A brewing political scandal regarding potentially illegal campaign donations is threatening to cause even more problems for President Barack Obama's re-election campaign, the Washington Examiner reports.
The news comes the day after the commander-in-chief was easily outperformed by his rival Mitt Romney in the first presidential debate on Wednesday night, putting Obama suddenly on the defensive.
The Washington Examiner, citing "knowledgeable sources," reports that a national magazine and a national web site are preparing to run a bombshell donor scandal story that President Obama and his campaign have been trying to keep under wraps.
However, a "key source" reportedly said the story could be published on Friday or this upcoming Monday.
The Washington Examiner has more details:
According to the sources, a taxpayer watchdog group conducted a nine-month investigation into presidential and congressional fundraising and has uncovered thousands of cases of credit card solicitations and donations to Obama and Capitol Hill, allegedly from unsecure accounts, and many from overseas. That might be a violation of federal election laws.The Obama campaign has received hundreds of millions in small dollar donations, many via credit card donations through their website. On Thursday, the campaign announced a record September donor haul of $150 million.
Political analysts have been trying to figure out why Obama looked off his game during the debate -- a possible donor scandal story from a national magazine and website could be one possible explanation.
If there is any silver lining for Obama, the Obama-Biden ticket survived a similar scandal at the end of 2008. The Washington Post reported that the Obama campaign allowed donors to use "largely untraceable prepaid credit cards that could potentially be used to evade limits on how much an individual is legally allowed to give or to mask a contributor's identity."
TheBlaze will continue to follow this developing story.
Front page photo via Getty Images.
