So it would appear as if Governor McAuliffe took a check from an Angolan oil firm, cashed it, and only when asked about the donation by the Associated Press, returned it:
Officials at Common Good Va. initially believed the $25,000 donation on June 29 was legal. But nearly a month later, the PAC said it is returning the donation because officials at Glinn USA Investments are unwilling to certify that the contribution was legal under federal law, which prohibits campaigns at any level from accepting money from outside the U.S.
The move came after the AP questioned Glinn USA’s connections to Sonangol, the state-owned oil company of Angola.
McAuliffe’s staffers at Common Good VA are brushing this off as something they caught, not something the press caught. Which makes this more of a game than it does a method of accountability.
Of course, McAuliffe has been known to take shady cash like this before from Liberian shipping firms and the like.
It does raise an interesting question though. Can we think of another time where a sitting governor took a contribution, a question was raised about its propriety, the money was returned… and today is now staring down an appeals process?
Oh yeah… that…
Now partisans might argue that the circumstances were different, but let’s be honest here. One governor took gifts and produced nothing over a set of vitamin pills. This governor is actively taking illegal cash, gets caught doing so, returns the cash (same as McDonnell did “in an overabundance of caution”) and what happens?
Nothing.
When the judicial system begins to apply our laws unevenly, that is where the wheels start coming off. No doubt many Republicans were shaken by the draconian ruling against McDonnell, if for no other reason than the punishment never fit the allegations. This salient point has been missed by virtually every op-ed thinker to the left. What, pray tell, happens when the pendulum swings the other way?
Meanwhile, McAuliffe skates by after being caught taking illegal cash. Hillary Clinton — once again in the news for shady deals with UBS — is actively considered as a frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Such are the times, folks.
