Who are these Donors the WaPo Found?

Amanda Carpenter | August 06, 2008 1:00 PM

There's a curious story about John McCain in the Washington Post today I haven't been able to verify though normal FEC databases.

Take a look at the lede in this story

"Bundler Collects from Unlikely Donors":

The bundle of $2,300 and $4,600 checks that poured into Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign on March 12 came from an unlikely group of California donors: a mechanic from D&D Auto Repair in Whittier, the manager of Rite Aid Pharmacy No. 5727, the 30-something owners of the Twilight Hookah Lounge in Fullerton.

Here's the rub. I can't find three out of these four donors on opensecrets.com, the online clearinghouse for donor information.

Here is what I can find:

-The donation record for Rite Aid General Manager Ibrahim Marabeh, who gave to Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani in 2007 and,

-The donation record for a man and a woman with the last name Abdalla who both manage a Twilight Lounge. But Twilight Lounge managers Nadia Abdalla and Hisham Abdalla gave money to Clinton and Giuliani, too. Not McCain. And WaPo reporter Matthew Mosk cites a "Shawn Abdalla" in his piece, but I only see Hisham, not Shawn.

So what these donors really have in common is that they donated to Clinton and Giuliani, which is indeed "unlikely" as Matthew Mosk's article suggests, but maybe not in the way he reported. Mosk alleges there was some Norman Hsu-style bundling involved by an oil-trader named Harry Sargeant III, but I can't figure out what Mosk has to back it up.

The Washington Post claims these donations were made on March 12, several FEC reporting deadlines ago. This means it should be readily available.

Since this information is not easily found, the WaPo should have explained where it came from in their story. Or it could be, this is just simply not true. And if that's the case they should apologize to the McCain campaign and promptly post a correction online and in tomorrow's paper.