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According to the supreme court (https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/16/politics/supreme-court-campaign-funds-ted-cruz/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/16/politics
by diffxx 4y ago
According to the supreme court (https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/16/politics/supreme-court-campaign-funds-ted-cruz/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/16/politics/supreme-court-campai...), it is legal to make personal donations to your campaign and then have the campaign pay you back with post election fundraising. What is to stop a candidate from colluding with a bank? Let's say a banker offers the candidate a 1MM loan with 0.5% apr. The candidate receives that money and makes a 1MM loan to their campaign at 10% apr. Now the candidate potentially has a ~100K/year annual revenue stream coming from the repayment of their loan. All they need to do is rile up their supporters about whatever hot button issue is most salient with their constituents to keep the post election donations coming in. This is particularly scary when it comes to house elections since given the short terms, house members are pretty much always in election fundraising mode.
Now, perhaps the scheme I just outlined is a bit too obvious, but I certainly don't doubt that far more sophisticated money laundering schemes that leverage the recent supreme court decision are happening now and will happen in the future.