The campaign run by Democrat presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is accused of breaking federal election law by accepting thousands of dollars in illicit donations from a foreign political party which sought to influence the results of an American election.
Breitbart News exclusively acquired a complaint filed by Rep. William O’Brien (R-NH) against the self-described Democratic Socialist’s 2016 presidential campaign.
The complaint names the Australian Labor Party — a group that espouses socialist principles and policies similar to those Sanders supports — and says both violated the Federal Elections Campaign Act (FECA) and the commission’s regulations, by accepting, making and/or receiving prohibited foreign contributions.
The evidence easily indicates more than $10,000 of in-kind contributions to Bernie 2016 in New Hampshire alone, and hints that similar financial outlays were made by ALP in several other state primaries. By all reasonable accounts and calculations, Bernie 2016 is responsible for accepting–or at least receiving–tens of thousands of dollars in foreign in-kind contributions. And the ALP is responsible for prohibited intervention in a federal election.
The discovery that workers with the ALP were financed by their own socialist democratic party to work on Bernie’s 2016 presidential campaign was made by the Project Veritas Action Fund.
Last month, several recordings of conversations with Sanders campaigners were exposed in a report from the Project Veritas Action Fund that featured these Australian nationals. At that time, three quarters of them were employed with the ALP. They’re quoted saying they’ve been stealing political yard signs and had replaced Hillary Clinton campaign literature with Sanders literature.
These foreign “volunteers” were deployed to Nevada, New York, New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina and another state to carry out illicit acts on behalf of the Sanders campaign and were paid by their own party to do this.
“Voters in New Hampshire and, indeed, the nation require that their right to choose a president not be sold to foreign bidders,” the complaint notes.
FECA states that “a foreign national, directly or indirectly”, cannot lawfully “make a contribution or donation of money or or thing or value… in connection with a Federal, State or local election.” It also states that it is unlawful for “a person to solicit, accept or receive a contribution or donation… from a foreign national.” The money that was expended by the ALP for travel, housing and food to and in New Hampshire for the purpose of “volunteering” for Bernie 2016 are all prohibited contributions under FECA.
Sanders has consistently made the rallying cry against the corruption inherent in the Democratic Establishment and the Clinton and Obama camps the guise of his “political revolution.” It turns out, he is not so different from the politicians he criticizes. In a press release he issued on filing a complaint with the FEC against the ALP and the Bernie 2016 presidential campaign, O’Brien writes “There is a long tradition in the Democrat Party of trading away American sovereignty for campaign contributions.”
O’Brien noted that findings by the Project Veritas Action Fund show that Bernie 2016 has now introduced “a new wrinkle to this now well-established Democrat practice of foreign support of their presidential campaigns.” He notes that “under Bill Clinton, intelligence information showed that the Chinese mainland government funneled illegal contributions to the Democratic National Committee.”
And that President Barack Obama, who was at the time a junior Illinois senator seeking the nation’s highest office, “had turned repeatedly to the world outside the United States for contributions to his presidential campaign.” The findings came shortly after Obama had delivered a controversial 2008 speech in Berlin, Germany in which he described himself as a “citizen of the world.” His foreign policy has arguably proven to be a reflection of that post-national priority.
The Sanders campaign has not yet responded to Breitbart News inquiries about this matter.
Follow Adelle Nazarian on Twitter @AdelleNaz.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.