WorldNetDaily’s Aaron Klein is getting some serious Drudge attention for his Oct. 29 article claiming to have made a donation to President Obama’s re-election campaign under the name “Osama bin Laden” using ” a Pakistani Internet Protocol and proxy server, a disposable credit card and a fake address.”
In addition to being late to the game — RedState’s Erick Erickson tried this same stunt a few weeks ago — Klein, or the “WND staff” member he claims actually did the deed (perhaps Joshua Klein, who is credited with “additional research”), is admitting to identity fraud. Isn’t that illegal?
Klein also exhibits a fundamental misunderstanding of how credit card verification works. As Media Matters points out, the Obama campaign has explained that it has anti-fraud protections in place to stop fake or illegal donations and that just because a fraudulent donation “may initially appear to a donor to have been accepted,” such a donation will soon be rejected.
So, what we have here is Klein (or his lackey) committing identity fraud for the purpose of trying (and failing) to embarrass Obama on the eve of an election and, it seems, to get a Drudge link. Klein can ultimately take heart in the fact that most people are too preoccupied with the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy to pay much attention to his failed stunt.
UPDATE: Remember that a couple years ago, WND was so unconcerned about online security that anybody could — and did — pad WND’s anti-Obama birther petition. And it has yet to release the names of those 500,000-plus signatories it claims signed it, or subject the petition’s counting methods to any sort of outside auditing.