Guest Post by Bob Cushman
Every so often, a reporter stumbles into a story so large, so complex, and so sprawling that it almost feels impossible to tell. This is one of those stories. The deeper this investigation went, the clearer it became that what initially appeared to be an anomaly may actually represent one of the most extensive money-laundering operations in modern American political history. While the scope is daunting, the facts uncovered along the way demand public scrutiny.
The first red flags appeared in October 2019. While downloading and analyzing publicly available data from the Federal Election Commission (FEC), I noticed something deeply unusual. Three Michigan members of Congress had received roughly 75 percent of their total campaign donations from outside the state they represented. That alone raised serious questions.
Puzzled by the scale of these out-of-state contributions, I documented the findings and sent formal letters to then–Attorney General William Barr, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and Matthew Schneider, the U.S. Attorney for Eastern Michigan. The purpose of the letter was clearly stated:
“The purpose of this letter is to request a thorough investigation into the legitimacy of campaign donations of three Michigan Congressional Districts, MI 8th, MI 11th and MI 13th. The extremely high ‘out of state’ component of the individual donations and other factors strongly suggest a preponderance of ‘conduits’ AKA straw donors which is a violation of Title 52, United States Code, Sections 30122 and 30109(a)(1)(A).”
