by Peter Schweitzer

The Government Accountability Institute’s 108-page report is a detailed investigation of the widespread vulnerability of federal campaigns to fraudulent and foreign donations. The Obama campaign’s response to the report has been surprisingly defensive. As the report demonstrates, this is a systemic problem that affects Republicans and Democrats alike.

The Obama campaign seems to be more interested in scoring political points than dealing with the facts of this problem. They should note that, as we set forth in our Daily Beast article, we have been critical of the Romney campaign for its failure to release the names of all their campaign bundlers. To that end, the Government Accountability Institute is going to stick with the critical question of non-partisan fact.

Our report is a comprehensive analysis of a bipartisan problem: the vulnerabilities that campaigns face when it comes to fraudulent and foreign donations. The Obama campaign is particularly vulnerable because of its aggressive solicitation of online donations, their failure to employ rigorous, industry-standard anti-fraud security tools (CVV and AVS), and because the name “Obama” is a global brand. [Read more...]