The New York Post reports that Rosie O’Donnell, the former actress and talk show host who’s now best known for erratic behavior, has been breaking the law. It seems that she’s given a total of $5,400 over the legal limit to five different Democratic congressional candidates. Federal Election Commission rules prohibit giving more than $2,700 to a candidate in a given election cycle.
O’Donnell says she assumed the online donation tools she used would keep her from exceeding the legal limits. Her other defense is Trump. “My anxiety is quelled by donating to those opposing Trump [and] his agenda—especially at night—when most of these were placed,” she told the Post. For someone innocently pursuing political-donation therapy, however, O’Donnell seems to have been shifty about it. She “used five different New York addresses and four variations of her name” to make these nocturnal donations, according to the Post.
Absent the discovery of more and/or bigger campaign finance violations, O’Donnell is unlikely to suffer much punishment for her liberality. Nor should she. Campaign finance violations are malum prohibitum—wrong because prohibited, as opposed to malum in se or wrong because evil—and the idea of severely penalizing people for supporting political candidates rightly offends any ordinary person’s sense of decency.
But while we tire easily of the “imagine if our side did the same” complaint, indulge us just this once: Imagine if Charles Koch were discovered to have exceeded the maximum contribution limit to several Republican candidates and used five different addresses and various forms of his name. Weeping and gnashing of teeth would follow: demands for stricter campaign finance laws and severe punishment for Koch. And no doubt Jane Mayer, the New Yorker’s in-house Koch paranoiac, would get a book deal out of it.
