Free Republic

July 15, 2015 Sen. Bernie Sanders wants people to know he's fighting for the little guy. And so far, his donations are matching up to the image. Sanders's presidential campaign received roughly $15.2 million in donations this quarter, according to his campaign's quarterly report filed with the Federal Election Commission.

Presidential candidate Jeb Bush is launching a young donor program aimed at padding his already flush campaign account and grooming the next generation of big Republican contributors. The program, called Mission Next, will be spearheaded by his sons, 39-year-old George P. Bush, who last year was elected to statewide office in Texas, and 31-year-old Jeb Bush Jr., who recently took over the consulting business he and his father led in Miami. Both sons have already headlined several fundraisers for their father. -snip- The young donors program will also be named after space missions, according to donors familiar with the plans....

Presidential hopeful Jeb Bush, along with his father, ex-president George H.W. Bush, threw a party for top fund-raisers, including billionaire New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, at the Bush family compound in Maine. In a Kennedy-esque move, Jeb hosted the retreat at his father and mother Barbara Bush’s estate on Walker’s Point in Kennebunkport, which was bought in the 19th century by Jeb’s great-great-grandfather.

A top establishment Republican donor reportedly wants Donald Trump banned from the first presidential debate... And that is not sitting well with some of the party’s top donors, many of whom favor pro-amnesty legislation and do want to see their establishment darlings like Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) 80% challenged on the issue. According to an Associated Press report, “Republican donor John Jordan said Monday that GOP leaders should take steps to block Trump’s access to the first presidential debate in early August.” “Someone in the party ought to start some sort of petition saying, ‘If Trump’s going...

Texas senator Ted Cruz is summoning the biggest donors to his presidential campaign to Colorado Springs in mid-July. Cruz and his top bundlers — those who, according to a top campaign aide, “have met or exceeded their finance goals” by raising a minimum of $100,000 — will convene at The Broadmoor, the five-star resort owned by the conservative billionaire Philip Anschutz. The Colorado event, which will run from July 10-12, will serve as an opportunity for the campaign to update its top donors on the state of the race and to ask them to redouble their efforts on Cruz’s behalf....

Hillary Clinton is privately signaling to wealthy Jewish donors that — no matter the result of the Iranian nuclear negotiations — she will be a better friend to Israel than President Barack Obama. But, even as donors increasingly push Clinton on the subject in private, they have emerged with sometimes widely varying interpretations about whether she would support a prospective deal, according to interviews with more than 10 influential donors and fundraising operatives.

Texas senator Ted Cruz is summoning the biggest donors to his presidential campaign to Colorado Springs in mid-July. Cruz and his top bundlers — those who, according to a top campaign aide, “have met or exceeded their finance goals” by raising a minimum of $100,000 — will convene at The Broadmoor, the five-star resort owned by the conservative billionaire Philip Anschutz. The Colorado event, which will run from July 10-12, will serve as an opportunity for the campaign to update its top donors on the state of the race and to ask them to redouble their efforts on Cruz’s behalf....

So the organization gave the money back. And now they want your help. A $50,000 donation is cause for celebration at the Queen Anne offices of the Girl Scouts of Western Washington. “We have these little clapper thingies, and the clappers go mad when we get that kind of gift,” says the council’s CEO, Megan Ferland. So when Ferland came back to the office earlier this spring and announced that she’d just landed a $100,000 donation, the place went mad. Not only did it represent nearly a quarter of the council’s annual fundraising goal, it would pay to send 500...

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz has returned money given to his campaign by the head of an organization linked to the suspected gunman in last week's Charleston church shooting. The Cruz campaign said in a statement obtained by Fox News that it was returning money donated by Earl Holt III, the head of the Council of Conservative Citizens. The donations were first reported by The Guardian. "Senator Cruz believes that there is no place for racism in society," the statement read. "Upon learning about Mr. Holt's background and his contributions to the campaign, he immediately instructed that all of...

