Recently, the Associated Press
reported, the Republican Governors Association will donate to charity $500,000 in donations they received in October 2002 from a public affairs company owned by Michael Scanlon, a business partner of Jack Abramoff. Unfortunately, they have decided to do this over the course of 2 years and that's where I have a problem. From the article:
Romney said an internal review, triggered by questions about the donations on Tuesday from the AP, deemed the donations legal. But he and Gov. Sonny Perdue of Georgia, the RGA vice chairman, decided to split them equally over two years among Red Cross chapters in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Texas and Florida.
The move allows Romney and the RGA to avoid questions about the contributions while they are trying to help Republican governors win elections in 36 states this fall.
More on the flip!
There is little question these donations were made with illegal money. What gives the RGA, or for that matter, anyone who received these funds, the right to decide what they are going to do with them, and when? Futhermore, how is it they believe they have the right to hold on to these funds to help re-elect Republican Governors in 2006? Unless I've missed the picture, the very reason these funds are illegal was the fraudulent manner in which they were obtained. And the motive, aside from personal gain, was the very purpose of re-electing Republicans to office.
I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that these illegally obtained funds would come under the U.S. laws related to forfeiture. Here's an interesting paragraph from an article from The Federalist Society titled, Forfeiture is Reasonable and it Works
The government also uses forfeiture to take the profit out of crime, and to return property to victims. No one has the right to retain the money gained from bribery, extortion, illegal gambling, or drug dealing. With the forfeiture laws, we can separate the criminal from his profits -- and any property traceable to it -- thus removing the incentive others may have to commit similar crimes tomorrow. And if the crime is one that has victims -- like carjacking or fraud -- we can use the forfeiture laws to recover the property and restore it to the owners far more effectively than the restitution statutes permit.
If in fact, this money was illegally obtained through fraud, shouldn't these funds be returned to the rightful owners? And, shouldn't the government be doing everything possible to secure these funds so they can be returned to the rightful owners?
We need to push to have as much of these funds stripped from the people who illegally received them. They don't have a right to decide to just give them to a charity of their choice. If we don't, the Republican party will continue to use them against us to re-elect more corrupt politicians.