Congressional Candidate declares his independence from the Federal Election Commission

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Congressional candidate David Esrati, Democrat OH-10, will file his final campaign report to the FEC on July 5th 2024 July 23rd 2024 (The FEC software is really bad) withholding all of his donors names. Instead, he’ll attribute them to “ElectionsNotAuctions.com.”

He is claiming a GloMar exception in his filing, to “protect their privacy” and citing FOIA exemptions (b)(6), (b)(7)(C), 5 U.S.C. §§ 552 9b)(6) and (b)(7)(C) because he knows his opponent, Michael R. Turner is vindictive, and because the self-reporting of donations by candidates is a sham shell game.

Esrati says that if voters have to be registered to vote, to provide protections to the democratic process, that donors should be required to be registered to donate. Elections in this country have been turned into auctions, with races handicapped by fundraising, and the amounts of money it takes to run for almost any office are now insane. We are going to see over $20B spent on the upcoming November election, $20B that could be spent on anything else for the betterment of our nation.

Esrati, a perennial candidate and advertising agency owner, veteran and community activist, who develops web sites for a living, claims that the FEC reporting system is overly complex, not ADA compliant, and a fraud being foisted on the American public. Esrati points to the donations by billionaire, NY Mets owner Steven A. Cohen who he identified in 2013, as being reported so many different ways from Sunday in the FEC database. Is he Steve, Steven, Stephen, Steve A, Steven A, etc?

The data presented by the FEC is so utterly worthless, that the group Open Secrets takes the data and tries to make it somewhat useful and digestible, at considerable expense.

If we required donors to register to donate, provided a single donation portal, and then distributed to all candidates via a debit card system that would record all expenses in real time, we would greatly simplify and improve the process and it’s transparency. It would also reduce candidate overhead, offer a payroll system to pay staff from the funds, and end the tedious process of setting up an entire business to run for office every couple of years.

If the donor registration process also included extra levels of reporting by donors at several donation threshold levels, say, giving more than $2500 to a single candidate, giving more than $20K per cycle, we’d also know things like their employment, stock holdings, and could also include their voting records (the more you buy influence, the more scrutiny you are subjected to). This would also include donations to Political Action Committees and Political Parties.

The current FEC software is obscenely complex, not web based, and requires a PC- it won’t run on a mac. It requires conversion of simple spreadsheet CSV files into an obtuse format, using a poorly named “app” that they created to convolute the process.

Esrati chose to use the Glomar response for his filing for two main reasons. First, despite ActBlue instructing that it should not be reported as the donor, Esrati’s primary opponent, Amy Cox, did so—along with many others, including Sherrod Brown, who did it 119,148 times. Second, Esrati is on a personal mission to expose the FBI and DOJ for committing felonies while prosecuting Dayton City Commissioner Joey D. Williams. They turned Williams into a ‘Confidential Human Source’ and allowed him to run for office as a known criminal, thereby undermining our election system. In response to Esrati’s Freedom of Information Act request for tapes of Nan Whaley that were played to the Grand Jury, the FBI has repeatedly refused, citing Glomar and personal privacy.

The fact that “dark money” (unattributed donations to PACs) was legalized by Citizens United and has already made a mockery of integrity in our elections, turning them from elections into auctions to the highest bidder (95+% of Congressional candidates win re-election) the FEC “reporting” of donations has almost become a sideshow. The purpose of reporting donations is supposedly to allow citizens to see who buys their politicians. Turner was backed by over 23 Billionaires in his 2022 race against Esrati.

Esrati has spent the last three years in the courts trying to expose the FBI and DOJ as criminals for running Williams as a domestic “Manchurian Candidate” via FOIA requests to hear tapes made of Nan Whaley that were played to the Grand Jury. After having three local federal judges recuse themselves from his FOIA appeal, a fourth, dismissed his case on a minor technicality, leading to 3 years of appeals ending in a refusal of the 6th Circuit to review the final decision En Banc. Esrati has spent the last three months, perfecting an appeal response on a new FOIA request he filed for records pertaining to a possible CHS in the FBI “Culture of Corruption” investigation in Dayton, who is dead- which they also used Glomar and privacy responses. The appeal response was filed last Friday, June 28, 2024 and ran 8 pages.

The integrity of our elections has been challenged every which way since the 2020 Election. I believe that Nan Whaley dropped out from her re-election campaign for Mayor to run for governor because she had become a CHS for the FBI and they knew she couldn’t also resign after re-election. They allowed her to run for Governor, knowing she would lose, and in an effort to entrap large dem donors the way they had caught donors to Larry Householder. Donors to her gubernatorial campaign were voluntarily scammed out of over $8M.

I also believe that the Montgomery County Board of Elections has been involved in systematic manipulation of elections via refusing to certify signatures on the low end, and actually tampering with election results, due to having 2 different databases of voters which I discovered back in 2014 where my father mysteriously lived in 2 different precincts, depending on where you looked him up. I don’t believe Carolyn Rice somehow got 95% of absentee ballots in her favor to unseat Jordan Wortham in their County Commission race, because the flip is statistically implausible. I have a huge number of absentee ballot request chasers sitting at my office that were undeliverable, waiting for me to cross reference them with voters who may have in fact- voted absentee- but, that hasn’t been a priority.

While we sit and watch a convicted felon run for president, because the founding fathers never thought the electorate would be dumb enough to elect a person of such low character, I still wonder how I was required to pass a background check to be a guardian, but you can run for Congress without one (George Santos for example).

The Song for this post: Esrati vs the FEC

A note from Esrati: I am not a lawyer. The costs of doing the legal research to respond to my FOIA appeal is all out of my own pocket, as is the time spent creating videos exposing criminal behavior in our community (see esrati.com/deadly about the pepper spraying of restrained inmates in the Montgomery County Jail, and esrati.com/manofmystery about a school board member who gave a giant middle finger to the public). I thank those of you who donate on a recurring basis to support my citizen journalism- and will be reaching out to you to ask you to resubscribe via my new payment gateway, since the old donation plugin I was using has reached end of life. Thank you for your continued support.