Obama Pal Hit With Record Election Fine

In Democrat circles, this qualifies as a resume enhancer.

The Rev. Al Sharpton and his National Action Network have been slapped with a record $285,000 fine for violating a slew of federal election rules during his 2004 bid for president, the Post has learned.

In a decision to be made public next month, the Federal Election Commission found that Sharpton's Democratic primary campaign accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from private sources.

It also "kept poor records of its activities and expenditures" and commingled funds with Sharpton's civil-rights group. All are prohibited under the Federal Election Campaign Act.

Earlier this month, Sharpton and former campaign manager Andrew Rivera signed an agreement with the FEC to pay the fine -- among the highest in the regulatory body's 34-year history.

"Sharpton 2004 materially misstated its receipts and disbursements, as well as cash on hand in 2004," says the April 8 FEC report, which followed an investigation of the Sharpton campaign's expenses.

Good luck ever getting this thug to pay up a nickel of this fine.

'A Wide Scale Problem for the Obama Campaign'

Obama's got some explaining to do. Of course, the media will largely ignore this and go back to making up stories about Sarah Palin.

The Republican National Committee is hosting a conference call right now outlining the Federal Election Commission complaint it will file Monday accusing the Obama campaign of taking contributions from foreign nationals who are banned by U.S. law from giving to U.S. federal candidates.

Good Will was unavailable for comment.

H/T Instapundit.

We're not talking chump change here either folks. As noted here, it could be well over $200 million in illegal foreign money.

More than half of the whopping $426.9 million Barack Obama has raised has come from small donors whose names the Obama campaign won't disclose.

And questions have arisen about millions more in foreign donations the Obama campaign has received that apparently have not been vetted as legitimate.

Normally, this would disqualify a candidate, but the media doesn't want to go near it for the most part, and if they do, they'll call you racists for pointing it out.

Update: Remarkably, Newsweek notices this minor little problem of massive campaign fraud, which the RNC cites.

"When we were made aware of an ad for a Nigerians for Obama fundraiser in a Nigerian paper, our attorneys sent a letter to the paper making it clear the event had nothing to do with our campaign, and that we would not accept contributions from the event," one Obama aide said.