DSCC Paid Illegal Alien for Campaign Services

During the 2022 midterm elections, the Democrats paid half a million dollars to an Arizona company called La Machine Consulting for canvassing work and other campaign services. There’s nothing wrong with that since many such companies do business all over the country and both parties make use of their services. Or at least there wouldn’t be anything wrong with that except for one potentially glaring problem. As Chuck Ross reports at the Free Beacon this week, La Machine Consulting is owned by Antonio Valdovinos. And Mr. Valdovinos proudly portrays himself as a “dreamer,” meaning that he’s not a citizen and is not in the country legally, even though he received a deferment under DACA. And the FEC frowns on that sort of thing.

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.

Under Federal Election Commission laws, they classify DACA recipients as foreign nationals. And foreign nationals cannot “directly or indirectly” participate in the “decision-making process” of any campaign or political committees’ election-related activities. Canvassing is obviously an “election-related activity.”

Of course, for either the DSCC or Valdovinos to actually get hauled before a judge over this it would require someone in either the FEC or the Justice Department to take action. As it turns out, Antonio Valdovinos had already gotten into trouble over this in the past. In 2021 he was charged with campaign finance violations for the same reason. But the FEC mysteriously exercised “prosecutorial discretion” and opted not to take action against him.

Do you suppose that the clients who have engaged Valdovinos might have anything to do with this exercise in prosecutorial discretion? Or that his “inspiring personal narrative” might be playing a role? In addition to the DSCC, La Machine Consulting has also done work for Congressman Ruben Gallego and Senator Mark Kelly, among others. Do you notice any similarities popping up on the La Machine client list? If you said, ‘they’re all Democrats,’ give yourself a cookie.

Antonio Valdovinos is a dreamer on top of having financial ties to prominent liberal political figures. As long as the Democrats are in charge, do you really think anyone will be holding him or the DSCC accountable for “a flat-out violation of federal law,” as campaign finance attorney Dan Backer called it in a statement to the Free Beacon?  Somehow I don’t think they’re losing any sleep over this.

Then again, perhaps I’m wrong. In 2021, the FEC fined Bernie Sanders’ campaign $15,000 for employing three DACA recipients during the 2020 primary election. Of course, the Democrats never really like Sanders much when he thinks about running for higher office. But who knows? Perhaps the FEC can eventually feel too embarrassed to keep ignoring things like this.

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