The Madam of Miami Massage and Citizens United

Jeb Bush's 2016 presidential campaign was just socked with a huge fine for receiving foreign campaign contributions:

The Federal Election Commission on Monday doled out $940,000 in fines to the super PAC that backed Jeb Bush’s 2016 presidential bid and a Chinese-owned corporation that made illegal donations to it.

The unusually large FEC fines came after the commission found evidence Bush’s super PAC took money from a foreign national, which is prohibited under federal election law. The super PAC, Right to Rise, was fined $390,000 for the violation, while the FEC gave an additional $550,000 fine to American Pacific International Capital, Inc. The company had donated $1.3 million to Bush’s super PAC in the spring of 2015, as Bush was gearing up for a run for president.

So what, you say. The problem is that the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision allowed corporations to donate unlimited amounts of money to politicians. Other decisions have allowed contributors to donate to PACs (political action committees) with complete anonymity. That means there is no way to know whether foreign money is being funneled into American campaign coffers. Only idiots like Neil Bush (of Silverado Savings and Loan fame) will get caught, however.

Jeb lost, so this is irrelevant, right? Nope. Take the case of Cindy Yang, the founder of the massage parlor where Patriots owner Robert Kraft was arrested for soliciting prostitution.

Yang has donated tens of thousands of dollars to Donald Trump and other Republicans and has made a business of selling access to Trump at Mar a Lago. She brings foreigners into his inner circle, getting them into places that he frequents and connecting them with Trump surrogates like his sons.

Besides the obvious scandal of Trump and his family posing for selfies with the Madam of Miami Massage, who is apparently involved in human trafficking and prostitution, and the pay to play aspect of foreigners buying access to Trump and donating money to his campaign, this is a huge security risk.

Trump conducts real government business in these locations and he's bringing people linked to Chinese intelligence into his very home. Trump is notoriously careless with secret intelligence, blabbing everything to the Russians he can think of, so what kind of intel is he giving to the Chinese at his shindigs? And are they leaving surveillance devices in Mar a Lago?

And this is all possible because of the Supreme Court's Citizens United, which equated money with free speech and said that there was no appearance of corruption if corporations are free to donate unlimited quantities of cash anonymously....