Guest post by Bob Cushman
Once in a while, a reporter finds a story that challenges his or her ability to tell because it is so massive in terms of time and scope. He or she feels over-whelmed. This reporter feels that way, but let’s begin anyway. This story will attempt to show the reader the journey that this reporter has been on to discover what is most likely one of the largest money laundering evolutions in the history of this country.
First Indications of Massive Money Laundering – 2019
Six years ago in October of 2019, I was downloading data from the FEC database, which by the way is quite easy to do. As I compiled the data I found that three Michigan Congresswomen had received about 75% of their total incoming campaign donations from out of the state of Michigan. At that time, this reporter was both amazed and confused. How could this possibly be? I decided to compile this information and wrote letters to William Barr (Attorney General), Christopher Wray (Director of FBI) and Matthew Schneider (US Attorney of SE Michigan). A copy of this letter which was sent to all three officials is as follows:
In this letter I defined my purpose as:
“The purpose of this letter is to request a thorough investigation into the legitimacy of campaign donations of three Michigan Congressional Districts, MI 8th, MI 11th and MI 13th. The extremely high “out of state” component of the individual donations and other factors strongly suggest a preponderance of “conduits” AKA straw donors which is a violation of Title 52, United States Code, Sections 30122 and 30109(a)(1)(A).”
Unfortunately, I never received a substantive response from anyone.
Amazing Increase in Money Flow to Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer Fast forward to November of 2023. I once again noticed something astonishing! While analyzing campaign contributions to Governor Whitmer, I was surprised to see the following: “After Whitmer contracted with the largest, most successful Democratic consultants known as GMMB her donation dollars increased by 100 fold and the number of donations per year increased by 265 fold!” How could this possibly happen? Is it possible that the payment to GMMB “facilitated” the increased flow of “Straw Donors” AKA “Smurfs”? Only an investigation that could produce subpoenas could find the truth! The details of my findings can be found here:
Election Watch Press Release I then came across a Press release from Election Watch/ Peter Bernegger that stated: “A report by non-profit organizations, the Gibson Group of Maryland and Election Watch, has exposed a large-scale money laundering scheme in US political campaigns. This involves the use of “smurfs” – thousands of individuals who make numerous small donations to liberal PACs, committees or directly to candidates’ campaigns, in order to launder large sums of money. The report claims that over $200m has been laundered so far, with many of the smurfs being unaware their names and addresses are being used for donations. Investigation found that the smurfs tend to be primarily white, retired, liberal, and of middle to lower economic class.”
Note: Peter Bernegger is, in my opinion the absolute authority on identifying “straw donors” AAK “smurfs”. I encourage readers to visit the following website: You will be amazed at the data that has been composed for your benefit! Peter is without question one of the leading Patriots in this country fighting for election integrity!
Letter to James Comer: Fast forward to September of 2024. This author composed a letter to James Comer – Chair of the Congressional Oversight Committee. In this letter I stated the letter’s purpose as follows: “As a citizen journalist/investigative reporter, I have spent several hundred hours, in the past few years, researching and reporting on the subject matter of your investigation. I am responding to your announcement with some of my work in hopes that it may prove helpful to your investigation. The most important aspect of laundered money in the campaign finance sector is that our right to be represented by our elected officials has been stolen in large part by massive amounts of laundered money! This cannot be overstated! I believe there have been billions of dollars illegally laundered by ActBlue in the last two decades, and more recently and to a much lesser degree, by WinRed! I think it highly likely that the FEC is complicit or at the very least, guilty of malfeasance in this regard.”
To view the letter to James Comer see the following:
In my data research I discovered 20 smurfs that I labeled as the Corey Booker Smurfs. A summary of these smurfs is as follows:
All of these so called donors are seniors with the average being 80 years old. Amazingly these 20 persons have been accused of donating over 2.6 million dollars in over 187,000 separate donations. It should be noted that conventional wisdom indicates that these elderly persons had their identities stolen and that they did not actually make anywhere close to this ridiculous amount of donations/money. Investigations by many, including James O Keefe, Peter Bernegger and myself have shown that most, if not all, of individuals similarly involved are actually “straw donors” AKA “smurfs”.
Trump Orders DOJ to Investigate ActBlue! Fast forward to April of 2025 In April 2025, President Donald Trump ordered the Justice Department (DOJ) to investigate foreign money flowing through campaign funds, specifically targeting ActBlue, the Democrats’ main fundraising platform, citing “straw donor” schemes and illegal foreign contributions.
Seditious Six – Recipients of Money Laundering Fast forward to December – 2025.
After conducting many hours of “spreadsheet analysis” this author issued a report in which I state: “It now appears that the six lawmakers have been found to have been heavily involved in money laundering. Investigative Reporter/Citizen Journalist, Bob Cushman, has just released an FEC data analysis that strongly suggests that Mark Kelly, Elissa Slotkin, Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Chrissy Houlahan and Maggie Goodlander have been recipients of illegally laundered campaign funds. In the initial investigation, Cushman cites 22 Smurf examples that have “allegedly” contributed almost three million dollars in more than 95,000 separate donations to Democratic coffers. All six members of the Seditious Six have received funds from one or more of these “smurfs”.”
This report can be viewed at:
The data contained in this report is summarized in this following chart: