|
?:reviewBody
|
-
On 10 May 2019, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) unsealed an indictment charging two men, American entertainer Prakazrel Pras Michel and Malaysian financier Low Taek Jho (aka Jho Low), with conspiring to make and conceal foreign campaign contributions in the 2012 U.S. presidential election. U.S. law prohibits foreign nationals from contributing to federal, state, or local election campaigns. It also prohibits donors from making campaign contributions in anyone else's name. The defendants stand accused of conspiring to do both, as well as making false statements to the Federal Election Commission (FEC). A DOJ press release enumerated the charges: Although the recipient(s) of the illegal contributions weren't named in the indictment, it was clear from the context that they were campaign committees working on behalf of the re-election of President Barack Obama (referred to in the document as Candidate A). The object of the conspiracy, according to the DOJ, was to gain access to, and potential influence with, Candidate A and his administration. Mainstream news media coverage of the indictment focused on the alleged conspirators and the details of their plot to defraud the Obama campaign and the FEC. Despite the fact that no one in the campaign was implicated in the conspiracy or charged with crimes, a decidedly different narrative emerged on an assortment of right-leaning, pro-Trump websites and social media accounts. An 11 May 2019 article on Intellihub.com, for example, bore the headline How Barack Obama received $21.6M in illegally funneled foreign campaign contributions and stole the presidency. According to reports circulating at the highest levels in Washington, the article said, former U.S. President Barack H. Obama’s political campaign received at least $21.6 million in illegal foreign campaign contributions during the run-up to the 2012 presidential election. The sentence was subsequently quoted in an editorial published on at least a half-dozen other hyperpartisan blogs and websites with headlines falsely claiming that a media blackout was in place regarding the indictment. A significant chunk of the editorial was devoted to the text of what was described as the DOJ Report, in full — although, in point of fact, what was referenced was only the DOJ press release, which distilled the 20-page document down to just a few paragraphs. The author of the piece then posed (and presumed to answer) these rhetorical questions: The same propagandistic strategy was employed by pro-Trump social media users. This example was tweeted on 15 May: These claims are factually erroneous and logically invalid, on these three grounds: First, the Obama campaign did not receive all $21.6 million of the foreign funds the DOJ says Jho transferred to Michel for that purpose, or anywhere near that amount. Both the indictment and the DOJ's press release said the actual amount funneled to the campaign totaled approximately $1.87 million: To facilitate the excessive contributions and conceal their true source, Michel paid approximately $865,000 of the money received from Low to about 20 straw donors, or conduits, so that the straw donors could make donations in their names to a presidential joint fundraising committee. In addition, Michel personally directed more than $1 million of the money received from Low to an independent expenditure committee also involved in the presidential election in 2012. (DOJ press release) Second, as we stated before, nowhere in the indictment was Obama or any entity involved in the campaign implicated in the conspiracy or charged with a crime. The indictment stated multiple times that the defendants went to elaborate lengths to hide what they were doing, not only from the FEC but from the campaign itself. Committees connected with the campaign unknowingly accepted the foreign donations via a series of shell bank accounts and straw donors set up by Michel and Jho to disguise the true source of the funds. Page 2 of the indictment states: The defendants concealed the scheme from the candidate, the candidate's campaign and administration, federal regulators, and the public by secretly funneling foreign money from JHO LOW through a series of straw donors (also known as conduits or straw contributors) who purported to make legal campaign contributions in their own names, rather than in the names of the true source of the funds. MICHEL concealed the conspiracy by making and causing false statements to be made to the FEC. Page 8 of the indictment states: MICHEL, Company E, and the straw donors made contributions to Political Committees A and B in their own names, rather than the name of JHO LOW, thus concealing the true source of the contributions. As a result, MICHEL caused Political Committees A and B to make false entries in multiple campaign contribution reports submitted to the FEC about the true source of the contributions. To further conceal the true source of the contributions, and to maintain his appearance as a high dollar fundraiser for Candidate A, MICHEL made false entries in a declaration he submitted to the FEC claiming that he was the source of the contributions to Political Committee B. Last, the supposition that these illegal contributions enabled Obama to win (or steal) the election is absurd, considering that the campaign raised (and spent) roughly $722 million in total, of which the actual donations Jho and Michel managed to funnel to the committees amounted to about one-quarter of one percent (0.25%).
(en)
|
![[This page as RDF]](http://data.gesis.org/claimskg/static/rdf-icon.gif){kind=icon}