[Trailer] Election Watchdogs Discover $200M Laundering Scheme Using 'Smurfs' | Facts Matter

A new report put out by two election watchdog groups—the Gibson Group of Maryland, and Election Watch—exposes what appears to be a large-scale money laundering scheme in American elections. The report claims that the groups have uncovered over $200 million worth of money that’s been laundered into political donations, wherein thousands of alleged smurfs make non-stop donations into the political machine. Smurfing, in the world of organized crime, is a specific method of money laundering where a large sum of money is split up into many, many smaller sums of money, which can avoid getting detected by the authorities. This only uncovers a much bigger issue with our political system: outside money affecting local elections. With the way that our current system works, it’s possible for wealthy American billionaires, multi-millionaires, or potentially several thousand smurfs to shape our local elections by using large amounts of money. It’s amid this backdrop of 10,000 alleged smurfs, as well the reality of giant amounts of out-of-state election funding, that a new amendment to the U.S. Constitution is roaring across the country, and it has now been endorsed by 22 out of the necessary 38 states. This amendment, if passed, would officially become the 28th amendment to the U.S. Consitution, and it would ban the use of both foreign and out-of-state funding in local elections.