Stories based on a recent Guccifer 2.0 leak of more alleged DNC emails were circulating this week pointing out that various government officials, mostly ambassadors but including former FCC chairman Julius Genachowski and another former FCC chair, may have been responsible for millions in campaign contributions to Democratic candidates.
“We have been anticipating that an additional batch of documents stolen by Russian agents would be released," said DNC interim chair Donna Brazile in a statement on the DNC website. "Our legal team is now in the process of reviewing these private documents, and attempting to confirm their authenticity."
The New York Observersuggested the offices had been "sold" to donors.
The leaked list of alleged 2008 Democractic donors included Genachowski and another former Democratic FCC chairman, Bill Kennard, (former ambassador to the Economic Union in the Obama Administration). Genachowski was said to have raised over $3 million, making him one of the top bundlers, while Kennard raised a little over $1 million.
But the fact that both were top campaign contribution bundlers was already common knowledge or at least public information.
Both Kennard and Genachowski were among the top bundlers for Obama—in Genachowski's case the President was a former college chum—in the 2008 election cycle, both listed in the $500,000-plus bundlers category (the top category) by Open Secrets from public FEC data.
The FEC list only has a "$500,000 and above category," so while their top status was known, the total figure was not.
Of the bundling, one communications attorney said: "It is not a surprise, not a big deal, and completely legal."
Bundlers are people who get others to conribute, then "bundle" the checks to deliver to campaigns or candidates.
According to the Open Secrets website, Genachowski (or his wife or immediate family) donated $11,445 to the campaign personally in 2008. Kennard's personal/family total was $52,950 for 2008. But the same site shows that Genachowski was not listed as a bundler in 2012, after he was named FCC chairman, nor Kennard after he became EU ambassador (Kennard was chairman of the FCC in 1997-2001).
The leaked DNC donor list has a lot of ambassador/donors, but it is hardly a revelation that contributors and friends can be rewarded with such posts.
It is also hard to argue against the credentials of either Genachowski, who had been a media lawyer, congressional staffer, Supreme Court law clerk, and Harvard Law Review editor, or Kennard—Stanford and Yale—who had been both the top FCC official, FCC general counsel, an attorney in private practice, and a communications investor.
