| | | The Biden/Harris campaign. That's what I thought That would be incorrect. Those contributions were made to the Biden Campaign alone. Or, back in the day, it would have been something along the lines of "The Committee to Reelect the President".
The VP candidate is generally not selected until the convention, and at that time, a joint campaign fund is established. The reason is that it is possible a sitting president would make a change for VP, and that has happened commonly, but not so much lately.
There is no basis for a presidential candidate to transfer money paid into his candidacy, to some other candidate's candidacy. The reason it is illegal is obvious: If I contribute to the Donald Trump candidacy, and Paul Ryan decided to run, I don't want my money going to Ryan without my prior approval. Donald can't, because he has a bad day, just fork over the money I contributed for a different purpose. That would be not only illegal, but a gross moral wrong. And it would serve to damage the campaign funding process.
It may be true there are no CRIMINAL penalties involved. But there is a process in which donations are refunded to the contributors, who can subsequently choose to contribute to the Harris campaign. I'm pretty sure there will be civil penalties but they'll probably be waived or reduced in the long haul because that's how FEC does things: They don't enforce shit against Democrats. |
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