Kanye West, whose presidential campaign under the “Birthday Party” ticket flopped in the 2020 election, has disabled donations and removed merchandise from his website after the Federal Election Commission sent him a notice and people sent him numerous complaints about “extended shipping delays from some of his zoomer donors hopeful that their federal contribution would return a black-market payday,” The Daily Beast reports.
Sparking the Feds’ interest are some “unusual violations” in the West campaign’s disclosures such as multiple donations from minors, possible contributions from foreign nationals “and several fake names and addresses that trace to drop-shipping warehouses on both coasts.”
He’s also facing a possible investigation for “unlawful campaign practices that pulled in almost $100,000 in small donation in 2021.
“In five-plus years of doing this I’ve never come across something like this,” Jordan Libowitz, communications director for government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told The Daily Beast.
To date, his campaign has garnered $2.2 million from small-dollar donors, “nearly all of it in exchange for campaign swag, not out of support for a Yeezy administration,” the Beast reports.
“You know this was a scam, right?” Jennifer Bloom, mother of 16-year-old West donor Ian Bloom, told the Beast. Her son said that he still hasn’t received the $3,280 worth of Kanye 2020 gear that he ordered from the campaign store.
“I don’t know what’s happening there. I ordered like 20 hoodies off his campaign website, along with a lot of other people that I know. They said it would be three weeks, and after that I emailed the support team, and the email just wasn’t a thing,” Ian Bloom said, adding that he planned to resell the merchandise online for a profit. He has since disputed the charged in his credit after getting the runaround from the support team.
As The Daily Beast points out, it’s illegal to solicit and accept donations from anyone under 18.
Read the full report over at The Daily Beast.
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