CBS News: Washington hates a secret. Yet in the summer of 2020, when a blandly named entity called the Impetus Fund received a $64 million donation from a single anonymous source, it touched off a guessing game with broad political implications.”

“That single anonymous donation, routed through a series of accounts, eventually would be used to help Joe Biden defeat Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Critics say it has come to illustrate an increasingly opaque system of funding elections that in 2024 could reach a scale that dwarfs all previous election cycles.”

“The source of that donation remains unknown — and not for lack of effort. Fox News first reported on the curious donation in 2023, but was unable to ferret out the donor’s identity. A cottage industry of public interest groups and investigative reporters who dig relentlessly to unmask big-dollar donors, also came up empty.”

“Few are clamoring for Herschel Walker’s return to politics since he flamed out in his Georgia Senate bid nearly two years ago. But they sure are interested in his campaign cash,” Politico reports.

“Georgia and national Republicans, in dire need of money, are furious that Walker is sitting on more than $4 million in leftover campaign funds and seems to have no intention of using it to help the GOP or Donald Trump in the key battleground state in November.”

Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) “filed 11 amendments to his campaign finance reports Wednesday, acknowledging that his claims for the last two years to have loaned $320,000 to his campaign were not true,” WTVF reports.

“Ogles says that he actually loaned his campaign $20,000, instead of the $320,000 that he had previously claimed.”

“The Federal Election Commission quietly issued an advisory opinion last week allowing candidates to raise unlimited money for issue-advocacy groups working on ballot measures in elections in which those candidates are on the ballot,” the New York Times reports.

“The opinion, issued in response to a request from a Nevada-based abortion rights group, could significantly alter the landscape in the fall in terms of the capacity that candidates aligned with these groups have to help them raise money.”

“The decision applies to all federal candidates, but with a presidential election taking place in six months, the biggest attention will fall to that race. If Mr. Biden can solicit money for abortion-rights ballot measures, he can add to an already-existing fund-raising advantage that his team currently has over Mr. Trump.”

“The Lincoln Project — a super PAC that ranks among former President Donald Trump’s leading antagonists — lost $35,000 in what it described to federal regulators as ‘fraudulent’ transactions committed by cyberthieves,” Raw Story reports.

“In recent weeks, a number of news reports have delved into the legal questions about a super PAC generating hundreds of thousands of dollars in corporate revenue from a popular podcaster: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX),” the Daily Beast reports.

“While legal experts cited in those reports have floated serious potential campaign finance issues with the arrangement, it appears that Cruz—a notorious Federal Election Commission troll—may have landed upon yet another seemingly unprecedented loophole in election laws: He’s turned a super PAC supporting him into a media company—and is funding it himself.”

Politico: “And outside spending continues to increase dramatically. Across all federal races, super PACs have spent more than $430 million on independent expenditures already this cycle… up from $176 million at this point in 2020.”

“The expanded role for outside groups has been accompanied by new fundraising tactics and financial relationships. … Super PACs have begun to bridge the divide between a candidate’s outside ventures and their political pursuits.”

Sen. Mike Braun’s (R-IN) Senate campaign “owes the federal government $159,000 for violating campaign finance rules during the 2018 election, among the largest fines in the federal agency’s history,” the Indianapolis Star reports.