The legality of donation swapping seems pretty unclear to me. My limited and insufficient understanding is there’s no actually exchange of goods, and you can’t verify whether someone will actually carry through with the match.
On reflection it’s not obvious to me that the small chance of a public comment being picked up and casting negative light on a campaign (particularly if I am wrong and donation swapping in this case is not legal) wouldn’t offset a fairly small donation to a campaign making the activity negative in expectation. I’ll retract my previous comment.
“A foreign national may not direct, dictate, control or directly or indirectly participate in the decision-making process of any person (such as a corporation, labor organization, political committee or political organization) with regard to the person’s federal or nonfederal election-related activities. This includes decisions concerning the making of contributions, donations, expenditures or disbursements in connection with any federal state or local election or decisions concerning the administration of a political committee.”
The legality of donation swapping seems pretty unclear to me. My limited and insufficient understanding is there’s no actually exchange of goods, and you can’t verify whether someone will actually carry through with the match.
On reflection it’s not obvious to me that the small chance of a public comment being picked up and casting negative light on a campaign (particularly if I am wrong and donation swapping in this case is not legal) wouldn’t offset a fairly small donation to a campaign making the activity negative in expectation. I’ll retract my previous comment.
https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/foreign-nationals/
I think it would be pretty hard to argue that a donation swap didn’t at least involve indirectly participating in someone’s decision to donate.