On Thursday, the Washington Examinerreported that the Obama campaign has been trying to block a story that reveals a major donor scandal being prepared by a national magazine and web site.
"But," Paul Bedard wrote, a "key source said it plans to publish the story Friday or, more likely, Monday."
According to Bedard’s sources, "a taxpayer watchdog group conducted a nine-month investigation into presidential and congressional fundraising and has uncovered thousands of cases of credit card solicitations and donations to Obama and Capitol Hill, allegedly from unsecure accounts, and many from overseas."
"That," he added, "might be a violation of federal election laws."
Bedard said that the Obama re-election campaign has received "hundreds of millions in small dollar donations, many via credit card donations through their website. On Thursday, the campaign announced a record September donor haul of $150 million."
"To raise $150 million in a month, you need an awful lot of donors," a post at Hot Air observed.
A similar problem was unearthed during the 2008 campaign when a Kansas City couple reporteda "strange" $2,300 donation to Obama that appeared on their credit card statement. The couple said they were McCain voters and would never donate to Obama.
Although Chase dropped the charge, further investigation revealed a number of donations from fictional characters like Bart Simpson, Daffy Duck and King Kong, all using prepaid credit cards. Even "O. J. Simpson" donated $5 to the campaign.
"At the time," Bedard said, "the Washington Post reported that the Obama campaign let donors use 'largely untraceable prepaid credit cards that could potentially be used to evade limits on how much an individual is legally allowed to give or to mask a contributor’s identity.’"
In 2008, the Post said that questions were raised when they discovered that Mary T. Biskup, a retired insurance manager from Manchester, MO., had donated $174,800 to the Obama campaign, according to FEC reports.
"Contributors are limited to giving $2,300 for the general election," the Post said.
