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March 18, 2023 - Epoch Times
16:02
Election Watchdogs Discover $200M Laundering Scheme Using "Smurfs"
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A new report put out by two election watchdog groups exposed what appears to be a large-scale money laundering scheme in American elections.
Here's specifically how the report describes what they uncovered.
Quote, And Election Watch Inc.
out of Wisconsin.
Large sums of money have been placed with thousands of individuals across the United States.
These individuals, called smurfs, then make numerous contributions to either liberal PACs, committees, or sometimes directly to the candidates' campaigns.
Smurfing is a term coined by drug gangs years ago to identify their money mules.
Over $200 million has been laundered, and the group is still counting.
Now, in case you've never heard of it before, smurfs are a real thing.
They're not just those frightening little blue characters with white hats that live in the forest.
Instead, within the world of organized crime, as it's mentioned in this report, smurfing is a specific method of money laundering.
Specifically, it's when you take a large sum of money and you split it up into many, many smaller sums of money, which can avoid getting detected by the authorities.
And then, each individual person who is given one of these smaller parcels of money to launder is himself or herself called a smurf.
So that is the general terminology.
And what these election watchdogs uncovered appears to be a plot wherein you have tens of thousands of alleged Smurfs making non-stop donations into the political machine.
Here's how the report continues.
Quote, However, the president of Election Watch said that, quote, we're finding Smurfs who are making 1,000 to 6,000 donations per year, and every year for three upwards to seven years.
We even found one who is making 40.8 donations per day, 365 days per year.
Now, interestingly, the report then goes on to say that as their investigation is unfolding, they're discovering that many of these alleged Smurfs don't even know that they're being used as Smurfs.
Meaning that they are not aware that their names and addresses are being used to make these non-stop political donations.
And in terms of the demographics of these alleged Smurfs, the investigators found them to fit a certain mold.
The two groups investigated Smurfs and saw a profile emerging.
Primarily white, over the age of 65, retired, several are single, very liberal, and of middle to lower economic class.
They are real people, not fake names.
Then, in terms of the ubiquity of these alleged Smurfs, the investigators found that when you look at just the top 1 or 2 percent, they've made a staggering number of political contributions.
Here's what it says about the top, top percentage.
Quote, In Arizona, the top one made 18,672 contributions in just three years.
Another one in Louisiana gave a sum worth much more than her house.
The top 32 Smurfs in Maryland gave a total of $5,559,429 over the last five years.
The majority of these are not rich people.
When one Smurf was contacted in Florida, her husband hung up the phone while she was yelling at him in the background not to say anything.
Then, a few days later, her donations completely stopped.
And just in terms of the sheer number of these Smurfs across the country, the investigators wrote that, quote, Smurfs are money mules.
Some of the individuals know they are participating, but many times they are not aware of the shenanigans.
The number of Smurfs we are finding number more than 10,000 spread across the country.
And so, you can forget about 2,000 mules because now there are 10,000 Smurfs.
Although, I should say alleged Smurfs because we have yet to go point by point and confirm with every single individual where this money actually came from.
Regardless though, one of the obvious questions here is how could this be happening without setting off obvious red flags?
And the answer appears to be that after the initial Smurf...
After the initial alleged smurf, the money is then funneled between multiple organizations before finally reaching its intended political destination.
Here's how the report lays this part out.
Quote, Quote, If one looked at a particular liberal candidate's campaign donations, it would not show the bulk of the donations were coming from Smurfs.
A political campaign which received funds illegally is required per state and federal law to pay the money back promptly.
Now, the issue with these alleged Smurfs, while of course they need to be investigated thoroughly, but it's just one manifestation of a deeper problem within our current political system.
And that problem has to do with outside money affecting local elections.
Because you see, with the way that our current system is set up, It's possible for wealthy American billionaires, wealthy American multimillionaires, or potentially several thousand Smurfs to shape our elections by using large amounts of money.
And so, for instance, you might look at our political system, and you might naturally assume that a senator from, let's say, Pennsylvania represents the people from Pennsylvania.
That would, of course, be a natural assumption.
That the senator from a particular state, like from the state of Pennsylvania, is in the federal Congress representing the interests of his local constituency back home.
However, here's the big question.
If the money that was used to get the senator elected came largely from outside the state, well in that case, is it really still accurate to say that that particular senator in Congress is really there because of the will of his local constituents?
Or is it the case that that particular senator's platform just happened to align with the wealthy individuals from other parts of the country who are willing to bankroll his campaign?
And this is not a theoretical problem, because if you look at the number for the most recent midterm election, for the 2022 midterm election, you'll find that in some states, over 90% of the money came from other parts of the country.
Meaning...
That these politicians were able to collect giant war chests of cash because they appealed to the interests, not of their local constituents, but rather of people outside of the state who ultimately decided to bankroll them.
There are two ways to look at this issue.
The first perspective is that these campaign contributions hijack the actual will of the people.
Because, let's say hypothetically, you are a conservative candidate running for an office in an area that's slightly right of center, politically.
And so then, technically, you would be the best representative for the will of the people in that locality.
However, your opponent in the race begins to receive major campaign contributions from organizations that are funded by the likes of Michael Bloomberg, George Soros, Mark Zuckerberg, or potentially 10,000 Smurfs.
And then suddenly, your opponent is able to outspend you in advertising by a factor of, let's say, 10 to 1.
