NewYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
Allegations have been made Senator Marco RubioR-Florida, and Republican Virginia Attorney General jason miares (among other things) that millions of dollars are being funneled into candidates’ campaign funds through a process called “smurfing.” We’re not talking about donations being made by little, blue comic-book characters—though we might be if the allegations are true.
What is campaign finance smurfing? It is a form of money laundering for campaign contributions. It involves dividing up large-scale donations in such a way as to conceal who the money is really coming from, in order to circumvent contribution limits on how much money can be donated to a particular candidate. It can also involve widespread mail and wire fraud and the fraudulent use of the identities of unwitting members of the public to violate federal and state campaign finance laws.
The Federal Election Campaign Act, or FECA, imposes several important rules on the financing of congressional and presidential election campaigns.
First, Federal law strictly prohibits Corporations and unions were barred from making any direct contributions to federal candidates. Second, FECA bans foreign nationals Foreign nationals are barred from contributing. Only U.S. citizens and permanent resident aliens may fund the campaigns of individuals running for Congress and the presidency (as well as state and local offices).
Third, federal law limits the amount of money an individual can give to a candidate. Current 2023-24 During an election cycle, individuals cannot contribute more than $3,300 for a primary election and the same amount for a general election. Other limits apply to contributions to PACs and party organizations.
The Federal Election Commission, where I once served as commissioner, has civil enforcement authority for FECA violations, while the U.S. Department of Justice has criminal enforcement authority for willful and intentional violations of the law. For an example of a criminal violation related to smurfing, consider a case I oversaw while I was commissioner.
The senior partner of a law firm told his employees that if they made the maximum contribution to a presidential candidate, he would reimburse them. This is called a conduit contribution and it was an attempt by the lawyer to evade contribution limits – it is illegal to make campaign contributions in another person’s name.
A clue to this is that Justice Department What was surprising was that the law firm’s employees had never made political donations before. Yet they were suddenly giving the largest amounts, even though their salaries were much lower than those of the firm’s senior partner.
So how does all this apply to smurfing? Suppose an unknown criminal deposits a large sum of money into a bank account. He connects it to the corporate payment credit-card system, which is often used by companies to create unique credit-card account numbers for their employees to use for transactions. He then creates credit-card account numbers for people without their knowledge and uses those individuals as straw donors to make political contributions, perhaps through an aggregator such as ActBlue, a Democratic fundraising website.
Where does this criminal get the names and addresses? There are a variety of possible sources, including the list of reported donors to campaigns listed on the FEC’s website. He can then make thousands of donations to a number of candidates, most of them small enough to avoid suspicion, and he can use the individuals’ real names and addresses without their knowledge.
For more Fox News opinion, click here
Miyares’ letter to ActBlue claims that “millions of dollars” have been contributed through ActBlue in Virginia “appears to be unbelievable and suspicious.” “Virginia donors are reported to be making multiple contributions per day … totaling tens of thousands of dollars,” Miyares says. Yet many of the donors list their occupation as “non-employed” or “retired,” and the circumstances make it appear that this is being done “from fictitious donors or fake accounts” and “without the consent or knowledge of the reported donors.”
Senator Rubio also questions these transactions in a letter of complaint to the FEC; specifically, the fact that ActBlue “does not require a CVV number to conduct online transactions.” CVV numbers are the three-digit “card verification value” numbers that are on the back of all of our credit cards and are used to verify the legitimacy of credit-card transactions. Rubio argues that not requiring a CVV number amounts to an “intentional lack of security” in ActBlue’s donation process.
ActBlue has strongly denied these allegations in a response Investigation by the US House Administration Committee and jason miaresJoe ActBlue They say What is happening is a “partisan attack and scare tactic” aimed at undermining “small-money” Democrat donors.
Click here to get the Fox News app
The only way to know the truth is to investigate these suspicious donations. That means both the FEC and the Justice Department — and state attorneys general under applicable state fraud laws — need to get busy, including talking to the donors listed in the filed reports to find out whether they actually made these donations and whether they were prevented from making them.
All of these law enforcement agencies have a responsibility to find out if any “smurfs” are using money laundering to illegally interfere in our elections.
