That’s the headline of Peter Schweizer and Peter J. Boyer’s Newsweek/Daily Beast piece, which went live moments ago. We’ve covered the contents of the Schweizer report on foreign and fraudulent campaign contributions, which serves as the basis for the Newsweek piece. The piece includes something interesting, though: the Obama campaign’s explanation for how they verify their money is coming from eligible donors:

Campaign officials say they use multiple security tools to screen all online credit-card contributions, and then review, by hand, those donations that are flagged by their automated system. Potentially improper donations, such as those originating from foreign Internet addresses, are returned to any donors who cannot provide a copy of their current U.S. passport photo pages, the campaign says. [Italics mine]

That may be true, but to me, it doesn’t pass the smell test. Schweizer and Boyer don’t touch on the subject of intent – that is, whether the Obama campaign, among others, is intentionally soliciting donations from overseas and choosing not to implement “industry standard” verification methods in order to funnel that money into its campaign coffers. The Schweizer report notes that it’s far more expensive for a political campaign not to implement these verification methods:

…card processors charge higher transaction fees for campaigns that fail to use the CVV. In 2008, the Obama campaign raised more than $500 million online. Assuming the campaign paid industry standard rates, the campaign would have paid at least an additional $7.25 million in fees to the banks that it could have avoided if it were to have used the CVV.

So, at some point, did somebody on the Obama campaign calculate the campaign would rake in more than $7.25 million from foreign donors or people incapable of reproducing the three digits on the back of their credit cards? The Obama campaign told the authors of the report that it doesn’t use industry standard verification “because it can be an inhibiting factor for some small donors.” Again, it doesn’t pass the smell test.