600. If a donor has topped the limit in the primary, the campaign can “redesignate” the contribution to the general election on its books.
In a letter dated June 25, 2008, the FEC asked the Obama campaign to verify a series of $25 donations from a contributor identified as “Will, Good” from Austin, Texas.
Mr. Good Will listed his employer as “Loving” and his profession as “You.”
A Newsmax analysis of the 1.4 million individual contributions in the latest master file for the Obama campaign discovered 1,000 separate entries for Mr. Good Will, most of them for $25.
In total, Mr. Good Will gave $17,375.
Following this and subsequent FEC requests, campaign records show that 330 contributions from Mr. Good Will were credited back to a credit card. But the most recent report, filed on Sept. 20, showed a net cumulative balance of $8,950 — still well over the $4,600 limit.
There can be no doubt that the Obama campaign noticed these contributions, since Obama’s Sept. 20 report specified that Good Will’s cumulative contributions since the beginning of the campaign were $9,375.
In an e-mailed response to a query from Newsmax, Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt pledged that the campaign would return the donations. But given the slowness with which the campaign has responded to earlier FEC queries, there’s no guarantee that the money will be returned before the Nov. 4 election.
Similarly, a donor identified as “Pro, Doodad,” from “Nando, NY,” gave $19,500 in 786 separate donations, most of them for $25. For most of these donations, Mr. Doodad Pro listed his employer as “Loving” and his profession as “You,” just as Good Will had done.
But in some of them, he didn’t even go this far, apparently picking letters at random to fill in the blanks on the credit card donation form. In these cases, he said he was employed by “VCX” and that his profession was “VCVC.”
Following FEC requests, the Obama campaign began refunding money to Doodad Pro in February 2008. In all, about $8,425 was charged back to a credit card. But that still left a net total of $11,165 as of Sept. 20, way over the individual limit of $4,600. ….
NewsMax has since taken this post down in lieu of a larger post on this issue – Funny Money. In this excellent investigative article we find this:
Newsmax began its own investigation of the Obama campaign in early September. By that time, the Democratic presidential candidate had raised $426.9 million, most from small donors whose names the campaign wouldn’t disclose.
In addition to concerns that donors were defrauding the system to donate more than allowed, there were indications that millions of dollars also were coming from outside the U.S., another violation of campaign finance law.
Federal law does not require campaigns to identify donors who give less than $200 during the election cycle. However, it does require that campaigns calculate running totals for each donor and report them when they go beyond the $200 mark. The first red flag was the enormous number of Obama donors who never broke the $200 threshold.
“Contributions that come under $200 aggregated per person are not listed,” said Bob Biersack, a spokesman for the FEC. “They don’t appear anywhere, so there’s no way of knowing who they are.”
By Sept. 29, the FEC breakdown of the Obama campaign identified a staggering $222.7 million as coming from contributions of $200 or less. Only $39.6 million of that amount came from donors the Obama campaign has identified. That made it the largest pool of unidentified money that ever has flooded into the U.S. election system, before or after the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reforms of 2002.
Massie Ritsch, a spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics, tells Newsmax that there was skepticism about all the unreported money, especially in the Obama campaign coffers. “We and seven other watchdog groups asked both campaigns for more information on small donors,” he says. “The Obama campaign never responded,” whereas the McCain campaign “makes all its donor information, including the small donors, available online.”
The rise of the Internet as a campaign funding tool raised new questions about the adequacy of FEC requirements on disclosure. In pre-Internet fundraising, almost all political donations, even small ones, were made by bank check, leaving a paper trail and limiting the amount of fraud.
But credit cards used to make donations on the Internet have allowed far more abuse.
“While FEC practice is to do a post-election review of all presidential campaigns, given their sluggish metabolism, results can take three or four years,” says Ken Boehm, the chairman of the conservative National Legal and Policy Center, a think tank in Washington, D.C.
When FEC auditors questioned the authenticity of Good Will from Austin, Texas, they also issued a request to the Obama campaign to “re-designate” contributions in excess of the finance limits.
Under campaign finance laws, an individual can donate $2,300 to a candidate for federal office in both the primary and the general election, for a total of $4,600. If a donor has topped the limit in the primary, the campaign can re-designate additional contributions to the general election on its books.
But if the candidate accepts public financing — as McCain did — then he is barred from accepting donations for the general election, so that individual donors are limited to just $2,300 each. Busting this limit gave Obama a distinct advantage in the money race.
In response to the FEC request in July, campaign records that Newsmax reviewed show that 330 contributions from Mr. Good Will were credited back to a credit card. But by Sept. 20, Good Will’s contributions stood at $8,950 — still well over the $4,600 limit. The Obama campaign no doubt noticed these contributions, since its Sept. 20 report specified that Good Will’s total contributions had reached $9,375, in clear violation of the law.
Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt told Newsmax that the campaign would return the donations but could not guarantee a refund would be made before Election Day.
Much like Good Will, a donor identified as “Pro, Doodad,” from “Nando, NY,” gave $19,500 in 786 separate donations, most of them for $25. For most of these donations, Mr. Doodad Pro creatively listed his employer as “Loving” and his profession as “You,” just as Good Will had done.
The FEC also noticed Doodad Pro and issued another request to the Obama camp to clear up the discrepancy. The records indicate that Doodad Pro engaged in a flurry of giving, including 14 separate donations of $25 each on July 7. Obama officials claim that they refunded $8,425 to the credit card listed with the Doodad Pro donations. That still left a net total of $11,075 from the obviously fake donor.
