Tag: campaign finance

Gavin Newsom Handed $53 Million in State Contracts to His Biggest Donors

California has become a case study in how political connections translate directly into profit. 

For Gov. Gavin Newsom’s wealthiest supporters, campaign contributions appear to double as investments—ones that yield lucrative state contracts, taxpayer-funded benefits, and prestigious appointments.

Since Newsom entered office in 2019, records show that California has steered more than $53 million in state contracts to companies owned or managed by his top donors. 

These contracts have covered everything from wildfire prevention and emergency response to public health services. 

The overlap between political contributions and state spending highlights an entrenched culture where those with financial ties to the governor reap disproportionate rewards.

Donors have also secured massive tax breaks and credits. 

California’s climate initiatives, energy projects, and green subsidy programs have disproportionately benefited firms connected to Newsom’s political backers. 

These arrangements not only raise ethical questions but also distort the competitive landscape, favoring politically connected companies over those competing on merit.

The pattern extends beyond financial contracts. 

Newsom’s allies have gained placement in elite academic circles, including appointments to university boards and advisory positions. 

Such appointments provide not only prestige but also influence over education policy and access to state resources. 

For major donors, the returns extend far beyond dollars and cents—they reach into the very institutions that shape California’s future.

The controversy has grown more prominent as Newsom positions himself on the national stage. 

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Radical Mayoral Candidate Receiving Big Money From Leftists Outside of NYC

According to The New York Post, socialist NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is raking in funds from leftists outside of the City who will not have to deal with, or suffer from, the radical agenda he hopes to enact.

From The New York Post:

Deep-pocketed, out-of-state donors account for 78% of the nearly $2.4 million raised by a super PAC backing Zohran Mamdani’s NYC mayoral campaign.

Lefties outside the Empire State wrote fat checks totaling $1,831,706 to the group, New Yorkers for Lower Costs, as of Friday, records showed.

The sum included $762,631 from 26 California donors, with most of it coming from just two people.

Mayor Eric Adams’ campaign spokesman, Todd Shapiro, noted, “Mamdani’s campaign isn’t about New York City — it’s about fueling a national socialist movement bankrolled by donors in California and beyond … with Hollywood and out-of-state activists trying to dictate the future of our city.”

Mamdani’s radical plans include transforming the city by hiking property taxes for “richer and whiter neighborhoods.’

He has also waged a longstanding campaign aimed at defunding the New York Police Department, which he claims is designed to “control black, brown and poor New Yorkers.”

The Gateway Pundit reported on another method of delivering funds to his campaign via potentially illegal tax-exempt charity-funded operations are being funnelled to Mamdani, disguised as community activism.

In his July 2025 article, How Elite Money Flows Through Working Families Party Network, forensic investigator Sam Antar exposes a hidden financial web he calls “grassroots laundering” with Mamdani’s rise as a case study.

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Reps. Bryan Steil, Jim Jordan, James Comer Issue Subpoenas to ActBlue Lawyers as Foreign Donation Probe Picks Up

Representatives  Bryan Steil, Jim Jordan, and James Comer have issued subpoenas to a current ActBlue attorney, as well as two former attorneys for the Democrat fundraising powerhouse, according to the New York Post.

Former ActBlue  general counsel Darrin Hurwitz, ex-director and associate general counsel Aaron Ting, and an unnamed counsel for ActBlue will be required to sit before House investigators for formal depositions.

According to the New York Post:

Records uncovered by the committees showed that Hurwitz, Ting and the unidentified counsel worked with the platform’s fraud prevention team as it implemented “more lenient” standards during the 2024 campaign.

ActBlue let debit or credit transactions occur without requiring a card verification value (CVV) until January 2024 — around halfway through the election cycle — and newer standards published last year still instructed employees to “look for reasons to accept contributions.”

In April 2024 and again in September of that year, ActBlue further relaxed guidelines, permitting between 14 and 28 more fraudulent contributions per month — meaning up to 6.4% of total donations that should have been rejected for fraud were accepted.

In June, the congressional trio issued subpoenas to former Vice President of  Customer Service Alyssa Twomey and a Senior WorkFlow Specialist “regarding allegations that online fundraising platforms, including ActBlue, have accepted fraudulent donations from domestic and foreign sources.”

Initially, the duo had agreed to give their depositions to Congress, however, President Trump’s executive order on straw donor donations targeting ActBlue led their counsel to withdraw their offers, forcing the congressmen to issue subpoenas.

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Corruption Crisis Continues to Bludgeon Democrats’ Biggest Contributor

ActBlue has become the financial engine of the Democrat Party. Since its founding in 2004, the Massachusetts-based nonprofit has directed more than $16 billion to Democrat campaigns and left-wing organizations. 

In the first quarter of 2025 alone, it processed $400 million, its strongest non-election quarter ever. Democrats call this proof of grassroots enthusiasm. 

