Tuesday, November 29, 2005

A RWCIF story kink

Something had been eating at me, eating I say, about how the Republican Main Street Partnership had tried to sell this George Soros contribution to the Republicans Who Care Individual Fund back before the name was amended from the Main Street Individual Fund.

In the letter sent to Michelle Malkin by the RMSP legal representative, it was stated:

Furthermore, the page opened in www.opensecrets.org fails to provide a good faith basis to believe that Mr. Soros made any contributions to to RMSP. In fact, the webpage you reference does nto even mention Mr Soros. A search of contributiions by Mr Soros on the opensecrets.org website yields the infomration that Mr. Soros gave $0 to the Main Street Fund. See ....
But in the copy of the e-mail Michelle Malkin posts, purportedly from Mr Auble of the Center for Responsive Politics to a MM reader, Mr Auble notes there was a contribution from George Soros that was promptly returned by MSIF within a week.

Now a contribution contribution made and promptly returned would show up readily in an IRS filing if you ask me. So I took a look and found that the 2004 filing did in fact show a -$50,000 for a Soros contribution in the Second Quarter 2004 filing.

But there was no +$50,000 and as everyone knows a negative amount has to have an equal positive amount if the result is supposed to be no net effect on your return from a contribution made and promptly returned. The reporting paperwork for the window that would include both the contribution and the refunding shows ... you guessed it, a loss equal to the refund.

I had to search all the filings back to mid-2003 filing to find any Soros positive contribution for which the refund canceled out that positive.

I also thought I would look at the FEC filings and the same thing occurred. A refund was made on April 29, 2004 (06/29/04 filing; pg 4 of 8) for a contribution made on April 22, 2003 (3/31/04 filing; pg 4 of 10), a year and a few days difference.

Now that seems to make the RMSP's legal rep correct from a contribution standpoint, or maybe more strictly from a donation standpoint, I don't know the legalities surrounding the terms, but it sure looks like it changed from a donation to a loan because of the time frame. But again, I don't know whether a contribution made and returned a year later moved it definitionally into a loan IRS-wise.

But Mr Auble is surely incorrect, I think, in saying the IRS forms show a contribution returned in a matter of a week or so.

Now I feel a little better, but I wish Kirk Walder, Sarah Chamberlain Resnick's replacement would clear up the confusion by answering all the questions this story has generated. Then Ms Resnick can explain why it was so hard for her to have done it much earlier. I can't imagine it was a possible "loan" issue.

Posts on this subject :
2. RMSP puts the heat on Malkin
1. I think I'm being screwed ...


2 Creaks:

Anonymous Anonymous creaked ...

Good job Dusty. Terrific post.

11/29/2005 9:01 PM  
Blogger Dusty creaked ...

Thanks Frank.

11/29/2005 11:55 PM  

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