Established Fact
The Eastern District of Virginia affirmed that the straw donor prohibition under § 30122 requires knowing acceptance by the receiving committee for criminal liability on the committee’s part, but that ‘knowing’ may be inferred from willful blindness — the Global-Tech standard.
Citations
United States v. Danielczyk, 788 F. Supp. 2d 472, 479–481 (E.D. Va. 2011), rev’d on other grounds, 683 F.3d 611 (4th Cir. 2012), “[A] ‘knowing and willful’ violation of FECA requires actions taken ‘with full knowledge of all the facts and a recognition that the action is prohibited by law’ …[T]he government need only show that the defendant acted with knowledge that [his] conduct was unlawful.” (citing Bryan v. United States, 524 U.S. 184, 195 (1998)).
Global-Tech Appliances, Inc. v. SEB S.A., 563 U.S. 754, 769 (2011), [A] defendant who takes deliberate actions to avoid confirming a high probability of wrongdoing … is considered to have acted with knowledge … [W]illful blindness satisfies the knowledge requirement.”