According to a 109-page report released Monday by the Government Accountability Institute (GAI), the Obama campaign has solicited donations from a number of foreign nations, including China, Vietnam and Azerbaijan.
“Using a collection of online research tools, the Government Accountability Institute analyzed a portion of the foreign links that lead to the Obama campaign website, my.barackobama.com,” the report said. “The Institute found a wide variety of instances in which apparent foreign
nationals either received solicitation emails or posted links to my.barackobama.com.”
According to the report, a Chinese blogger reposted letters he received from the Obama campaign, each of which contains a solicitation for $3 or $5. The report observed that the “smaller donations don’t require the campaign to keep any record…”
The report says that the Obama campaign “sent a solicitation letter to ‘Hikemt Hadjy-Zadh,’ an Azerbaijani citizen,” in August 2012.
“A writer in Vietnam writes on a website for the Vietnam Institute for Development Studies (a government-backed think tank) and posts emails he has received from my.barackobama.com with more than 24 total links to the campaign’s donate page embedded in the emails,” the report added.
The report notes that one letter came from Mitch Stewart, Director of Obama’s campaign arm, “Organizing for America.”
BOMBSHELL: OBAMA.COM OWNED BY BUNDLER IN SHANGHAI WITH BUSINESS TIES TO CHINESE GOVERNMENT
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.
President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign has been soliciting foreigners for donations, an explosive report from the conservative Government Accountability Institute (GAI) shows. Those foreign donors are allegedly visiting the Obama campaign’s donation solicitation Web pages through a social media website the campaign controls, and through an outside website that serves mostly Internet users from outside the United States.
About 20 percent of visitors to the “my.barackobama.com” social media website “originated from foreign locations,” the report found. That Web address is owned and controlled by the Obama re-election campaign.
Federal law prohibits ”a foreign national, directly or indirectly,” from making “a contribution or donation of money or other thing of value … in connection with a Federal, State, or local election. The same section of law makes it a federal crime to “solicit, accept, or receive” such campaign contributions.
Washington Examiner writer Paul Bedard reported last week that a fundraising scandal would soon hit the Obama campaign, and may have been one reason why the president bumbled his way to failure during Wednesday’s debate against Mitt Romney.
- DB
