Watchdog group files complaint against Sen. Landrieu's campaign for mysterious donation to Treasury

Why did the campaign committee of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) donate $25,300 to the U.S. Treasury last year?

That's what the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington hopes to find out through the complaint [pdf] it filed today with the Federal Election Commission.

Reports submitted to the FEC show Landrieu's campaign made the donation to the Treasury on Aug. 7, 2008. According to CREW, that may have happened because the campaign committee discovered it had accepted illegal contributions:

In such cases, campaigns generally return the contributions to the original donors. In this case, however, the committee chose to turn over the contributions to the U.S. Treasury. When asked about the payment to the Treasury, campaign committee lawyer Marc Elias refused to explain the circumstances, insisting the campaign was protecting the identity of the contributors who "are private citizens who in most instances may not have done anything wrong ... ."

"We all know politicians don't give up campaign contributions -- much less $25,000 -- without a very good reason," says CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan. "It appears Sen. Landrieu's reason may have been to avoid a scandal or, even worse, a federal investigation into some of her contributions."

Under federal campaign finance law, a campaign committee can transfer an illegal contribution to the Treasury rather than return it to the original donor -- but only when the committee learns the source of the funds is either under a Department of Justice investigation or indictment, or has been convicted for making illegal contributions. But even in such cases, a campaign committee must make the contributor's identity public before handing over the money.

Back in January 2008, CREW asked the Senate Ethics Committee to investigate whether Landrieu violated Senate rules seven years earlier by asking for a $2 million earmark for the Voyager Expanded Learning literacy program for the Washington, D.C. public schools four days after receiving $30,000 in campaign contributions from company executives and their relatives. The committee announced earlier this month that it cleared Landrieu of any wrongdoing in that matter.

But Sloan recently told the Huffington Post that it seemed odd that the $25,300 was handed over to Treasury during the Voyager investigation. Elias told the publication that the donation had nothing to do with the Voyager matter, but he would not say why it was made.