The FBI is looking into an alleged donation scheme involving a rich Saudi family that supports Marco Rubio’s Democratic challenger, Patrick Murphy.
The investigation is regarding donations made in Murphy’s first House run in 2012. A longtime friend of Murphy since high school, Ibrahim Al-Rashid, allegedly coordinated a “straw donor” scheme to help the Democrat.
A straw donor scheme involves bypassing the legal limits of campaign donations by funneling money through other people’s names. The FBI is looking into whether Al-Rashid has used other people's names as donors without their consent.
The son of a Saudi billionaire, Al-Rashid is a generous donor to Patrick Murphy and has forked over large sums of money to his campaign and other Super PAC’s supporting his candidacy. He has given in total almost $400,000 in various donations.
The GOP-aligned Super PAC, Senate Leadership Fund, was the first to blow the whistle on major discrepancies regarding Murphy’s donor list. One such example included a woman who donated $300 to the Democratic candidate. In her occupation listing, it stated she owned and managed Limestone Property Management – a Texas based company. Upon investigation, it was discovered she neither owned nor managed the company. She never even worked there.
A police report in 2012 listed her as formerly being a “cleaning lady” to Al-Rashid.
The Murphy campaign has not commented much on the investigation, but has clarified that Murphy, himself, is not included in the investigation.
Throughout the Florida campaign, Murphy has been lambasted as a privileged rich kid who has a penchant for exaggerating his resume. Rubio has been consistently leading in the polls and the main spending arm of the DNC has pulled out of ad buys in Florida – essentially giving up on the race.