NEW YORK TIMES: Obama’s “foreign money” claims are bogus

October 9, 2010 (See linked article for all other links):

NEW YORK TIMES: Obama’s “foreign money” claims are bogus. They’re also pretty rich, considering how his 2008 campaign handled foreign credit cards. From that National Journal story: “The lack of a computerized address-verification system would allow the Obama campaign’s computers to accept online donations from U.S. citizens above legal limits, and to accept donations from foreigners who are barred by law from contributing at all.” Perhaps its time to remind people of that issue again. Oh, wait, I just did!

Here’s more on that from 2008: “A breakdown of controls has enabled foreign and other unaccountable funds to pour into the Obama campaign — and it’s not an accident.”

Plus, from the Washington Post: Obama Accepting Untraceable Donations. “Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is allowing donors to 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, campaign officials confirmed. Faced with a huge influx of donations over the Internet, the campaign has also chosen not to use basic security measures to prevent potentially illegal or anonymous contributions from flowing into its accounts, aides acknowledged.”

More here. “Then there’s the question of whether foreign nationals are contributing to the Obama campaign. There is more than enough evidence to warrant a full-scale investigation by the Federal Election Commission, including the $32,332.19 that appears to have come from two brothers living in a Hamas-controlled Palestinian refugee camp in Rafah, GA (that’s Gaza, not Georgia). The brothers’ cash is part of a flood of illegal foreign contributions accepted by the Obama campaign.”

You know, I’d kind of forgotten this scandal until Obama brought this stuff up. It didn’t get much attention then, but it may get more this time around.

UPDATE: A reader emails: “Shouldn’t Obama be pushing for Comprehensive Undocumented Donation Reform instead of this xenophobic demagogy? Asking every contributor to produce ‘their papers’ just reeks of Nazi Germany.” Good point!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Another reader suggests that this explains how Obama managed to vastly outspend McCain: “Does anyone really think that that much money came from the little people sending their contributions via the Internet, and a few big—REALLY big—donors like labor unions? Surely a good bit of that money was illegally donated. Perhaps the new congress will have enough gumption to investigate the source of those rivers of dollars. Certainly the DOJ can’t be trusted to look into it.” It does bear looking into.

MORE: Reader Harrison Colter writes: “If they take the House, there are a lot of things the Rs might want to investigate, and things their whacko supporters will scream to have investigated, but the one thing that they absolutely should investigate is the Obama campaign finance practices from 2008. Not only would it be targeted to an area of legitimate concern, but they might actually learn something that could be used to fix existing statutes.

Plus, because it will involve one of the Left’s holiest canons, campaign finance reform, what with all the other fights likely to be going on next year, won’t it be nice to have at least one investigation that is fully supported by the Ds? They will support it, won’t they? I mean, won’t they fall all over themselves saying ‘It is about time the Rs got on board here’? Of course they will.” Indubitably.

Posted by Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit

http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/107664/