Free Republic

WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles on Wednesday indicted a Jordanian businessman with connections to the Florida Republican Party on charges of funneling illegal contributions to three former presidential candidates and Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida. The indictment of the businessman, Ala’a al-Ali, 37, shines a spotlight on the role of a business associate who the complaint asserts helped collect the donations. The associate, Harry Sargeant III, is a major Republican fund-raiser who owns an oil company with government contracts in Iraq and who recently resigned as finance chairman of the Florida Republican Party. Mr. Sargeant raised more than...

RIVERSIDE, California: The Jordanian business partner of a prominent Florida businessman, who has raised more than $500,000 for Senator John McCain, appears to be at the center of a cluster of questionable donations to his Republican presidential campaign. Campaign finance records show that McCain collected a little more than $50,000 in March from members of a single extended family, the Abdullahs, in California and several of their friends. Amid a sea of contributions to the McCain campaign, the Abdullahs stand out. The checks come not from the usual well-off coastal addresses, but from lower-income inland California towns like Downey and...

WASHINGTON - John McCain's campaign said Thursday it is returning $50,000 in contributions solicited by a foreign citizen. The move follows the disclosure that the money was being raised by a Jordanian man who is a business partner of prominent Florida Republican Harry Sargeant III, who has collected hundreds of thousands of dollars for McCain.