By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Tuesday, October 07, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Campaign Finance: Sources of more than $190 million in Obama election contributions are unidentified. Will a federal investigation find foreigners illegally rigging the most important presidential election in history?
Read More: Election 2008
Newsmax reported last week that Sen. Barack Obama's campaign has collected "the largest pool of unidentified money that has ever flooded into the U.S. election system, before or after the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reforms of 2002."
Federal Election Commission data show that some $222 million of the cash Obama has collected came in the form of contributions of $200 or less, with the Democratic nominee's campaign identifying the donors of less than $40 million of that sum.
Campaigns may accept donations of less than $200 without providing the donors' names and addresses in campaign finance reports, but Sen. John McCain's camp has made its full donor database available on the Internet. Independent campaign finance watchdog organizations have asked the Obama campaign to list all its donors, as well, but it's refused. What is Obama hiding?
The Republican National Committee is making the most of this disclosure gap, filing a complaint with the FEC, demanding that it investigate the sources of Obama's thousands of unknown donors and look into possible illegal foreign donations.
Major media have jumped on the story, with Newsweek noting that FEC auditors ordered Obama's campaign to return large amounts from sources with fake names. One phony was "Good Will," who listed "Loving" as his employer and "You" as his job. The address given was found to be that of the Austin-based nonprofit Goodwill Industries, which informed the Obama campaign last month that its name was apparently being used fraudulently.
Another made-up name: "Doodad Pro." His listed address is a Nunda, N.Y., liquor store next to the now-closed Doodad Boutique.
More disturbing was $33,000 paid for Obama campaign T-shirts by two Palestinian brothers from Gaza who listed "Ga." as their address, which the campaign took to be the state of Georgia. The purchase is considered a campaign donation.
This week, CBS News discovered two Obama contributors who gave $7,722 using fake identities, "Dahsudhu Hdusahfd of Df, Hawaii," employed by "CZXVC/ZXVZXV" and "Uadhshgu Hduadh of Dhff, Fla.," who works for "DASADA/SAFASE."
The Newsmax report noted a separate FEC database of more than 11,500 overseas contributions to Obama totaling $33.8 million, with more than 520 listing their locations as "IR," a possible abbreviation for Iran. (The Associated Press noted that "In FEC reports, the designation 'IR' typically stands for 'information requested' because the donor did not supply it.")
Sixty-three listings had "UK" as the donor's location. Other locales apparently providing money for Obama included Abu Dhabi, Addis Ababa, Beijing and Fallujah, as well as France and Italy.
Obama's Web site formerly let donors choose from among every United Nations member when listing their residence. By contrast, the presidential campaign of Democratic rival Hillary Clinton actually required U.S. citizens residing abroad to fax a copy of their passport before accepting their donations. Federal law prohibits the acceptance of campaign contributions from foreign nationals.
In the summer, the head of Nigeria's stock market held a series of fundraisers believed to have collected $900,000 — ostensibly to pay for some Nigerians' attendance at the Democratic convention in Denver. A Nigerian government commission is now investigating.
Do the "Doodads," "Good Wills," "Dahsudhu Hdusahfds" and Nigerian money men form only the tip of the iceberg? The hundreds of millions this supposed "man of the people" has raised is an astonishing sum, with a large percentage coming from unknown sources.
Obama might say he doesn't know who any of these people are, so it is absurd to suggest he would be a president in the pocket of anti-American foreigners he doesn't know.
But they know him. Many foreign powers would give a fortune to install a far-left president who wants to reduce American economic and military power. All signs point to Obama being exactly that.