Their name recognition goes through the roof, voters feel a lot more familiar with them, and they ultimately win.
And this, of course, can take place both in a general election as well as a primary election, meaning that these big-money donors from outside of the locality where the election is being held can control not only who gets on the ballot, but also potentially who then wins the ballot.
And so, in this type of scenario, does the elected official representing that area represent the true will of the people there?
Does he or she represent the actual constituents that they were elected by?
Well, at the very least, there's an argument to say that they don't.
And so, it's amidst this backdrop of these 10,000 alleged Smurfs, as well as the reality of giant amounts of out-of-state election funding, that a new amendment to the U.S. Constitution is roaring across the country, and it has now been endorsed by 22 out of the necessary 38 states.
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This amendment, if passed, would officially become the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and it would ban the use of, among other things, foreign as well as out-of-state funding in local elections.
And interestingly enough, while I was down in D.C. just last week, I had the opportunity to sit down and speak with Mr.
Jim Rubens, who is a board member of the American Promise Organization.
They're the ones who are spearheading this amendment, and we discussed his work on keeping big money out of local elections.
So we at American Promise are seeking the 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, restoring power to Congress and to the states to set reasonable limits on out-of-state campaign money, dark money, super PAC money.
Here's the problem.
You've got people like Mike Bloomberg, Soros, Zuckerberg.
They're billionaires.
They've amassed hundreds of millions of dollars, and they're targeting with data science and big money.
Every swing election now, for Congress certainly, party control of state legislatures, and it's getting down to school board level now.
And they're supplanting the preferences, the policy preferences, the candidate preferences, election outcomes in states all over the country, and it's damaging, destroying federalism.
This is important.
The framers of our Constitution were most fearful, most concerned about concentration of power.
They divided power.
We added the Tenth Amendment subsequent to the ratification to install federalism in our Constitution.
This system was not foreseen by the founders and the framers, where powerful entities could concentrate power to this extent.
So this amendment corrects that problem and restores federalism, restores local control, local preferences over election outcomes.
One example we gave prior to the interview that you mentioned was in your race for Senate, right, in New Hampshire.
Can you give us the breakdown of the financials for that?
2016 U.S. Senate, $132 million went into that race, 95% out of state.
Now, the problem is this money from out of state, super PAC, dark money, control of it is highly concentrated in the hands of the majority leaders of both bodies of Congress and billionaires.
And again, it's replacing the preferences, policy preferences, candidate preferences of local New Hampshire voters.
And it's critical to defend federalism that people in New York, this money is primarily controlled in New York, D.C., and California, critical under federalism that we can live together as a nation, that New Hampshire can be different than California.
We all don't want to be New York City.
The reason I wanted you to mention that example is because it really I think elucidates the problem, which is that you think of a senator in New Hampshire as being a representative of those people.
However, if so much money, 95% of the money actually came from out of state, the question becomes, is that really a representative of that state?
Now, the argument I imagine for it would be that, yes, you saw the voters in New Hampshire, only the voters in New Hampshire are voting for that representative.
But since so much money is coming from outside of the state...
Maybe people don't know as much about the other guy, right?
Exactly.
The money, it does not determine with certainty election outcomes.
We all know this, but it influences.
It has a significant impact on the election outcome.
So the candidate, first of all, becomes...
Allied with, subservient to, responsive to the source of this super PAC money, even though it's supposed to not.
And so the candidate is representing the billionaire, the super PAC. In some cases, dark money money is coming from China and Russia.
And the candidate is becoming responsive to the needs of that entity, as opposed to the voters in the particular state.
It's a subversion of the notion of voter control over election outcomes.
Do you think that the reason such...
Such a measure wasn't originally put into the Constitution.
Was that this problem was just not foreseen?
Exactly.
This problem was not foreseen.
This cropped up really as a result of a wave of judicial activism beginning in the early 80s by the Supreme Court where they struck down laws, state laws that controlled this problem.
Let me give you an example.
In Montana, the legislature was run by Anaconda Copper Company in Montana in the 1880s.
So the legislature in Montana says we're going to ban corporate money in Montana elections.
That's what they wanted in Montana.
The Supreme Court, U.S. Supreme Court, struck down that Montana law.
And I think Montana would want that back again.
Our amendment, the 28th Amendment, would restore power to the Montana legislature to effectuate that.
Another example, Alaska had a donor-voter law so that if you're a candidate in Alaska...
People who live in Alaska can vote for you, can donate to you, but people in California cannot donate to the Alaska candidate.
The Supreme Court struck it down.
We want to have this amendment to restore power to the people of Alaska to have a donor-voter law that they want.
How many states have so far signed on board?
22 states have endorsed mostly through legislatures, some through ballot initiatives.
22 states have endorsed and asked Congress to give this proposed amendment back to the states for potential ratification.
We need to get to 38 to ratify.
American promise has been in existence five years to get to these 22 states.
We're going to get here within two to four years.
Now if you'd like to learn more about either the American Promise Organization or the 28th Amendment that they're spearheading, I'll throw all those links down into the description box below this video for you to check out.
And also, I'd love to know your thoughts.
Do you support this amendment?
Do you think it's a good idea?
Or do you believe that in the context of American elections, giving people money is a form of free speech and should therefore not be curtailed regardless of how local a race happens to be?
I'd love to know your thoughts.
Please leave them in the comments section below.
I'll be reading them later tonight as well as into the weekend.
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And then, until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epoch Times.
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