Free Republic

When I got asked to look into Letitia James’ financials last week, I really wasn’t expecting to find much. As you probably know, James is the Attorney General of New York who just secured a $454 million judgement against Donald Trump. James was elected as the NY AG in 2018 and re-elected in 2022. Prior to that James was the NYC “public advocate” for 4 years and a NYC city council member for 8 years prior to that. Prior to elected office she was a public defender for Legal Aid. IOW Letitia James is a lifelong public servant and other...

The independent journalist Peter Bernegger has uncovered what appears to be a massive fraud scheme related to Fulton CountyDA Fani Willis and her campaign funds. According to Bernegger, a large number of people are being used to make campaign donations to Willis — without their knowledge. More precisely, their names and addresses are being used — an illegal tactic known as “smurfing.” It’s structured money laundering for political campaigns. [snip] This is illegal in the state of Georgia. The current count of suspicious donations stands at over $160,000 — all of it apparently “smurfed” into the Fani Willis campaign.

Sen. Raphael Warnock has been hit with allegations that he misused campaign funds to defend himself against a federal lawsuit stemming from his time as a pastor, according to a report out Wednesday. Atlanta resident Melvin Robertson initially sued Warnock (D-Ga.) in 2019 over allegations dating back to 2005, when Warnock led the city’s Ebenezer Baptist Church. That suit was dismissed by a federal judge in Georgia without any of the defendants being served, Politico reported. Robertson sued again in April 2021, making the same allegations against Warnock and naming the church and other public officials as defendants, the report...

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden holds a large financial advantage over President Trump as the race for the White House enters its final weeks. The former vice president’s campaign reported on Sunday that it and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) began September with $466 million in the bank – roughly $141 million more than the cash on hand for the president and the Republican National Committee (RNC). Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh tweeted on Friday that the president’s re-election team and the RNC had $325 million in their coffers at the beginning of the month.

Valerie Biden Owens, the sister of former vice president Joe Biden (D), who served as the campaign manager for his past presidential campaigns, directed $2.5 million from “Citizens for Biden” and “Biden for President Inc.” to her own consulting firm during her brother’s 2008 presidential bid alone, Breitbart senior contributor and Government Accountability Institute (GAI) President Peter Schweizer’s investigative blockbuster Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite reveals.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on Monday blasted Nancy Pelosi's decision to sit on the articles of impeachment against President Trump. “He ought to send her a beautiful ‘thank you’ note saying that no one has done more to finance my campaign than you have Nancy, please spend the next months convincing people your party is brain-dead,” Gingrich told “Fox & Friends.” Gingrich’s comments came after Trump’s campaign raked in a whopping $46 million in the fourth quarter of 2019, fueled in part by a backlash from his base against House Democrats’ impeachment efforts and blowing past any of his...

Video at link. Yesterday the New York Post reported that Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is having an affair with Democratic strategist Tim Mynett. The allegation was made in divorce papers filed by his wife. In July, Omar filed for divorce from her current husband. A refresher: Dr. Beth Jordan Mynett says her cheating spouse, Tim Mynett, told her in April that he was having an affair with the Somali-born US representative and that he even made a “shocking declaration of love” for the Minnesota congresswoman before he ditched his wife, alleges the filing, submitted in DC Superior Court on Tuesday. It...

Russ Feingold and John McCain largely made their names in the Senate fighting the power of special interest money. But now as McCain fights for re-election in Arizona and Feingold tries to return to the Senate in Wisconsin, the authors of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law are benefiting from the same sources of funding they once scorned. …

Mr. Trump said that Mrs. Clinton is beholden to big-money interests than he is, saying he’s going to spend upwards of $100 million of his own money on his campaign. He challenged her to pony up as much as $30 million of the $250 million she and her husband have earned since they left the White House in 2001. “Why aren’t you putting some money in?” he demanded. Mrs. Clinton did not respond to the challenge.

Donald Trump's campaign has alerted Senate Republicans that he won't have much money to spend fending off attacks from Hillary Clinton over the next couple months. The notice came when Paul Manafort, Trump's senior advisor, met with a group of Senate Republican chiefs of staff for lunch last week, sources familiar with the meeting told the Washington Examiner. The admission suggests that Trump will be far more dependent on the GOP brass for money than he has led voters to believe, but it's consistent with his reliance on the Republican National Committee to provide a ground game in battleground states....