LaBolt again pledged that the questionable contributions would be returned but gave no date. And the bogus contributions continued to roll in. Bart Simpson, Family Guy, Daffy Duck, King Kong: All contributed to Obama in September and October with no attempt to screen them out.
The fake donors could have been caught. Even rudimentary online merchant security procedures would have stopped donors from using a name or address that didn’t match the credit-card account. The Obama campaign had turned off most of those safety features on its Web site, industry analysts and a confidential informant told Newsmax.
That facilitated scenarios like the one on Oct. 14, when an individual using the name “O.J. Simpson” participated in an Obama small-donor fundraising drive, and made a $5 donation through the Web site. Giving a Los Angeles address, he listed his employer as the “State of Nevada” and his occupation as “convict.” The donor used a disposable “gift” card to make the donation. The Obama campaign sent O.J. a thank-you note confirming his contribution.
Four minutes earlier, an individual using the name “Raela Odinga” also made a $5 contribution, using the same gift card. The real Raela Odinga became prime minister of Kenya in April and has claimed to be a cousin of Obama’s through a maternal uncle. Obama donor “Raela Odinga” listed his address as “2007 Stolen Election Passage” in “Nairobi, KY.” This donation raised no alarm bells in Obama’s campaign.
A few minutes earlier, “Daffy Duck” gave $5 to the Obama matching campaign, listing his address as “124 Wacky Way, Beverly Hills, Calif.”
But just as with Odinga’s address, the “Wacky Way” address failed to raise any alarm bells or security traps on the Obama campaign Web site. Daffy Duck also used the same card as “O.J. Simpson” and “Raela Odinga.” Within the hour, three other new donors gave $5 to the Obama campaign:
Bart Simpson of 333 Heavens Gate, Beverly Hills, Calif.
Family Guy of 128 KilltheJews Alley, Gaza, Ga.
King Kong of 549 Quinn Street, Capitol Heights, Md.
Newsmax learned of these contributions, which all were made on a single $25 Visa gift card (oddly, the total was $30), from a source that requested anonymity.
The source said he had been following the Newsmax investigation of Obama’s campaign finance irregularities “with great interest” and believed that some of the small donations were coming from gift cards — “you know, the type of disposable debit card you can pick up at Rite-Aid or just about any supermarket.”
“I tried it myself a few days ago,” he said. “I’m attaching for you proof of the contributions I made. This needs to be exposed.”
As Newsmax dug further into the Obama finance records, other spurious donors were discovered including “Dertey Poiiuy,” “Mong Kong,” “Fornari USA,” and “jkbkj Hbkjb.”
[….]
The Obama Web site allowed a contributor to select the country where he resided from the entire membership of the United Nations, including such places as North Korea and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Unlike McCain’s online donation page, the Obama site did not ask for proof of citizenship. With such lax vetting of foreign contributions, the Obama campaign may have indirectly contributed to questionable fundraising by foreigners.
For example, in June, Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi gave a public speech praising Obama, claiming foreign nationals were donating to his campaign.
“All the people in the Arab and Islamic world and in Africa applauded this man,” the Libyan leader said. “They welcomed him and prayed for him and for his success, and they may have even been involved in legitimate contribution campaigns to enable him to win the American presidency.”
Gaddafi asserted that fundraising from Arab and African nations was “legitimate,” despite the U.S. federal laws banning such contributions.
In July and August, the head of the Nigeria’s stock market sponsored a series of pro-Obama fundraisers in Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city. The events attracted local Nigerian business owners. At one fundraising dinner, a table for eight went for $16,800. Nigerian press reports claimed sponsors raked in an estimated $900,000.
The fundraisers were intended to help Nigerians attend the August Democratic convention in Denver, sponsors said. But the Nigerian press expressed skepticism of that claim, and the Nigerian public anti-fraud commission is investigating the matter.
Just as Internet-based credit-card donations made it easier to perpetrate identity fraud domestically, they also greased the skids for foreign nationals to donate to American campaigns, especially if they claim their donation is less than $200.
LaBolt cited several measures that the campaign has adopted to “root out fraud,” including a requirement that anyone attending an Obama fundraising event overseas present a valid U.S. passport. Despite those efforts, a pair of Palestinian brothers, Hosam and Monir Edwan, contributed more than $31,300 to the Obama campaign in late 2007, ostensibly to buy Obama T-shirts, FEC records show.
Here, Atlas Shrugs compiles many of its posts and links to other on this topic (some may not work anymore, but many do.
A number of Atlas readers have written that Atlas was cited on FOX News at around 7:00 am this morning — if anyone can grab the clip …… I’ll be your best friend :)
UPDATE: Atlas broke the story with the indispensable help of researcher Cathy, John Jay, Doc, Slim guy, Randall, Laura – the individual doing the heavy lifting.
Matthew Mosk of the Washington Post did a whitewash on Obama’s fraud, do no investigative work and did not even make a cursory call to yours truly. They contacted Powerline – who did no investigative work. Great reporting work, WaPO!
While the potentially fraudulent or excessive contributions represent about 1 percent of Obama’s staggering haul, the security challenge is one of several major campaign-finance-related questions raised by the Democrat’s fundraising juggernaut.
Uh, says who Mosk? Did you pull that out of your …. ear, or just run what you were told to run by the Obama thugs. Same diff.
