It “defies reasoning” that Ami Bera didn’t know his dad was breaking the law

With just 5 days until Ami Bera’s father is sentenced for illegally funneling more than $265,000 dollars to his son’s campaign, more voices are protesting the sheer suspension of disbelief needed to accept that Ami had no knowledge of his father’s illegal activities. In the Sacramento Bee “James Wedick, a retired FBI agent who worked on high-profile public corruption probes” is the latest person point out that in a situation where Ami Bera’s family members and friends were involved in a sophisticated straw donor scheme it “defies reasoning” that Ami wouldn’t have known what was happening.

James Wedick, a retired FBI agent who worked on high-profile public corruption probes, referred to the case as “unusual” because it’s far more common to have politicians themselves orchestrate sophisticated and illicit ways to underwrite their campaigns than their aging parents.

 “For a parent to get this involved in the race without including (Ami Bera), or telling others, or getting advice as to what to do? I don’t know. It defies reasoning a little bit,” Wedick said. “And most of the time when I have looked, it’s a lot a more complicated than people have suggested. Where there’s smoke there’s usually fire.”

 Separate from the criminal probe, The Bee reported in May that Ami Bera and his family, including his parents, participated in a complex series of campaign donations involving the families of other Democratic congressional candidates. Campaign finance experts said the contributions, which often came within days of one another, generally do not violate federal law, but were another way to avoid individual donation limits.

Ami Bera has said the contributions often were arranged by the candidates themselves, but in some cases may also have been initiated by the candidates’ families or their campaign staffs. Bera also said he periodically asked his wife and parents to contribute to colleagues running in competitive contests, but that similar donations from those candidates and their relatives didn’t constitute “reimbursements.”

Ami Bera has admitted he personally solicited his family for donations to other campaigns in a sophisticated donor-swapping scheme. Yet Bera would have us also believe that his aging father, who he claims was a political novice, somehow single-handedly orchestrated a massive web of straw donors to benefit his son’s campaign without Ami or his staff having the slightest inkling something untoward was occurring?

Philip A. Ferrari, assistant U.S. attorney made clear, “Finally, this defendant knew his acts were wrong, and he took active steps to conceal them, using multiple bank accounts and sometimes writing reimbursement checks from multiple accounts on the same day.”

Ami Bera didn’t know? It simply “defies reasoning.”