Report: Obama.com Vulnerable to Illegal Foreign Campaign Donations
The Internet and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have democratized elections, made the world more interconnected, and allowed the velocity of information to be faster than ever before.
But an extensive eight-month investigation by the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) released on Monday found these same forces can also be the greatest threat to America’s sovereignty (visit campaignfundingrisks.com to download the full report).
These technologies allow foreign donors to anonymously circumvent U.S.
campaign finance laws and directly influence elections by donating
repeatedly to candidates.
The 108-page GAI report found nearly half
of Congress, both political parties and presidential candidates, and
third-party fundraising groups that funnel money to political parties
and candidates were vulnerable to fraudulent and foreign donations. This
is a bipartisan problem potentially impacting all levels of government,
as those whose organizations were found to have been vulnerable include
President Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), the
Democratic National Committee (DNC), the Republican National Committee
(RNC), and third-party groups like ActBlue, which funnels money to
progressive politicians.
And the report found that the website Obama.com,
which is not owned by President Barack Obama's campaign but redirects
to the campaign's official donation page, may make the Obama campaign
the most susceptible to illicit foreign donations. Obama.com is
connected to an Obama campaign bundler, Robert Roche, who is from
Chicago but now lives and co-founded a corporation in China. Roche has
direct ties to China's state-owned banking industry.
Peter Schweizer, president of GAI, told
Breitbart News the ease with which foreigners could donate to American
candidates puts America’s sovereignty in peril.
“Foreign donations mean that we no longer make our election decisions anymore,” Schweizer told Breitbart News.
Schweizer said he had initially thought
“we would find some bloggers overseas with motivation to support a
presidential candidate encouraging people to make donations,” but he was
“very surprised” by the study’s findings, including how easy it was for
foreigners to use "robo-donation" programs that allow foreigners to
potentially make thousands of small-dollar, fraudulent and automated
donations to candidates.
Schweizer said he “never thought” the GAI would find mysterious redirect sites like Obama.com and was “surprised how little security is required to receive online donations.”
“We are basically trusting political consultants and fundraisers to do the right thing when no one is looking,” Schweizer said.
The report found nearly half of Congress
was vulnerable to fraudulent and foreign directions. Of the 446 House
and Senate members who have an online donation page, 47.3% do not
require the Card Verification Value (CVV), which is the three or
four-digit security code on the back of credit cards, for internet
donations. Those in Congress who are vulnerable to foreign donations can
be seen at www.CampaignFundingRisks.com.
“Candidates appear content with lax
security, negligently inviting foreign or fraudulent cash into their
campaign,” the report notes.
And the Obama campaign seems to be the most content with the "lax security."
The FEC requires campaigns to make their
“best efforts” to collect identifying information on all contributors
who donate more than $50.30 and even more specific information, such as
the donor’s occupation and employer, for donations over $200.
As the report notes, donations less than
$50, though, fall under the “Pass-the-Hat” rule, which means campaigns
can report all such donations under a lump sum and do not have to make
their “best efforts” to collecting information on these small-dollar
donors.
Because foreigners can exploit the
“Pass-the-Hat” rule, the report found that “any campaign not using
these industry-standard security tools is increasing its costs and
unnecessarily increasing the risk of at least two types of potential
fraud":
The Fraudulent High Dollar Donor(s): –the fraudulent high dollar donor is politically motivated and is seeking to avoid detection by making numerous donations below the $200 dollar threshold, over which their donation must be identified; they may seek to exceed campaign donation limits.
The Unintentional Fraudster –a foreign national who is unaware of U.S. election laws but sympathetic to the campaign. Such an individual can easily end up on a campaign donation page. Given that a number of campaigns list the U.S. donation laws in an inconspicuous place on the “donate” page, it is easy to see how illegal donations can be made with no malicious intent.
And the Obama campaign is most vulnerable to both types of fraudsters.
For example, the study found “the Obama
campaign regularly and aggressively posts solicitations for donations
and campaign memorabilia on Facebook,” and “the campaign does not make
clear in these postings that only U.S. citizens or permanent residents
are allowed to contribute.” Fundraising solicitations from the Obama
campaign have gone out to foreigners, asking them to contribute in
amounts of less than $200. Similar solicitations have been posted in
Arabic, Taiwanese, and Chinese on Facebook and on Middle Eastern and
Asian websites.
Even though the Obama campaign is touted
for its technological sophistication and sites run by top Obama
technology advisers use the “CVV” feature, the Obama campaign itself
does not use the “CVV” feature on its donation pages -- even though it
does use the feature on the merchandise pages where it sells campaign
merchandise.
This means someone who donates $2,500 to
the campaign online has to go through less security than someone who
goes online to buy an Obama campaign mug.
“This creates a security risk that is
compounded by the considerable foreign interest in President Obama’s
political history, personal story, and views,” the report notes.
And according to the study, BarackObama.com, the campaign’s main website, receives approximately 43% of its traffic from foreign IP addresses.
