Historian: Obama Campaign Opens Door to Chinese Influence with Lax Online Security Measures

If you are an elected official in China, would you want President Obama, who seems to apologize for America’s exceptionalism, or Mitt Romney, who just declared the era of American weakness abroad is over, to win the presidential election? 

That is the question historian Arthur Herman posed in the New York Post on Wednesday.

Herman writes that if you are a Chinese official rooting for Obama, “well, you can do something about it.”

“Feel free to get out your credit card, pull up Obama’s fund-raising Web site, barackobama.com, and give to the campaign — along with a few thousand of your closest friends,” Herman writes. “As long as your donation is less than $200, no questions will be asked about whether you’re even a US citizen. If it’s under $50, there won’t even be a record of it.”

Herman is referencing the Government Accountability Institute’s report on “online campaign fund-raising at local, state, and national levels” that “shows that many campaigns have inadequate safeguards against foreign donors influencing this election.”

Herman says Obama’s campaign, though, “stands out as a veritable cesspool.”

Herman cites the lack of protection against credit card fraud and a Chinese blogger who has “has posted the Obama thank-you notes for his $3 and $5 donations on his Chinese site — which includes hyperlinks steering visitors to the official Obama fund-raising page.”

“Multiply those untraceable $3 and $5 donations by a few thousand or tens of thousands of Chinese nationals giving up to the $200 limit, and the money starts to add up,” Herman writes.

Many of these foreigners go to Obama.com, a mysterious site owned by Obama campaign bundler Robert Roche. Roche got a seat at the head table at the 2011 China State Dinner and has business interests in China that are dependent on the Chinese government. 

Herman notes that Obama once blasted the Supreme Court for potentially opening the door for elections to be “bankrolled by foreign entities,” but “his campaign’s actions tell a very different story.” 

“At best, it refuses to do anything to prevent foreigners (or fraudsters) from donating,” Herman writes. “The Obama campaign clearly doesn’t care. The real question is whether the media, Congress, and the American people do.”