Posted on 02/18/2012 8:47:33 PM PST by Steelfish
Questions Surface On Gingrich Campaign Travel Payments By Luke Rosiak February 17, 2012
When Newt Gingrich’s campaign disclosed in October it planned to pay the candidate $70,000 for travel expenses in the third quarter, the transfer was an anomaly among presidential campaigns.
But weeks ago, the former House speaker revised his third-quarter bill: He actually expected to personally receive $115,000 of the funds donated to his campaign to reimburse himself for expenses during that period.
The campaign would not explain how the candidate forgot about $45,000 in receipts, what they were for or why the campaign wasn’t simply paying the invoices directly, as other campaigns do. Far beyond that payment, the uses of donations to Mr. Gingrich’s campaign are being obscured on a massive scale by the unprecedented use of a legally questionable tactic, The Washington Times found one that has accompanied the flow of the better part of a million dollars in unexplained cash to Mr. Gingrich, family members and top staffers.
The money reportedly was to reimburse employees for unspecified expenses in what amounted to petty cash exceeding their entire salaries, The Times’s analysis of federal records showed. The move would be permitted only if, election lawyers say, that money was spread across so many vendors that not a single company received more than $200 in total.
“That’s an enormous amount of money, and not $200 wound up in the same place? I find that extraordinarily hard to believe,” said Brett Kappel, an election-law lawyer for Arent Fox LLC, a law firm and lobbying group based in Washington, D.C. “I’ve never seen a major presidential campaign run this way but I’ve only been doing this for 21 years.
“If this recurs throughout the campaign, this is the kind of issue where you get audited,” he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
I don’t think we should behave like the three proverbial monkeys in examining news about our candidates especially when made by conservative media. Don’t for a moment think the MSM will not pick on this in the next few days and blow it up sky high.
As I said above, I saw this BS article yesterday, and guess who popped into my mind about who would post this article on FR? Yeah - you. LoL.
Wealthy business associates who want to give to a super PAC supporting Mr. Romney have formed shell corporations so donor disclosures show only a cryptically-named company without saying where that company got its money.
When will “questions surface” about the MILLIONS Obama got in ILLEGAL campaign cash from Arab nations in 2008?
Gambling cash- ok with me. Political donations to candidates are always a gamble.
Adelson donated to the Gingrich SuperPAC. This article is about the Gingrich campaign.
Oh so YOU suppressed posting it because it wasn’t flattering of whoever you seem to support even if it was from a conservative news source? Shouldn’t we be interested in media screening of all candidates? or just only some?
"The money reportedly was to reimburse employees for unspecified expenses in what amounted to petty cash exceeding their entire salaries, The Times’s analysis of federal records showed."
You mean to tell me Wa-Times that the Gingrich campaign still reported it to the FEC?? They can't be that dumb if they were going to embezzle the cash. You can put 10s of thousands dollars on personal credit depending how much credit you have or even pay it out of pocket to front campaign expenses. Campaigns are expensive. Just bupkis and Rino BS.
The only one who will be left standing next November is 0bama. Everybody else will be destroyed by the 0bama machine and the news media (but, I repeat myself).
Stalin and Hitler both perfected these techniques decades ago. They work and they are in play to destroy this country.
As I said before, answers and explanations will be forthcoming in the next couple of days. The MSM are probably digging into this at this moment. The point of course is that even if no wrongdoing is proved, the dust storm created will stifle any chance Gingrich will have of a third resurrection unless he unleashes against the MSM in the next debate with a resounding defense. Time will tell. It is of course quite telling that a conservative news outlet carried the investigation in this case to conclude that nearly $1m went unexplained for in cash to close family members and staff. Couldn’t they find at least “some” explanation?
Shouldn’t we be interested in media screening of all candidates? or just only some?
You're the one totally interested in placing negative article about Newt Gingrich and never about "Saint" Rick. Seems to me that you're doing more than your share of screening here.
“When will “questions surface” about the MILLIONS Obama got in ILLEGAL campaign cash from Arab nations in 2008?”
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That illegality would have to be “detected” first and the “establishment” had (and even more so now has) its head firmly (and intentionally) planted in the sand. The way this fraud was likely done was via many, many thousands of small (less than $200 - mostly in $25 & $50 increments) contributions with separate fictitious names/IDs. Contributions of less than $200 do not have to be disclosed. It would take a not particularly large number of operatives to effectuate this contribution scheme over a period of months.
Any team of competent and determined investigators could uncover this type of bogus source of funds. However the “authorities” did not choose to pursue this possibility. And of course it didn’t help that Obama’s fundraising operations somehow conveniently managed to “forget” to collect/maintain things such as IP address data of the campaign “contributors”.
So when will “questions surface”? Never. And dude, if YOU raise that question you’re a racist -— don’t you know that?
That’s a nice try. But apparently you had already concluded this was “dubious” without telling us why. Perhaps, American Constitutionalist may be onto something with his post #38.
Because the Times wasn't told about what was itemized doesn't mean it's not legally explainable. And furthermore, the Times do not say the payment of expenses was not illegal as they do NOT know.
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