In addition, popular websites touting
Obama’s campaign and linking to its donation page have been found in
places like China, Azerbaijan, Vietnam, the Netherlands, Italy, Japan,
Norway, Egypt, Hong Kong, and South Korea.
The report notes that not using the CVV
feature “is quite possibly costing the campaign millions of dollars in
additional fees,” but the campaign is still not using it. Perhaps this
is so because the Obama campaign has benefited from donations slipping
through the cracks in the past.
In 2008, the report discovered that an
individual using the name “Doodad Pro” made at least 791 contributions
totaling $19,065 to the Obama campaign while others named “Good Will,”
“Test Person” from “Some Place, UT,” “gjtjtjtjtjtjr, AP,” and
“QWERTTYYU” also contributed to the campaign.
The most interesting -- or suspicious -- site is Obama.com, which the campaign strangely does not own. According to the report, nearly 68% of internet traffic to Obama.com comes
from foreign locations. And the website is connected to Robert Roche,
who lives in China and co-founded a Chinese company called Acorn
International. Roche, the report found, made 19 visits to the White
House since 2009, including being seated at the head table during a
State dinner with Chinese president Hu Jintao in 2011.
Unlike the Obama campaign, the Romney campaign website uses the "CVV" feature but it is not without vulnerabilities.
For instance, Romney's campaign also has
Facebook and Twitter accounts in Arabic that give off the impression
they are associated with the Romney campaign. These accounts link to the
Romney campaign’s page and are presumably for a foreign audience.
In addition, the report found some of
Romney’s top bundlers, like Akin Gump's Tom Loeffler, have lobbied for
foreign governments like Saudi Arabia.
Since 1980, Philippine President
Ferdinand Marcos, the Chinese government, powerful Indonesian families,
foreign criminal gangs, and the Turkish government have tried to
influence American officials through campaign donations.
Turkish government officials, the report
notes, once bragged about sending hundreds of thousands of dollars in
“un-itemized contributions” to then Speaker of the House Dennis
Hastert’s campaign between 1996 and 2000 and the government of Pakistan
has shuttled campaign donations through intermediaries to presidential
candidates and members of Congress who sat on the Foreign Affairs
Committee, such as Congressman Dan Burton.
With the internet, foreigners can now
attempt to influence American officials anonymously and conveniently --
with the click of a mouse.
According to the study, influential
members of Congress had websites that made them vulnerable to illicit
foreign donations. For instance, Rep. Ilena Ros-Lehtinen, Chairman of
the House International Affairs Committee, had a campaign website that
prior to May 1, 2012 did not require the CVV to contribute to her
campaign. Though there was no evidence of illicit campaign
contributions, her website was vulnerable to them.
The study also found that during Sen.
Marco Rubio's 2010 senate run, Rubio's campaign did not require the CVV
from his online contributors and foreign websites, including many in
South America, often featured videos that urged viewers to "donate" to
Rubio's campaign. One potential reason for Rubio's popularity abroad on
websites was the idea of "ethnic solidarity" among Hispanics willing to
support a rising star of the same heritage.
The report also noted foreigners can also
donate to third-party organizations on both sides of the aisle that
funnel money to political candidates.
The GAI study acknowledged “by design,
social media’s expansive and viral nature disseminates information,
ideas, and causes,” and as a result, “social media is difficult to
control, and indeed should not be controlled.”
“Campaigns need to be aware that the age
of social media is an age where donation requests go viral, reaching the
furthest corners of the world,” the report notes. “Failure to employ
industry standard security and transparent accountability is almost an
invitation to foreign money to inject itself into federal campaigns.”
The United States has laws against
foreign campaign donations to protect its sovereignty and, in January
2012, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld these laws banning foreign contributions were constitutional.
The GAI report recommends election officials:
- Integrate safeguards to limit the solicitation of money from foreigners by requiring donors with foreign IP addresses to provide proof of U.S. citizenship before they can proceed to the donate page
- Immediately require campaigns to use industry-standard anti-fraud security technologies including, but not limited to, the Card Verification Value (CVV) and a rigorous Address Verification System (AVS)
- Immediately require all campaigns to retain and disclose identifying information on all online campaign contributions, including those falling under the $200 nondisclosure threshold currently allowed under federal law
- Address the threat of "Robo-Donations": The absence of industry-standard anti-fraud credit card security features render campaigns more vulnerable to so-called “robo-donations.” Robo-donations are large numbers of small, automated donations made through the Internet to evade FEC reporting requirements.
Schweizer, president of GAI, put a
particular emphasis on the "robo-donations" that "can literally make a
thousand small contributions under different names to fall below the
disclosure thresholds."
These "robo-donations" essentially allow
foreigners to threaten America's sovereignty and potentially undermine
its elections, which is why Schweizer said it is "absolutely essential"
to mandate more disclosure and credit card security for campaign
donations.
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