Top Obama campaign donor faces fraud charges

A top donor to President Barack Obama's re-election campaign was accused in April 2012 of defrauding a businessman and impersonating a bank official \u2014 another round of unwelcome campaign-finance publicity for the White House.

The donor, Abake Assongba of New York, was a "bundler" on Obama's campaign: one of roughly 440 volunteer fundraisers the campaign publicly listed, who solicit high-dollar contributions from friends and associates and deliver them in a bundle. Federal records showed Assongba and her husband, Anthony J. W. DeRosa, had contributed or raised more than $50,000 for the re-election effort.

According to the Associated Press, which picked up the story first reported by the Washington Post, Assongba was accused of taking more than $650,000 from a businessman to help build a multimillion-dollar home in Florida \u2014 a charge her husband denied. She was also accused of impersonating a bank official, and was separately fighting a civil case in Florida over the money. The couple ran a charity, Abake's Foundation, that distributed school supplies and food in Benin, West Africa; a photo on Assongba's Facebook page showed the couple beside Obama at a May 2010 fundraiser.

Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt declined to comment to the AP, referring reporters to earlier statements. The campaign noted it had more than a million individual donors and addressed contribution problems promptly.

The episode fit a familiar pattern of the era: disclosure of bundler lists \u2014 Obama was the only 2012 candidate to publish his \u2014 bought transparency, but it also meant every supporter's baggage became campaign news. The charges against Assongba were for alleged conduct unrelated to her political activity, and she denied them. But the association was unavoidable, and the case kept the machinery of campaign finance \u2014 bundlers, access, and the wealthy networks behind them \u2014 in public discussion.

Based on Associated Press and Washington Post reporting from April 2012. All charges are described as alleged.

The indictment of a prominent fundraiser for Barack Obama's presidential campaigns on federal fraud charges created political complications for an administration that had campaigned on ethics and transparency, and renewed public conversation about the relationship between large campaign donors and the officials they support.

The charges against the fundraiser — who had achieved "bundler" status, meaning he had aggregated substantial donations from his network in addition to his own contributions — involved allegations of financial fraud unrelated to his political activities. But the association was unavoidable in public discussion.

The case highlighted a structural feature of American campaign finance: the practice of bundling, through which a well-connected individual multiplies their influence by organizing donations from friends, business associates, and clients, became increasingly important as campaign spending escalated. Bundlers who could deliver significant sums to campaigns earned access and relationships with candidates and elected officials that single donors of any size rarely achieved.

The Obama administration faced periodic criticism for the tension between its stated commitment to reform and its practical reliance on the same network of wealthy donors that every modern presidential campaign depends on. The campaigns' fundraising infrastructure required people of precisely the kind of wealth and social network that bundlers represented.

Whether the fraud charges against a particular bundler said anything meaningful about the political relationship was the subject of reasonable disagreement. The charges were for conduct unrelated to politics. The association was real but indirect.

The case was one of several that kept campaign finance practices in public discussion throughout the Obama years.