Bernie Sanders’ campaign had less than $6 million at the start of May, a critical cash shortage as he makes an admittedly tough final play to wrest the Democratic presidential nomination from Hillary Clinton. Sanders’ rival had five times as much money, according to new Federal Election Commission filings, beginning the month with $30 million in the bank. The two were on roughly equal fundraising footing last month, with Clinton and Sanders each raising more than $25 million. But the Vermont senator spent almost $39 million to Clinton’s $24 million, the reports showed. …

Former state Sen. Leland Yee’s campaign committee for last year’s secretary of state race has spent $128,000 on attorney's fees since he was indicted on federal corruption charges, he reported this week. The practice is legal, but one ethics expert said it should be restricted. "Unfortunately California’s relatively weak restrictions on the use of surplus campaign funds mean that politicians can turn these accounts into personal slush funds," said Sarah Swanbeck, an advocate for the group Common Cause.

State Treasurer Rob McCord's unexpected announcement on Thursday of his resignation, effective Feb. 12, gave rise to speculation about what brought it about so suddenly. Then within hours after issuing a news release saying he was returning to the private sector after having achieved all of his goals as treasurer, three media outlets cited anonymous sources confirming that McCord is under federal investigation. Philadelphia TV station WPVI reported that McCord was being investigated for alleged theft of campaign and other funds. The Morning Call in Allentown subsequently confirmed that report and also reported that the probe has been going on...

Japan’s trade and justice ministers resigned Monday after accusations they misused campaign funds in the biggest setback so far for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s conservative administration. The two ministers were among five women Abe named to his Cabinet in a reshuffle early last month. Their resignations may help to control the damage to his relatively high popularity ratings, but are a blow to efforts to promote women in politics and business as part of economic revival policies. […] Two other female Cabinet members known as Abe’s close allies on the right have been criticized for suspected ties with racist groups....

A soon to be released report from the conservative Government Accountability Institute shows that President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign has increasingly collected more electronic donations from non-existent ZIP codes throughout the 2012 campaign cycle. From February through June this year the GAI findings reported that the Obama campaign collected $175,816.26 in electronic donations from non-existent ZIP codes. One month later, the campaign raised $411,369.55 through such donations and $197,464.59 in August. By the end of September, the Obama campaign raked in $2,199,204.38 – thanks to donations from non-existent ZIP codes. The upcoming GAI report suggests the Obama campaign is allowing...

Minutes after Newsweek published a story on the threat of illegal foreign and fraudulent online campaign donations late Monday afternoon, the Obama campaign struck back hard with a response smearing one of the article’s authors and offered an anemic defense of its online fundraising operations.

Searching for an excuse to explain what went wrong for Democrats in Wisconsin, the broadcast networks blamed "a record-shattering $64 million poured into" the recall election by "conservative out-of-state groups" supporting Republican Governor Scott Walker.   On Wednesday's CBS This Morning, correspondent Bill Plante promoted Obama campaign talking points on the major Democratic loss: "...what it called the 'massive spending gap'. Governor Walker's supporters raised $31 million to $4 million for the challenger, Tom Barrett....with most of that money coming from out of state – a huge chunk of it from the super-PACs." On Tuesday's CBS Evening News, correspondent Dean...

Original Title:The Permanent Campaign: Failed President Has Held More Fundraisers Than Previous 5 Presidents Combined Let’s look at the bright side. When he’s out there shaking down his fatcat supporters he’s not actually working, so there’s the chance he’s actually doing less damage. But I guess in keeping with his adoring media we can call this historic and unprecedented. Barack Obama has already held more fundraising events to build cash for his re-election bid than all five Presidents since Richard Nixon combined, according to figures to be published in a new book. Obama is also the only president in the...

Sacramento -- Attorneys representing the alleged victims in a suspected fraud scheme involving millions of dollars in campaign funds from as many as 400 candidates, officeholders and committees asked the commission that oversees political fundraising in California to make urgent changes in regulations to ensure funding for their political work. The Fair Political Practices Commission held a special meeting Friday to hear from clients of Kinde Durkee, a campaign treasurer for the hundreds of politicians and political organizations, nearly all of them Democratic. Durkee was arrested Sept. 2 by the FBI and charged with stealing or misappropriating $670,000 from the...

[...]Take AT&T, for example. The telecommunications giant is pushing for the supercommittee to increase wireless spectrum, reform corporate tax and minimize government regulation. The company, which is also in the midst of fighting for its merger with T-Mobile, bundled $71,000 for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee through the first six months of this year and $20,750 last year for Washington Sen. Patty Murray, who co-chairs the supercommittee and runs the campaign arm that is charged with maintaining a Senate majority next November. In fact, Murray received the most bundled contributions of any individual supercommittee lawmaker since last year, also taking...