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From dwarves to Dems: There should be no big mystery as to why Alwaleed bin Talal, the Saudi prince Bill Gates talked into giving away all his money to charity, is dumping his riches. No one’s given away all of his money since the last saint more than 2000 years ago. Charity is no longer as conventional as it once was. In the case of the notorious Clinton Foundation, charity eloped with power and has never been the same. Is Prince bin Talal, whose $32 billion fortune makes it possible, about to buy immortality for the Democrats? Now that Barack...

Washington (CNN)—The first black Republican woman elected to Congress is returning $1,000 in donations from Earl Holt, the alleged white supremacist whose writings have reportedly inspired Charleston shooter Dylann Roof. A spokesman for U.S. Rep. Mia Love said Monday that she would be returning the three donations Holt made to her campaign immediately, after being contacted by CNN. Love made history last November when Utah residents selected her as the first black Republican woman to serve in Congress. Holt, who is president Council of Conservative Citizens, donated thousands of dollars to Republican candidates Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Rick Santorum...

How do Warren Buffett and Bill Gates convince the world's wealthiest people to give away most of their fortunes? The billionaires have organized the "Giving Pledge,” an initiative launched five years ago to convince others to donate at least half of their wealth to charitable causes around the world.

WASHINGTON // A Pakistani immigrant who hosted fundraisers for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is being sought by the FBI on allegations that he funneled illegal contributions to Clinton's political action committee and to Sen. Barbara Boxer's 2004 re-election campaign. Authorities say Northridge, Calif., businessman Abdul Rehman Jinnah, 56, fled the country shortly after being indicted on charges of engineering more than $50,000 in illegal donations to the Democratic committees. A business associate charged as Jinnah's co-conspirator has entered a guilty plea and is scheduled to be sentenced in Los Angeles next week. ...The case has transformed Jinnah from a political...

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, her Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills, and Sen. Bob Menendez (D., N.J.) supported a visa waiver for the daughter of a fugitive Ecuadorian banker in exchange for significant campaign contributions to the Democratic Party. On Tuesday, NBC 4 New York reported that Menendez, with express written support from Clinton, intervened on behalf of Estefania Isaías, who was banned from traveling to the U.S. due to accusations of visa fraud. Isaías is the daughter of Roberto Isaias, who lives in Miami and is currently fighting extradition to Ecuador for banking crimes and under investigation for...

A number of foreign donors pledged new support for Clinton Foundation efforts during a conference in Marrakech last week, raising questions about the strength of Hillary Clinton's campaign promise to cut off foreign donations to her family philanthropy while she runs for president. The Kingdom of Morocco was among the foreign entities that committed to new projects at the Clinton Global Initiative event, which drew dozens of big-ticket donors to the country for a three-day meeting headlined by Bill Clinton. Hillary was slated to attend the Marrakech conference before her name was quietly removed from the schedule earlier this year...

A good chunk of the $100 million raised to restore St. Patrick’s Cathedral has come from non-Catholics — a testament to the love and respect New Yorkers have for all religions, Timothy Cardinal Dolan said Monday. “We couldn’t be that far were it not for non-Catholic benefactors who have been extraordinarily good to us,” Dolan said in an Association for a Better New York speech. One “prominent Jewish man” told Dolan that as a child he loved visiting St. Patrick’s, where his mother would always light a candle. “He said, ‘I don’t think she ever paid for them so ....

Link only - Clinton Foundation Failed to Disclose 1,100 Foreign Donations

When I heard that Bill Clinton was making as much as $500,000 per speech and made many more millions in his post-presidency, I thought to myself, God bless him. This is the American way. Former President Clinton’s speaker fees are probably in line with other former presidents who draw big fees, maybe bigger owing to his global popularity. But God bless them all. Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/clinton-foundation-cash-controversy/2015/04/27/id/640856/#ixzz3YWUqOdC0 Urgent: Rate Obama on His Job Performance. Vote Here Now!

Perhaps not the the most effective messaging in the history of politics, but this is the corner in which Team Hillary finds itself, in the wake of two major bombshells that detonated this morning: Shorter Clinton Campaign: “All of this smoke is not caused by a fire.” https://t.co/E6gUyAuuuj pic.twitter.com/U4Zv5fWO7Q— Logan Dobson (@LoganDobson) April 23, 2015 The New York Times (building on reporting in the forthcoming book ‘Clinton Cash’) revealed the sordid web of cash and coziness wherein the Clintons and their foundation found themselves much richer, and the Russian government found itself in possession of a very large percentage...

