IHAQ wrote: ↑Sat Mar 13, 2021 8:14 am
A separate point on this from a commenter on the Trib article...
There is a legal problem here: Elder Uchtdorf just stated that one of his family members made multiple campaign donations in his name. That is called a straw donor, and is illegal under 52 U.S.C. § 30122: "No person shall make a contribution in the name of another person". Is that family member going to be prosecuted?
https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2021/03 ... /comments/
This was addressed in one of the articles. Absent intent to hide the identity of the donor, this case would not be considered a violation. The purpose of the statute is to prevent evasion of the donation limits. For example. Dined D’Souza and his his wife made a 10K donation to a senate campaign. The limit was 5k, and so the donation specified the total represented 5k each. So far, so good.
He then persuaded his mistress and another individual to donate 5K each, promising to reimburse them. They did and he did. The FEC records showed four donations in the amount of the 5K limit. In reality, though, D’Souza donated triple the limit.
He eventually confessed that he knew what the law was and intentionally violated it. After being sentenced to portion and serving part of his sentence, he was pardoned by Trump.
In the present case there is no evidence that anyone was attempting to deliberately mislead. All the donations were in the same name and were well within the donation limits for the various races. Now, if the donations were made at the request of someone ineligible to donate (like a foreign National), that would be a different story. I think it would be reasonable for the FEC to review bank accounts for evidence that the amounts donated were reimbursed, but I don’t know what their enforcement guidelines and priorities are.
So, I don’t foresee any legal fallout. And, Utchdorf’s donations don’t threaten the church’s tax exemption. (The church’s internal rules are more restrictive than the IRS’s.) But that doesn’t help with the violations of the Church’s neutrality rules.
For example, my wife and I share a PayPal account that is in her name because we originally set it up. But when I use the account to make an online donation, whether through a campaign website or a site like Act Blue, it doesn’t just record the donation as being from her. The campaigns have to report to the FEC and they know that’s it’s illegal for them to accept donations that violate the limits. So they specifically ask for the name and address of person making the donation.
So, just “sharing an account” explains nothing about what happened here. The donations were made directly to several campaigns and through Act Blue — in otherwords, to different organizations. Each one would have asked for the name and address of the donor.
To get to “oversight” as an explanation, someone has to forget both the church’s neutrality rules and mistakenly state that Dieter was the donor when he wasn’t. I’m a big fan of Hanlon’s Razor, so perhaps Mrs. Utchdorf misremembered that the policy applies only to the FP and used her husband’s name because she’s from an era where the husband’s name was used for all financial transactions. And maybe Dieter wasn’t paying close attention to his family finances during election season. But when I try to persuade myself that “oversight” is an honest and accurate description of what happened, I can feel Hanlon giving the side eye.
I don’t really care about whether and how the church acts with respect to its own rules: not my circus; not my monkeys. But I do hope the FEC does or did it’s due diligence to make sure this was squeaky clean.
by the way: I also think the church’s prohibition against donations is neutrality theater. The church is not politically neutral, and there is no reason to pretend it is by preventing Dieter or his wife from exercising the same rights other American Citizens have.