Reacting to the disclosure that Hillary Clinton exclusively used a private email account during her tenure as secretary of state, a federal judge agreed Friday to reopen a conservative group's Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking details about the employment arrangements of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin. However, U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan declined — for now — to address claims from Judicial Watch that Clinton's use of the private account and server led State Department officials to commit a fraud on the court by certifying they had turned over all responsive records.

The leader of a white supremacist group cited by Charleston church murder suspect Dylann Roof made $65,000 in donations to Republicans, including several to Republican presidential candidates, The Guardian newspaper reported Sunday night. The paper reported that one of the candidates, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, will return the $8,500 he received from Earl Holt, leader of the Council of Conservative Citizens. An online manifesto purportedly written by Roof, the suspect in last week's murder of nine blacks at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, said he learned about "brutal black on white murders" from the Council of Conservative Citizens...

Faison will unveil a $40 million campaign Tuesday “through 2016 to persuade moderates and conservatives to join the fight against climate change,” according to Politico. He is also spending $10 million to create a campaigning arm similar to President Barack Obama’s Organizing for Action or Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS. “There’s a lot of center-right Republicans that feel like they don’t have a voice in this issue, and surveys would say they’re eager to share this information to bring other people along with them,” Faison said. “Even in small percentages, that’s in the millions.”

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...

As the administration’s false narrative about the events leading up to the sacking of our consulate in Benghazi and the killing of our ambassador continues to unravel, a sordid detail has come to light. The leader of the the attack is believed to be an alumnus of Guantanamo Bay who was released from custody via an anti-American left wing group headed by an Obama donor. First, the terrorist: Abu Sufian bin Qumu. Bin Qumu, according to his Guantanamo file, was picked up in Pakistan in early 2002 after being identified by the Libyan government (that would be the same government...

Mitt Romney, who earlier this year decided against a third presidential bid after briefly flirting with a run, will jump back into the national political scene next month when he hosts GOP presidential hopefuls and some of the party’s biggest donors in Utah. Romney’s 2015 E2 Summit will take place June 11-13 in Deer Valley, a ski resort east of Salt Lake City, according to an invitation obtained Thursday by The Washington Post. Confirmed speakers from the likely 2016 Republican field include Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, and...

Who can blame them? It took months just for Hillary Clinton to cough up the e-mails that should have gone through their system in the first place, and that happened only because of the probe by the House Select Committee on Benghazi. Investigating the confluence of money and connections at the Clinton Foundation might take too much work, and the only evidence would have to come from the Clintons themselves. Besides, what difference at this point does it make, or something? The State Department said Thursday it has no plans to review previously undisclosed donations to a branch of...

Former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is holding what will amount to his fourth annual political summit, according to a report in The Washington Post. The summer affair is Romney’s fourth annual summit. The events began as a way for him to personally connect with the power brokers and financiers backing his political operation. The theme of this year’s gathering is the “strength and future of American leadership.” It appears Jeb Bush is opting out and, for whatever reason, GOP hopefuls Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) 93% and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) 96% are not among those on the current attendee...

Senator Ted Cruz has positioned himself as a strong opponent of same-sex marriage, urging pastors nationwide to preach in support of marriage as an institution between a man and a woman, which he said was “ordained by God.” But on Monday night, at a reception for him at the Manhattan apartment of two prominent gay hoteliers, the Texas senator and Republican presidential hopeful struck quite a different tone. During the gathering, according to two people present, Mr. Cruz said he would not love his daughters any differently if one of them was gay. He did not mention his opposition to...

Charles G. and David H. Koch, the influential and big-spending conservative donors, have a favorite in the race for the Republican nomination: Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin. On Monday, at a fund-raising event in Manhattan for the New York State Republican Party, David Koch told donors that he and his brother, who oversee one of the biggest private political organizations in the country, believed that Mr. Walker was the Republican Party’s best hope for recapturing the White House. “We will support whoever the candidate is,” said Mr. Koch, according to two people who attended the event. “But it should be...