“De Blasio’s Elections Strategy, Under Scrutiny, Recalls Predecessor’s”

NYT:

Yet the current investigations focus less on the flow of money than on whether Mr. de Blasio’s team went too far in trying to direct it.

Contributions to individual candidates are capped at a relatively low level. But much larger contributions are permitted to party committees, and the law allows those committees to transfer an unlimited amount of money to candidates.

It is illegal, however, for the party committees to agree with donors in advance that the money is destined for individual campaigns, a process referred to as earmarking the donations. And that is a line that investigators believe Mr. de Blasio may have crossed in 2014 by directing donations to small county committees that then transferred the money to local candidates.

“The line between legal and illegal is razor-thin,” Ms. Lerner said. “Certainly it is a critical legal difference, but in the real world, they’re practically identical.”

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