Key Points
- Democrats paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to a consulting firm operated by an illegal alien, which experts say may have violated campaign finance laws.
- Antonio Valdovinos, the owner of the Arizona-based La Machine Consulting, has made his status as a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient central to his personal narrative. He boasts of his “undocumented” status on his firm’s website and produced an off-Broadway musical,”¡Americano!,” about life as a “Dreamer.” Valdovinos’s immigration status could cause a problem for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which paid his firm, La Machine Consulting, $500,000 to canvas in three battleground states ahead of the 2022 midterm election.
- The Federal Election Commission classifies DACA recipients as foreign nationals for the purposes of campaign finance laws, and says that foreign nationals cannot “directly or indirectly” participate in the “decision-making process” of any campaign or political committees’ election-related activities. One veteran campaign finance lawyer tells the Washington Free Beacon the DSCC’s contributions could have violated these laws.
- “If the DSCC knowingly engaged a non-citizen/resident in a capacity that they are prohibited from participating in for federal election law purposes, then they ought to be held accountable,” said Dan Backer, a campaign finance attorney who represented the plaintiffs in the landmark Supreme Court case, McCutcheon v. FEC.
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