There is also an unfolding potential campaign finance scandal Obama must now answer for. “The independently owned websiteObama.com, which steers users to the president’s campaign donation website, gets most of its traffic from foreign countries, raising questions about the legality of tens of millions of small dollar donations to the campaign, according to a new report” issued by the Government Accountability Institute, the Washington Examiner reported Monday.

To read the complete U.S. News & World Report article, click here.

Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Reince Priebus sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder on Thursday demanding an investigation into online campaign contributions to the president’s reelection campaign.

“[T]he President’s campaign committee does not use the industry standard practices to guard against receiving fraudulent or excessive contributions via the internet,” Priebus alleges in the letter. “As a result, the President’s campaign committee is vulnerable to the receipt of prohibited contributions. Their failure to adhere to the industry standard has caused these questions regarding whether the campaign is deliberately inviting prohibited contributions.”

To read The Hill’s full report, click here.

A new study suggests that President Obama’s campaign systematically pursued foreign contributions to fuel his run for the presidency, a violation of law. Is America’s democracy now for sale to the highest bidder?

The Government Accountability Institute, which is headed by Stanford University Professor Peter Schweizer, used sophisticated Internet investigative tools — including something called “spidering” software — to determine how the web is being used to raise political funds.
To read the entire Investor’s Business Daily article, click here.

The Obama campaign’s online donation system contains “major security vulnerabilities,” a watchdog group reported Monday, suggesting the flaws could open the door to illicit foreign contributions.

The study by the Government Accountability Institute flagged security problems with a host of political websites, including the online donation pages for nearly half the members of Congress. The report, though, homed in on what it described as three major flaws in the Obama campaign’s system for soliciting contributions — claims the campaign later rejected as unfounded.
To read the rest of the FOX News article, click here.

The Obama website, unlike those of most campaigns, doesn’t ask for the three- or four-digit credit card verification number. That makes it easier for donors to use fictitious names and addresses to send money in.

Campaigns aren’t allowed to accept donations from foreigners. But it looks like the Obama campaign has made it easier for them to slip money in. How much foreign money has come into the Obama campaign?

Click here to read Michael Barone’s Washington Examiner article.

The report suggests the Obama campaign is uninhibited in its foreign solicitations, lacks rigorous screening for donors’ citizenship and fails to impose basic e-commerce safeguards, such as requiring donors to provide the Card Verification Value (the security code on the back of a card) to prove a donor is in physical possession of the card.

Under U.S. federal election law, contributions from foreign nationals to presidential campaigns are forbidden.

To read the complete ABC News article, click here.

The Obama-Biden campaign has raised more than $271 million from donations under $200, vs. $69 million for Romney. But the Obama team’s done so in part by abjuring the most basic controls against fraud or illegal foreign donations.

The Government Accountability Institute, a Washington watchdog group, says it’s likely a high percentage of Obama online’s donors aren’t Americans. For starters, a full 43 percent of the traffic on the site barackobama.com comes from foreign Internet provider addresses, versus just 11.9 percent at Romney’s equivalent site.

To read the rest of the New York Post article, click here.

A new report released from the Government Accountability Institute shows that nearly half the members of Congress do not require consumers to give their CVV number when making online credit card donations to their political campaigns.

The Card Verification Value number is the three or four digit number that is usually imprinted on the back of a credit card. Providing the CVV number when making an online purchase or donation proves that you actually have the physical credit or debit card, helping to protect the consumer and reduce credit card fraud.

Click here to read the entire Forbes article.

In Newsweek, Peter Schweizer and Peter Boyer draw a bright line under a gap in the federal campaign finance system that could allow foreign nationals and other questionable donors to put money into American campaigns — in the event that those campaigns don’t monitor their own receipts vigilantly.

To read the rest of the Politico story on the GAI report, click here.

To buy Obama merchandise, the campaign requires buyers to enter their credit card CVV security code but does not ask the credit card security code to be entered when making an online campaign donation.

By GAI’s estimates, the Obama campaign’s failure to utilise industry-standard protections potentially costs the campaign millions in extra processing fees.

To read the entire article in the Daily Mail, click here.