Foreigners Buying Crooked U.S. Politicians-- Like Patrick Murphy And His Business Associate Donald Trump

For a Saudi billionaire it isn't hard to buy a crooked sieve a seat in Congress

When I travel I'm still living under the delusion that I have a secretary who will take care of any emergencies that come up, even though I don't. But I'm so used to cutting myself off when I'm away on vacation that the only communication channel I leave open is e-mail. The FEC, it turns out, doesn't do e-mail.

When I got back from nearly a month in Russia, Azerbaijan and Finland a couple days ago, there were dozens of phone messages to pick up. I still haven't gone through them all. But one-- actually two-- that I attended to immediately was from an FEC agent to me in my capacity as treasurer of Blue America. The FEC wanted an explanation of some significant contributions that flowed to our PAC and our candidates from a donor in China. It was easy to handle because the donor is an American citizen living abroad, just as I used to be myself. But once we got that out of the way-- including a promise from me to send an amended quarterly report attesting to his U.S. citizenship-- I started badgering the agent about the hundreds of thousands of dollars the powerful Saudi billionaire (and top advisor to that country's royal family) Nasser Ibrahim Al-Rashid, has funneled into Patrick Murphy's career through his sons, Ibrahim, Salman, Ramzi, and Mohammed (AKA- "Moose"). Nasser, by the way, contributed between 1 and 10 million dollars to the Clinton Presidential Library and has made it known that the Saudi would give the Obama Presidential Library a similar amount-- as long as Patrick Murphy was endorsed by the president (and vice-president, the clownish Biden, who actually endorsed Privileged Patrick thinking he was endorsing the former congressman from Pennsylvania, a current U.S. Army Under Secretary, who isn't running for anything.) How useful has it been for the Saudis to have a weak-minded sieve like Murphy sitting on the House Intelligence Committee?

Anyway, I didn't get much of a response, barely a grunt. Oh well... I wonder if the FEC is asking Trump's crooked eldest son, Donald, Jr., why he's soliciting money from citizens of foreign countries, which actually isn't just an infringement of FEC regulations but actual law breaking. A Member of Parliament from Glasgow sent this letter to Donald, Jr. in response to the illegal solicitation:

It turns out Trump is trying to get foreigners to give him campaign cash. I haven't read much about the FEC doing anything about that. Have you? Chris Hayes did a story about this on his show last night. And TalkingPointsMemo caught it too, reporting that the Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21, filed a complaint with the FEC, arguing that Trump's campaign broke federal law by sending fundraising emails to foreign elected officials. Trump isn't just spamming Scottish parliamentarians for cash; he's also been asking for money from elected officials in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Iceland, England and Finland. I hope Hillary's campaign files an official complaint... or does she do the same kind of crooked campaign funding?

3 grifters: Eric, The Donald, Donald, Jr.