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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...

<p>Hedge fund magnate Robert Mercer, a reported billionaire, is the "main donor" bankrolling the super PACs supporting Sen. Ted Cruz's (R-Texas) presidential campaign, The New York Times reported Friday.</p> <p>According to The Times, Mercer, "a reclusive Long Islander who started I.B.M. and made his fortune using computer patterns to outsmart the stock market, emerged this week as a key bankroller of Cruz's "surprisingly fast campaign start."</p>

WASHINGTON (AP) — A phosphate export firm owned by the Moroccan government will give the Clinton Foundation a donation of at least $1 million in advance of a May meeting the charity is to host in Morocco, Politico reported Thursday. The gift adds to the Clinton family charity's reliance on contributions from foreign nations as Hillary Rodham Clinton prepares to enter the 2016 presidential race. Clinton Foundation spokesman Craig Minassian did not confirm the Politico report about the donation from OCP, but said Thursday that international participants in the Clinton Global Initiative meeting in Marrakech in early May would work...

New York hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer, who spent more than $1 million trying to elect Republican Art Robinson to Congress in Oregon, is reportedly now putting his fortune to work for Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz. The National Review reports that Mercer controls one of the four super-PACs that together claim to have raised $31 million to support the Texas senator's presidential bid. The super-PACs are set up so that they can raise donations of unlimited size. While the leaders of these groups can't coordinate directly with the candidate's campaign they can otherwise conduct a wide range of advertising and...

Lawrence Billy Jones III – a reporter for The Blaze, a conservative news site – started a GoFundMe page Wednesday to raise $45,000 for the family-owned pizzeria in Walkerton to “relieve the financial loss endured by the proprietors’ stand for faith.” By 2 p.m. Thursday, they had far surpassed their goal – raking in more than $190,000.

Which Hillary Clinton scandal is bigger? Is it the one involving her likely illegal secreting and destruction of email records from her time as secretary of state, or is it the one involving the massive conflict of interest she wholeheartedly embraced by using her family’s nonprofit foundation to collect millions of dollars from foreign government donors — again, during her time as secretary of state?Time will tell, but the foreign-donor scandal got a fresh dose of ugliness Monday with a CBS investigative report revealing that the Clinton Foundation received a massive injection of money from “at least one” Chinese company...

This summer, right when the presidential primary fundraising season is in full bloom, the Securities and Exchange Commission is expected to make running for president harder for some candidates than for others. In fact, that's already the case. Republican Govs. Chris Christie, Bobby Jindal and Scott Walker are off limits to some financial industry donors. "Pay to play" rules restrict the governors' ability to accept contributions from investment advisers who work with state and local governments on pensions and bond deals. An SEC ruling could significantly expand that pool of prohibited contributors by July. The original SEC "pay-to-pay" rule took...

Hassan Nemazee, an Iranian-American businessman who raised money for the political campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for defrauding Bank of America Corp, Citigroup Inc and HSBC Holdings Plc out of $292 million. U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein imposed the sentence on Thursday following Nemazee's March 18 guilty plea in Manhattan federal court to charges of bank fraud and wire fraud over loan transactions with the three major banks. Nemazee said he needed the money to pay debts arising from his dealings in hedge funds and properties.

President Barack Obama’s choice to be the next attorney general, Loretta Lynch, has asked a federal judge to impose a prison term of four and a half years on one of Hillary Clinton’s biggest fundraisers for illegal contributions made to Clinton’s 2008 campaign, according to Yahoo!’s Michael Isikoff. Hotel magnate Sant Singh Chatwal had requested leniency from prosecutors on charges that he made more than $180,000 in illegal contributions to the Clinton campaign, but Lynch made clear this week that leniency would not be granted. “The evidence in this case reveals a man who believes that either the rules do...

....victory eluded Hillary in 2008...now her 2016 run is marked by mistakes, gaffes and reports of ethical corner-cutting. Once viewed as a smart, passionate woman whose brilliance would shine when she was liberated, she is, at 67, getting long in the tooth to be talked of in terms of "potential." After 25 years in the circus, she’s still a celebrity guest, not a star performer. Instead she’s running the Rose Garden strategy of a favored incumbent. She’s still giving paid speeches, believing she can float above it all like a giant balloon in the Thanksgiving Day parade....she sees herself as...

