I recently read the story of Kathy Callahan over atBluewjersey.com I decided to do some poking aorund.
Gregory Turley, a lawyer in Texas, said the credit card company temporarily suspended his Visa card after he and his wife used it to each make $2,300 contributions to the Clinton campaign, apparently because the large amount raised a flag. Informed by the campaign that the donations did not go through, Mr. Turley said he sent a check instead, but the campaign returned it.
?They said they would prefer to run it through the credit card again,? he said.
After resolving the bank?s security concerns, Mr. Turley said the contributions went through ? twice. The Clinton campaign refunded the Turleys the $4,600 in erroneous charges in April.
NY Times
Why does this sound familiar... ?
Greg Turley;s story was just like Kathy Callahans story, except Kathy was on Hillarys finance com. And there seems to be a ton of Greg Turleys floating around on the Donor refunds lists.
-Clinton camp reimburses landlord.
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10/23/2007 Clinton campaign refunds $13,900 to the 2006 Ishmael Jones Irrevocable Trust.
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Donald Alexander was refunded $2,300 twice, three months apart.
-Nichole Avante 2x $2300, Carlos Balzoa 3x $4600.
-Kathy Callahan, eventually got back over 5k from the Hillary campaign, but not the $400 in bank charges and other credit problems.
Open Secrets has the Clinton Campaign way out in front in refunds compared to the Obama Campaign. 2.8 million to 900k.
I then considered that the FEC has 4 vacancies on its board and has no quorum, it cannot rule on the McCain issue let alone anything else.
The Clinton campaign has refunded 3 times what Obama has, 2.8 million to 900,000. Is the Clinton campaign gaming the system, running up lots of debt, then double dipping peoples credit cards, waiting until more donations come to to cover the refunds on those credit cards, taking advantage of the FEC inaction ? I have no proof, but I do think this stinks.
Updated:
I want to include a great comment from Lib Dem FoP
Let's for the moment assume that the scale of the refunds and the experiences of individuals we know about indicate that these "accidents" are rather too frequent. Why would they be doing it?
Could it be that their submissions to the FEC break down into two separate filings. One, the one everyone looks at, are the simple totals of contributions, spending and known liabilities like outstanding bills from companies providing services.
A second or later one is the complete list of donors and the amounts they have given. Because of the detail involved, this can be sent in after the first. In the course of "checking" it, they "discover" that some have given over the max because of these double charges. This generates a list of "whoops we have to give these people their money back". That ammends the figure they have already sent in for the month but the "headline" figures have already been reported.
They artificially inflate the figure that gets all the press coverage, ammend it for the FEC returns but that change never gets fully reported as it does not reduce the "contributions" on the next month's returns. It's like the position where her win in the primary in Texas makes all the news but her defeat in the caucuses and final figure of fewer delegates than Obama gets ignored or sidelined in the media when it comes in later.