Obama Accepting Untraceable Donations, ACORN Staffer Corroborates

Ever wonder how Barack Obama is making his campaign millions? Earlier this year, it was from foreign donors. When that was discovered, his campaign allegedly gave the money back. But now, new evidence is surfacing that Obama is skirting the law and getting his campaign cash in a way that would make corrupt Chicago politicians proud.

Untraceable pre-paid credit cards. That's right. This isn't a joke. Matthew Mosk of the Washington Post has this story:

Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign is allowing donors to use largely untraceable prepaid credit cards that could potentially be used to evade limits on how much an individual is legally allowed to give or to mask a contributor's identity, campaign officials confirmed. Faced with a huge influx of donations over the Internet, the campaign has also chosen not to use basic security measures to prevent potentially illegal or anonymous contributions from flowing into its accounts, aides acknowledged.

And how do they know this?

The Obama team's disclosures came in response to questions from The Washington Post about the case of Mary T. Biskup, a retired insurance manager from Manchester, Mo., who turned up on Obama's FEC reports as having donated $174,800 to the campaign. Contributors are limited to giving $2,300 for the general election. Biskup, who had scores of Obama contributions attributed to her, said in an interview that she never donated to the candidate. "That's an error," she said. Moreover, she added, her credit card was never billed for the donations, meaning someone appropriated her name and made the contributions with another card.

Sounds just like what a Chicago-style politician would resort to in order to circumvent the law.

But it isn't just the Obama campaign that is under scrutiny for this. A former ACORN staffer named Anita Moncrief is suggesting one method of how these donations are solicited. From the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

A former staffer for an affiliate of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now testified today that the organization was provided a "donor list" from the presidential campaign of Barack Obama in late 2007 for fundraising efforts. Anita Moncrief, a former Washington, D.C. staffer for Project Vote, which she described as a sister organization of ACORN, said her supervisor told her the list of campaign contributors came from the Obama campaign. Moncrief said she has a copy of a "development plan" that outlines how Obama contributors who had "maxed out" under federal contribution limits would be targeted to give to Project Vote, and that it was her job to identify such contributors.

Why identify them if they are "maxed out?" To get them to contribute elsewhere, or through different channels. That's why.

You can access the Washington Post article on-line here:

Obama Accepting Untraceable Donations
Matthew Mosk
The Washington Post
October 29, 2008

And the Pittburgh Tribune-Review article on-line here:

Former ACORN Staffer Testifies
Brad Bumsted
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
October 29, 2008