This seems to me problematic for all sorts of reasons:
Red-Handed: Will Republicans return the money donated by the Wyly brothers?
Will Republicans return the huge sums they’ve received from the Wyly brothers, now that they’ve been charged with insider trading?
Slate doesn’t quite get what’s going on, it seems. Never mind the sloppiness of using “red-handed” for a couple of guys who have been charged with a crime but by no means convicted; this isn’t really an insider-trading case, but a tax-evasion case. (The insider-trading stuff is kind of tacked on, and it has lawyers scratching their heads and calling the theory under which the charges were made “novel,” which translates: nonsense.) The Wylys are accused of using a combination of offshore partnerships and trusts to evade U.S. taxes. It’s a super-complex case and it is by no means obvious that the Wylys have broken the law. In any case, it’s not as though running afoul of the tax man is a Republican thing; you can still be Obama’s treasury secretary after a tax fracas. You can park your money in a tax-friendly jurisdiction, or you can park your yacht in a tax-friendly jurisdiction. It’s hardly an occasion for a partisan gotcha.
But, if you are going to ask this question
Will Republicans return the huge sums they’ve received from the Wyly brothers, now that they’ve been charged with insider trading?
shouldn’t you also ask whether Democrats and Democrat-affiliated organizations are going to return the money they’ve received from George Soros, who not only has been charged with insider trading, but has been convicted of it? We’re talking about a very large political operation funded by a guy who has been charged with and convicted of insider trading, and who saw that conviction upheld on review. Not accused; convicted. Guilty. So, what about all that Soros money sloshing around on the left: Is the Center for American Progress going to close up shop? Is every Emily’s List candidate going to spurn that endorsement because Soros helps to finance the group? Is the SEIU’s Anna Burger, former director of the Soros-funded Fund for America, going to step aside from the Obama administration’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board? And what do our friends at Media Matters think about this?
