After it was discovered that his campaign manager used Marjorie Taylor Greene’s credit card to purchase the Ye for President 2024 website, Kanye West found himself at the center of a political uproar.
The Daily Beast was given copies of the purchase receipts by an individual with knowledge of the matter on Wednesday (May 10), which brought the scandal to a climax. The story had been simmering in the political realm for a time.
Although Ye hasn’t formally declared his intention to run for president and has really been debating whether or not to do so, the publication revealed that alt-right troll Milo Yiannopoulos used Greene’s credit card to buy the website connected with West’s anticipated presidential bid.
According to the publication, “the receipts match Federal Election Commission filings from both campaigns.” The Greene campaign reported a $7,020.16 charge to the GoDaddy hosting service on November 22 for “domain registration and hosting,” according to those records. The Kanye 2020 committee announced paying Yiannopoulos $9,955 on the same day for “domain transfer.”
This report coincides with one that was previously made public on Tuesday (May 9), the day before Patrick Krason, the treasurer of West’s presidential campaign, resigned after reporting Milo Yiannopoulos’ potential legal violations to a federal regulator.
In November of last year, Yiannopoulos, according to Krason, “submitted falsified invoices and for expenditures that would be deemed unlawful.”
Yiannopoulos allegedly requested repayment for a “digital asset” expense in the letter from both Kanye 2020 and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s campaign, a Georgia Republican for whom he had previously worked.
The disputed website ended up being the digital assets, as the Daily Beast uncovered. According to the invoices, GoDaddy charged Greene senior adviser Isaiah Wartman $7,020.16 on November 22 for the acquisition of the “ye24.com” domain. Yiannopoulos oversaw the transaction using the Greene campaign card, according to the person with direct knowledge of the events, but the individual was unsure as to whether the Greene campaign was informed at the time of the charge, they claimed.
It’s possible that both Greene and West committed a wide variety of crimes, including possible theft and conversion of campaign funds for personal use, raising doubts about the legality of the entire transaction. However, the reason why this transaction took place in the first place still remains a mystery.
She had no idea what was going on, if you believe Greene, and she is shocked that anyone would think she would join in any form of criminal conduct.
According to Isaiah Wartman, a strategist for Greene’s campaign, “Congresswoman Greene knew nothing about the gross negligence made by a vendor and is being unfairly attacked as a result.” “The purchase was refunded, according to the campaign. This was not the situation.
However, as any first-year law student is aware, not knowing the law does not excuse breaching it. “That is on its face an excessive, prohibited contribution,” Saurav Ghosh, Federal Campaign Finance Reform Legal Director for the Campaign Legal Center, told the outlet. Whether Marjorie Taylor Greene or her senior staff members were aware of it or not, the value was significantly higher than what a campaign could legitimately provide to another campaign.
Furthermore, some political experts think that Kanye West is being used by the alt-right as a fall guy or a red herring to divert votes away from President Joe Biden’s upcoming re-election campaigns, swaying the 2024 presidential election in Trump’s favor should he, too, decide to run. This is because of Greene’s unwavering loyalty to Donald Trump.
The best source for this argument is Kanye West himself, who claimed to have ran for president just to undermine Joe Biden’s initial campaign efforts in an interview with Forbes in 2020.
“Trump may be a part of my route, but I’m not saying he’s in my way. Joe Biden, too? like, just come on, man. You realize? said he. “I’m fine with taking Black votes away from the Democratic nominee in order to support Trump. I told you, therefore I’m not trying to dispute it. Racism and white supremacy are demonstrated by the claim that the Black vote is Democratic.