Clinton charities will refile YEARS of tax returns after misreporting tens of millions of dollars in donations from foreign governments A Reuters investigation uncovered errors in tax returns filed by the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Health Access Initiative For 3 years, the Clinton Foundation reported it had received nothing from foreign and U.S. governments - despite receiving millions previously It will now refile its tax returns from 2010, 2011 and 2012 but has not ruled out reviewing tax returns extending back as many as 15 years The Clinton Health Access Initiative is refiling forms from at least 2 years...

Link only per rules. http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/23/us-usa-election-clinton-taxes-exclusive-idUSKBN0NE0CA20150423

Last week, GOP chief weasel, Reince Priebus, was squawking about Hillary Clinton and how she allegedly gotten all this money from the kings of other countries, which would, of course, be illegal. The supposedly unbiased PolitiFact decided to look at his claims. Their findings: "Priebus said Clinton took "money from kings of Saudi Arabia and Morocco and Oman and Yemen." The monarchies of Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Oman have contributed to the Clinton Foundation, but Yemen, which does not have a king, has not.

Major contributors like the Koch brothers and Tom Steyer would get a break on gift taxes to secretive non-profit groups. The House on Wednesday with little fanfare passed legislation that would protect major donors like the Koch brothers and Tom Steyer from having to pay gift taxes on huge donations to secret money political groups. The legislation, which now heads to the Senate, is seen by fundraising operatives as removing one of the few remaining potential obstacles to unfettered big-money spending by nonprofit groups registered under a section of the Tax Code — 501(c) — that allows them to shield...

Is it a good thing or a bad thing that a presidential candidate demonstrates an ability to raise enough money to effectively reach the “inhabitants of America” with his political message? On Friday, National Public Radio’s The Diane Rehm Show took a further drag on our tax dollars to take incredulous note of the fact that four Super PACs supportive of Republican Ted Cruz’s campaign for president declared having collected, collectively, $31 million. One of Diane’s guests, Neal King, Jr., with the Wall Street Journal, explained that all four PACs associated with the Cruz effort sport the “Keep the Promise”...

Millionaire Robert Mercer helps him raise an 'eye-popping' $31M right off the bat.If other GOP contenders shrugged off Ted Cruz's chances of winning the nomination, it's a safe bet they're reassessing things after four new super PACS announced they'd raised a staggering $31 million to support his new candidacy. "Even in the context of a presidential campaign cycle in which the major party nominees are expected to raise more than $1.5 billion, Cruz’s haul is eye-popping, one that instantly raises the stakes in the Republican fundraising contest," writes Mark Halperin at Bloomberg. The super PACs in question are only a...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: This is classic, too. You know these two guys, Heilemann and Mark Halperin, that we talk about a lot here? They've got this Internet show at Bloomberg, and they're classic. Halperin may be a little bit more informed about us than your average Drive-By Media person, but it doesn't do him much good. These are the two guys that write campaign books. They learn all the stuff that would kill a Democrat candidate, and they hold it for after the election for their book, it's those two guys. Halperin used to be at ABC, political director, whatever....

According to a Wednesday story in Bloomberg, the Ted Cruz for President Campaign has let it be known that a group of super PACs associated with the campaign expects to have $31 million in the bank by Friday. This feat is impressive considering that the Cruz campaign is not even two weeks old, and the super PACs in question were formed just this week. In the political fundraising game, this is what is called shock and awe. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is likely to be the champion fund raiser on the Republican side. But the news of Cruz’s feat,...

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush continues to lead the pack of Republican presidential hopefuls, but one candidate is making moves. Texas Senator Ted Cruz, the only GOP hopeful to formally announced his candidacy thus far, has shot up in the rankings in a new CBS News poll. Thirty-seven percent of those surveyed said that they would consider voting for Cruz in March, up 14 points from when the same question was asked a month ago. By comparison, 51 percent said they would vote for Bush, just two percent higher than did in February. *** Sen. Ted Cruz has raised $4...

Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican senator, raised nearly $4 million in the eight days after he announced his presidential campaign, according to The Wall Street Journal. What’s important about that number is that almost all of it came in amounts of less than $100. That’s a big change for Mr. Cruz. During his Senate run in 2012, 80 percent of the money he collected from individuals were in donations of $200 or more, the threshold for when donor’s names are listed on Federal Election Commission reports. Assuming The Journal’s report is correct that about 95 percent of the donations raised...