In reality, ActBlue is now the center of multiple federal investigations, accused of allowing straw donors, foreign contributions, and widespread fraud that undermines the integrity of American elections.

The Gateway Pundit was first to reveal that ActBlue received NEARLY HALF of its donations in 2019 from 4.7 million unemployed donors!

Democrats were also funneling donations to BLM that went directly to Democrat politicians.

In April 2025, President Trump issued a memorandum directing the Department of Justice to investigate ActBlue’s operations. 

According to federal investigators, the platform had been connected to twenty-two separate fraud campaigns, nearly half of which showed foreign ties. 

A House GOP report revealed that between September 2022 and November 2024, ActBlue processed nearly 1,900 fraudulent transactions. 

At least 237 of those transactions were traced to foreign IP addresses using prepaid cards in just two months of the 2024 campaign season. 

These findings suggest that a platform Democrats present as a small-dollar grassroots operation may in fact be a vehicle for foreign influence and systemic fraud.

The way ActBlue handled its own security makes these allegations even more troubling. Internal documents show that in 2024, the organization weakened its fraud detection systems not once, but twice. 

These changes allowed an additional 14 to 28 fraudulent contributions to slip past safeguards every month. 

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Act Blue Stopped Reporting Individual Contributions To Campaign Committee

Found huge news about Actblue where they stopped reporting individual contributions to their campaign committee!   Surprise ending.

Actblue receives contributions to their own committee and then dispurses from there to liberal politician campaigns. 

See first image: from Jan 1st 2024 until Aug 28th 2024 they received 44,748,000 contributions per the FEC website.

See second image: exact same dates but for 2025….there were zero, nothing, nadda contributions!!

BUT – Actblue’s website as of July 8, 2025 proclaims “Grassroots Donors Keep Breaking Records Q2 2025 Showing Undeniable Momentum Actblue”  Bringing in $390 million in the 2nd quarter alone. 

And “We saw more than 12 million unique contributions made this quarter alone…”   2nd Qtr 2025.

Yet per the FEC website, their contributions have gone to zero. 

Surprise ending: they are hiding Smurfing, i.e. campaign money laundering. And here is how –

The FEC has codes for campaign committees to assign to donations to categorize them; over 150 different types of codes to pick from. 

Actblue has not been using ANY code at all since January 1st 2025. None!  And that is why you see zero contributions this year for them….but there are contributions. 

They are just hiding them by not assigning FEC codes. These go into the “un-itemized” bucket, so there is no name or address any of us in the public can look up to see who gave how much, to who, when. 

And liberal MoveOn is doing it (zero contributions showing since Jan 1st); and liberal Democracy For America and others also.

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DECLASSIFIED: FBI Was Investigating 19 Clinton Foundation Bank Accounts For Campaign Finance Fraud Before DOJ Shut Down Probe

A newly declassified FBI internal timeline reveals the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office was investigating 19 Clinton Foundation bank accounts for ‘campaign finance fraud’ in 2016 but the Justice Department shut down the probe.

Thanks to Judicial Watch, the American public was made aware of Hillary Clinton’s private email server.

Hillary Clinton conducted official business on a non-government server so she could hide her Clinton Foundation pay-to-play while she was head of the Department of State.

According to emails obtained by Judicial Watch, Hillary Clinton gave preferential treatment to Clinton Foundation donors while she was Secretary of State.

The Gateway Pundit previously reported that a smoking-gun email from Obama’s Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates explicitly ordered FBI agents to shut down a criminal corruption probe into the Clinton Foundation.

Then-Deputy AG Sally Yates directly instructed the FBI to ‘shut down’ the Clinton Foundation investigation, effectively granting the Clintons immunity from further scrutiny during the 2016 election cycle.

Salky Yates ordered investigators to “Shut it down!”

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Maxine Waters Nailed: Whopping Campaign Finance Violation – 400% Greater Trump ‘Violation’ That Got 34 Felony Counts

Honest, genuine question: What good are congressional Democrats?

Yes, yes, most are aware that they’re really good at enriching themselves, quite skilled at unilaterally opposing anything and all things President Donald Trump, and have a knack for taking belittling cheap shots at paraplegics, but what do they bring to the table that isn’t some horribly partisan nonsense?

Dems like to claim that they bring integrity and honesty — two things they often accuse Trump of lacking, ironically — but that’s an odd claim to make when they’re busted breaking the rules all the time.

And no example of this hypocrisy crystallizes all of that better than the mess that blowhard California Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters currently finds herself in.

A Federal Election Commission report released Monday revealed that the California rep had violated several campaign finance rules that totaled over half a million dollars.

The report laid out the violations as such: “(1) misstatements of receipts and disbursements ($262,391 in receipts and $256,165 in disbursements); (2) acceptance of excessive contributions ($19,000); and (3) unlawful cash disbursements ($7,000).”

