With a week to go before the New York City mayoral election, a public interest watchdog group has made two criminal referrals of frontrunner Zohran Mamdani's campaign to the Department of Justice and the Manhattan District Attorney's Office for accepting illegal campaign contributions from foreigners.
The Coolidge Reagan Foundation (CRF) filed the referrals, referencing at least 170 individual donations from people who live abroad. The total raised from the illegal donors was less than $13,000 out of about $4 million in private donations and $12.7 million in public matching funds.
One of the donations listed was from his mother-in-law, who lives in Dubai.
“These are not isolated incidents or clerical errors,” Dan Backer, president of the Coolidge Reagan Foundation, said in a statement.
“This was a sustained pattern of foreign money flowing into a New York City mayoral race which is a clear violation of both federal law and New York City campaign finance rules,” Backer added. “Mamdani’s campaign was on notice for months that it was accepting illegal foreign contributions, and yet it did nothing meaningful to stop it.”
The Foundation urged DA Alvin Bragg and the Trump Department of Justice to investigate the referrals.
The Mamdani campaign said, "31 of the 170 donors have proven their citizenship or legal permanent residence and have been deemed permissible by the Campaign Finance Board, and the remaining 139 have had their donations refunded."
The DOJ referral calls for a criminal investigation "into potential FECA violations," while the Manhattan referral cites "possible violations of New York Election Law § 17.152, which makes it a misdemeanor for two or more persons to conspire to promote an election by unlawful means."
"Foreign money in American elections is not just a technical violation, it is a threat to self-government," CRF Chairman Shaun McCutcheon said. "Every dollar illegally funneled into a campaign from abroad dilutes the voice of lawful American voters. This case must be investigated immediately, and those responsible held accountable."
I'm sure Alvin Bragg of the Manhattan DA office will get right on this referral.
Related: Mamdani's Lead Over Cuomo Cut in Half as the Socialist's Momentum Is Slowed
Mamdani campaign spokesperson Dora Pekec claims that some of the donations came from Americans living abroad, which is legal under U.S. law.
“All US citizens and permanent residents, including those who live outside the US, are legally permitted to donate to New York City mayoral campaigns under federal campaign finance law and New York State and City law,” Pekec told Fox News Digital.
She called the campaign's vetting procedures "rigorous" and stated there was "a protocol to confirm whether donors with foreign addresses are U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents."
Barack Obama accepted millions of dollars in illegal contributions, discovered after a 2013 audit of his campaign finances. The FEC levied one of its largest fines in history against Obama's campaign committee for failure "to disclose millions of dollars in contributions and dragged its feet in refunding millions more in excess contributions."
Since then, the rules have tightened considerably, and new tools enable campaigns to more easily suss out foreign contributions. That's what makes these revelations so worrying. There's no excuse for them, which makes us wonder what other violations are yet to be discovered.
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