Suspicious Activity Found In Knoxville Regarding Donations To Political Campaigns
Image Credit: Knox County Government / CC
The Tennessee Conservative [By Paula Gomes] –
After O’Keefe Media Group (OMG) called for concerned citizens to help investigate instances of potential money laundering in relation to political campaigns, one Knoxville resident pulled data that points to similar activity in Tennessee.
The data that James O’Keefe obtained came from state and Federal Election Commission (FEC) data. O’Keefe said that there are “bizarre amounts of data” on homes and individuals amounting to thousands of dollars in donations.
Erik Wiatr, a concerned citizen and Chair of the Knox Liberty Organization, pulled a FEC report for Knoxville ActBlue donors after viewing the OMG video. ActBlue, a nonprofit tech organization, builds digital fundraising tools for Democratic political groups who then use them to process donations. ActBlue is used by the Knox County Democratic Party and also local and state Democratic candidates.
Wiatr found that one donor – an 84-year-old woman living in a senior home – had made 6,166 donations to ActBlue from August 2020 to December 2022 that amounted to just over $80 thousand dollars.
“She donated a total of 273 different days, however, there were some days where this 84 year old was cranking out the donations on her computer,” said Wiatr. “On November 2nd 2020, she donated 115 times. December 2nd, 2020, 88 times. January 2nd, 2021, 87 times. March 2nd, 2021, 87 times. February 2nd, 2021, 85 times. Why are there so many donations always on the 2nd of a month? I guess no clubs or activities are scheduled that day at her senior home.”
According to the data that Wiatr pulled, contributions include Biden for President, a PAC called Stop Republicans, Mark Kelly for Senate, Stop Republicans, National Democratic Training Committee PAC, the Democratic National Committee, the Progressive Turnout Project, Progressive Takeover PAC, Warnock for Georgia, and more.
Wiatr believes this data warrants an immediate investigation of Tennessee Democrats by Tennessee’s Bureau of Ethics and Campaign Finance and the State Attorney General.
The Knox County Election Commission voter database shows that the woman, whose name we are not sharing due to the possibility that she is a victim of fraud, has voted in all of the recent state and federal general elections, and the City of Knoxville’s general election in 2021. The only recent primary she voted in was the Democratic March 2020 primary.
Wiatr found that some of the donations were made under a slightly different name and with minor changes to the address. 101 of the donations did not include a middle name, and in some, the street name was spelled differently.
“Something interesting to note, for the years just prior to 2020 she had no donations and then all of a sudden starting in August 2020 she is a donating machine,” said Wiatr.
When O’Keefe knocked on doors of supposed donors from Maryland and Wisconsin, they denied the extent of their purported donations to ActBlue.
Wiatr says that anyone can use the FEC website to look up ActBlue donors using a specific time period and city. That data can then be downloaded and opened in Excel or a similar program.
About the Author: Paula Gomes is a Tennessee resident and reporter for The Tennessee Conservative. You can reach Paula at paula@tennesseeconservativenews.com.
Hi,
I have some real misgivings about a “red flag” law. I spent my career, teacher, counselor, working with teens and adults. I was a high school counselor, 17 years; behavioral alternative school teacher/counselor, 3 years and Director of Adult Education for 5 years. We provided teachers/GED in our local jail. In short, I have some experience with all demographics in East Tennessee. It is disturbing that “red flag” laws are the first consideration for stopping gun violence! It isn’t working in Chicago, San Francisco, Washington, D.C. …. The first line of offense is consequences. Enforce the existing laws with additional consequences. Increased jail time, penalties and no bail when a firearm is used to commit a crime, doesn’t have to be discharged, just on the perpetrator’s person or accessible during the criminal act. Flag any prior gun involved conviction, impose a recidivism law that puts the felon back in jail if caught with a gun in his/her possession and if used to commit a crime, life without parole. The second but equal line of offense, mental health facilities must be available to provide resident treatment, even permanently if necessary. I’m old enough to remember the stupidity of closing all mental health facilities because of the abuses in some. Rather than fix the problem, governments shut them all down. It is simple, Tennessee government need only look at the states and cities with red flag laws and determine if the gun violence and gun related crimes have reduced significantly since the law was enacted . It’s so frustrating to watch the governor I helped elect, the representatives I helped elect, be intimidated by those who use a horrific event, like the unimaginable death of 6 innocent victim to push a political agenda. Our governor needs to have a sit down conversation with Ron DeSantis for a lesson in reason rather than emotional reactivism. Janice Stelzman
AMEN!
AMEN!
Hope this gets properly prosecuted, but given the Soros DAs, etc., not got high hopes.
That’s just standard dimmercrap practice.
Well Done! Keep digging!
You are setting an example for others to follow.
I went to the website to look. If the Tennessee conservative could research where to go on the site and how to use it. More of us would look and do a little leg work. I tried. But couldn’t figure it out.
You can go hear and populate zip codes and other filters. If the data is over 500k rows, then it will require using the bulk data link.
https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/?two_year_transaction_period=2022&min_date=01%2F01%2F2021&max_date=12%2F31%2F2022