In total, that’s a clean $544,556 worth of campaign finance violations.

And Waters’ team all but admitted guilt by agreeing to pay a $68,000 fine over it.

“The Committee does not deny the allegations,” the report said of Waters’ team. “Instead, the Committee states that any errors it made were accidental, that the Committee has taken steps to both ameliorate the situation and prevent it from occurring again, and it requests that the Commission either take no further action or refer the matter to the Office of Alternative Dispute Resolution (‘ADRO’).

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Chinese intel agency official helped raise over $300,000 for Dem Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s campaign: report

A man who helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for Boston Democrat Mayor Michelle Wu has been revealed to be listed by a Chinese intelligence agency as an official.

The Daily Caller News Foundation reported that Boston International Media Consulting founder Gary Yu assisted in raising over $300,000 for Wu with the help of the New England Chinese American Alliance, a civic association of which Yu serves as co-chairman.

Yu, whose Chinese name is Yu Guoliang, is listed as an official with an agency of the United Front Work Department (UFWD), a Chinese Community Party influence and intelligence service, per the outlet.

The House Select Committee on the Chinese Community Party described united front work as “a unique blend of engagement, influence activities, and intelligence operations that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) uses to shape its political environment, including to influence other countries’ policy toward the PRC and to gain access to advanced foreign technology.”

The central UFWD reports directly to the CCP’s Central Committee, is the “lead organization for coordinating and carrying out united front work both inside and outside of China,” and “oversees the united front work departments of provincial and local party committees as well as those subordinate to party committees in companies, research institutes, and other entities.”

Yu is listed as an “overseas committee member” of the Hangzhou municipal All-China Federation Of Returned Overseas Chinese (ACFROC) and has met with their officials in China multiple times, and is the chairman of the North American Hangzhou Association (NAHAUS).

Per the Daily Caller, ACFROC is an agency of the UFWD that conducts overseas influence operations such as allegedly directing Chinese community leaders to create a Chinese police station in New York City.

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FEC Opens Probe of Rep. Jasmine Crockett Donations

The Federal Election Commission opened an investigation into firebrand Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, regarding donations to her 2024 campaign made through ActBlue, a Democrat fundraising powerhouse organization.

The Coolidge-Reagan Foundation, a conservative advocacy group, made the FEC complaint on March 26, as first reported by The Daily Signal. 

On April 2, the FEC notified the Coolidge-Reagan Foundation it would review the matter and notify Crockett. 

“The respondents will be notified of this complaint within five business days,” Wanda D. Brown, the FEC assistant general counsel for complaints examination and legal administration, said in the letter. 

“You will be notified as soon as the Federal Election Commission (FEC) takes final action on your client’s complaint. Should you receive any additional information in this matter, please forward it to the Office of the General Counsel.”

Brown wrote the letter to Dan Backer, a Washington lawyer representing the Coolidge-Reagan Foundation. 

“The FEC opened an investigation. There is a process, but they are investigating,” Backer told The Daily Signal. 

The complaints reference a specific suspect donor reported to have given 53 separate donations totaling $595 to Crockett’s campaign through the ActBlue portal.

The suspect donor was a 73-year-old Texas resident named Randy Best, according to the FEC complaint.  

However, Best’s wife—in a video promoted by one of Crockett’s opponents for 2026, Sholdon Daniels—denied knowing anything about the donations. The complaint contends this possibly means Best—and potentially other donors through ActBlue—did not make the donations listed under their names. 

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Slimy congressman is hit by multiple shocking scandals including one that involving a stillborn baby

A scandal-prone Tennessee lawmaker is facing fresh scrutiny over his campaign finances years after he fundraised $25,000 for a playground in memory of his stillborn baby that was never built.

Congressman Andy Ogles raised the cash to create a tribute to his late son Lincoln which could be used by other bereaved parents shortly after the baby’s death in 2014.

But more than a decade on and the garden has yet to materialize at the proposed spot at at Mount Hope Cemetery in Franklin.

Ogles insisted he has not spent the cash and blamed ‘government bureaucracy’ for the lack of progress when approached by the the Tennessean the year after his fundraiser launched.

Now the Maury County Republican is facing renewed questions over his campaign spending after News Channel 5 uncovered evidence he has been misrepresenting payments to various companies.

Among the findings, were tens of thousands of dollars of spending which was attributed to companies providing different services to those claimed by Ogles, the outlet reports. 

Ogles, who lives in a $1 million mansion on eight acres of land, reported a $14,000 expenditure with JL Tech Sales for 2022 and 2024 ostensibly for ‘office supplies, internet and TV services’.

However, when News Channel 5 investigated they found that the Virginia address Ogles listed for the business belonged to USA Custom Solutions, according to a man who told their reporter he works there.

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