Obama Campaign Returns Funds to Fugitive Rojas-Cardona’s Family

By ⋅ February 7, 2012 ⋅ Post a comment
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"Pepe" Rojas-Cardona (Photo: Mexico House of Representatives)

"Pepe" Rojas-Cardona (Photo: Mexico House of Representatives)

Barack Obama’s election campaign has decided to re-pay donations from relatives of a fugitive, Juan Jose Rojas-Cardona. His brothers in Chicago and others had donated more than $200,000 altogether.

As recently as last year the family sought a pardon for Rojas-Cardona, who jumped bail and fled to Mexico in 1994 to escape a federal drug charge, and a five-year sentence for fraud.

Rojas-Cardona, known as “Pepe”, is now a wealthy businessman in Mexico, where he is nicknamed the “casino czar”. A leaked State Department cable from 2009 says he was suspected of having a business rival killed.

Janet Lyness, attorney of Johnson County, Iowa, says there’s still an outstanding warrant for his arrest, on a charge of violating his probation. She told the New York Times that she “can think of few people who are less deserving of a pardon”.

Friends from his youth in Iowa are shocked by reports of how he’s changed.

The story was broken by Mike McIntire in the New York Times.

Discussion

One comment for “Obama Campaign Returns Funds to Fugitive Rojas-Cardona’s Family”

  • Camus Albert

    If there was no wrongdoing, in accepting the money, which the writer of the original article for the NY Times admits on air,  and there was nothing wrong with the two brothers, who, have to be citizens or legal residents to donate themselves, engaging in support of a political candidate who represents their minority interests, as reflected in the sister-in-law’s comment in the article (as Hispanics in America) why is this news?  Making the claim that “there is some ulterior motive”– looking for a pardon that cannot be given by the re-elected president, because it is in fact legally impossible– begs the question of the author, what is the secret motive?

    Did anyone even bother to read the articles in Spanish? As a bilingual American, when you read the articles in Spanish, you see that the entire basis of the story reads more like some sort of Hollywood movie plot rather than serious political discussion into politics that is more on par with the level of reporting done at Fox News and regrettably tabloids.

    Most importantly, why is there nothing being published about other people’s contributions being returned, or on the Republican’s side, what contributions are being returned and to whom? As a minority, and American citizen, race in this context as well as automatically citing sources that state that someone is a “gangster” or “drug lord” seem to fall much too easily to the stereotype that minorities, particularly Hispanics and African American are all “gangsters” and “drug lords.”

    I have lost respect for the NYTimes as well as most major news outlets for citing the original article as not only a source of information but being so willing to publish it as “news.”