Official Misconduct | Protect Our Elections

Politico: Huckabee ’08 backer indicted over straw donations

January 23, 2013 by

-By Josh Gerstein

January 23, 2013- A Florida developer, Jay Odom, has been indicted on federal charges that he used straw donors to donate at least $23,000 to former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's unsuccessful 2008 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

Odom faces two felony counts: one of making contributions through others in excess of $10,000 to Huckabee's campaign and another of causing false reports to be filed with the Federal Election Commission. At the time, the maximum legally allowed donation for an individual to a federal primary campaign was $2,300.

The indictment released Tuesday by the Justice Department (posted here) lists ten $2,300 donations made to the Huckabee campaign in December 2007 by ten different individuals identified only by their initials. Huckabee's campaign is not identified by name, but FEC records make clear that campaign received the suspect donations.

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Minneapolis Star-Tribune: Ex-Bachmann aide alleges campaign finance violations

January 14, 2013 by

Filing says her PAC wrongly paid a longtime consultant.

-By Kevin Diaz

January 15, 2013- WASHINGTON – A top adviser in Michele Bachmann's 2012 White House bid has filed a complaint with federal election officials alleging campaign finance violations involving her presidential campaign and the independent political action committee she leads.

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) complaint was filed Tuesday by Peter Waldron, a widely known evangelist enlisted by the Bachmann campaign for outreach to Christian conservatives. The filing follows his allegations last week that the Bachmann campaign has withheld payments to staffers who refused to sign confidentiality agreements.

Waldron, formerly Bachmann's national field coordinator, is accusing the campaign of improperly dipping into money from MichelePAC to pay longtime fundraising consultant Guy Short for presidential campaign work he performed in the critical final weeks ahead of Iowa's caucuses last year.