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October 10, 2008

Times Whitewashes Obama Illegal Donor Issue

Ed Lasky
The New York Times looks at a few oddball donors and concludes this is not much of a problem. Fact is that I believe $200 million dollars came in under the $200 per dollar increment so there could be potentially quite a bit of problems since all these donors seem to have escaped scrutiny since their information does not have to be filed.

Or am I not seeing something?

Secondly, if these came in on-line, etc. they must have used credit cards, no? Or Pay Pal or some such avenue. Why can't these be traced to the actual people?  Am I missing something? 

As it is now, according to the WSJ, the turnover of records and the scrutiny will not happen in time to effect the election and it may be years before we get the stroy-if at all.

But the New York Times treats the matter as just a minor problem:

Someone identifying himself as "Jockim Alberton," from 1581 Leroy Avenue in Wilmington, Del., began giving to Mr. Obama last November, contributing $10 and $25 at a time for a total of $445 through the end of February.

The only problem? There is no Leroy Avenue in Wilmington. And Jockim Alberton, who listed his employer and occupation as "Fdsa Fdsa," does not show up in a search of public records.

An analysis of campaign finance records by The New York Times this week found nearly 3,000 donations to Mr. Obama, the Democratic nominee, from more than a dozen people with apparently fictitious donor information. The contributions represent a tiny fraction of the record $450 million Mr. Obama has raised. But the questionable donations - some donors were listed simply with gibberish for their names - raise concerns about whether the Obama campaign is adequately vetting its unprecedented flood of donors.

It is unclear why someone making a political donation would want to enter a false name. Some perhaps did it for privacy reasons. Another, more ominous possibility, of course, is fraud, perhaps in order to donate beyond the maximum limits

Obama claims to have nearly 3 million donors. One wonders how it is going to be possible to check even a third of those donors to see if they are on the up and up.

Hat Tip: Ed Lasky

Posted at 10:55 AM | Email | |

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