The Wall Street Journal reported this past week that the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation has quietly dropped its ban on foreign contributions and is accepting donations from the governments of “the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Australia, Germany, and a Canadian government agency promoting the Keystone XL pipeline.” The Journal’s conclusion: Since 2001 “the foundation has raised at least $48 million from overseas governments.” Needless to say, the gargantuan troll-like conflict of interest that arises as soon as the foundation of the leading candidate for the presidency of the United States begins accepting money from overseas is...

The editorial board of The New York Times is urging the Clinton Foundation to ban foreign contributions ahead of Hillary Clinton's likely presidential bid. In its Friday editorial, the newspaper notes that the foundation has pulled in nearly $2 billion in cash and pledges since 2001, including millions in contributions from foreign governments. "All of which underlines the need for Hillary Rodham Clinton, in her all but certified role as a Democratic presidential candidate, to reinstate the foundation's ban against foreign contributors, who might have matters of concern to bring before a future Clinton administration," they wrote. Clinton came under...

Recent developments involving the Islamic Republic of Iran can fairly be characterized as grave. Iran has announced that it has begun construction on two more nuclear plants, and the authorities have imprisoned a Washington Post journalist on mysterious charges. **SNIP** On behalf of the Republican Jewish Coalition, Matt Brooks of the Republican Jewish Coalition put out this statement: What exactly was President Obama suggesting when he said opposition to his Iran policy is due to “donors”? No one would say opposition to his Russia policy is due to ‘donors,’ or his Cuba policy is due to “donors,” or his general...

An undercover FBI agent gave campaign donations to an unnamed Bay Area politician during a yearslong undercover investigation into a Chinatown gang and alleged political corruption that culminated in the arrests of state Sen. Leland Yee and Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow earlier this year. This is according to the latest filing by the U.S. Attorney's Office in the federal case against the two men and about 20 others. Besides indicating that a politician other than Yee allegedly took money from undercover FBI agents in exchange for favors, the filing further lays out the relationship between former school board member and...

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - Suspended California state Sen. Leland Yee could face a jury as early as June for charges of political corruption and conspiracy to import guns. At a scheduling conference on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer said Yee will be tried along with his political consultant Keith Jackson, who also faces drug and murder-for-hire charges. Breyer said those charges will be tried separately, but lawyers for the defendants, including Yee's lawyer James Lassart, were not satisfied. "The firearms charges are going to be extremely prejudicial. The government has acquired 50 to 70 different firearms that, undoubtedly to...

Illinoispaytoplay.com (IP2P) has learned that Daniel S. Mahru, former business partner of Antoin "Tony" Rezko, made a deal with the Department of Justice (DoJ) for his silence. IP2P is the first to report that on, October 4 2012, Daniel S. Mahru will receive probation at his sentencing hearing. IP2P has also learned that this is being done to insure Mahru will not speak of crimes, of which he has knowledge, that implicate Barack Obama, Valarie Jarrett, Allison Davis, Tony Rezko and others. (Remember Tony recently saying he committed crimes for which Fitzgerald did not charge him.) IP2P is also investigating...

Whether the name of Richie Urso ever makes it into the corruption trial of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich next June is anybody's guess. You've probably never heard of Richie Urso. But the FBI sure has heard of him. His is a classic Chicago story, about a beefy yet charming guy born on Grand Avenue, who got in trouble with the law as a kid, only to make political friends and become extremely wealthy. He was arrested once for jewelry theft in the '60s by the Outfit's top Chicago police detective, William Hanhardt. Urso's alleged partner in the theft was the...

Speaker Mop & Glo made headlines for her call to investigate opponents of the Ground Zero mosque, but there was something else about her remarks that should have raised your hackles: “There is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some. And I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded,” she said. “How is this being ginned up that here we are talking about Treasure Island, something we’ve been working on for decades, something of great interest to our community as we...

Dozens of the Republican Party’s leading presidential donors and fund-raisers have begun privately discussing how to clear the field for a single establishment candidate to carry the party’s banner in 2016, fearing that a prolonged primary would bolster Hillary Rodham Clinton, the likely Democratic candidate. The conversations, described in interviews with a variety of the Republican Party’s most sought-after donors, are centered on the three potential candidates who have the largest existing base of major contributors and overlapping ties to the top tier of those who are uncommitted: Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida...

link only: http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2014-12-04/warren-buffett-bets-big-on-hillary-clinton