Rep.-elect shows no indication of complying
By Guy Page
A Progressive/Independent who ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate wants Democratic Rep.-elect Becca Balint to resign for benefiting from a pass-through campaign contribution of almost $1 million from a senior official at FTX, the scandal-ridden cryptocurrency firm.
“Who needs another alleged corrupt Democrat right now, when Republicans are taking over the U.S. House of Representatives,” Cris Ericson wrote December 13 in “The Smirking Chimp,” an online news and opinion platform claiming to offer “news and commentary from the vast left-wing conspiracy.”
“They’ll probably just impeach Becca Balint anyway, so why wait? Tell Becca Balint to resign now!,” Ericson wrote. Ericson has run for statewide office as a Progressive Party candidate, but ran as an independent in the November 8, 2022 General Election for U.S. Senator. She finished eighth with 1,105 votes.
At issue is a $1.1 million contribution from Nishad Singh, a senior executive at FTX, the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency firm that was a major donor to Democratic campaigns as it sought to influence looming government regulations of cryptocurrency and the rest of the digital economy.
On July 7, Singh donated $1.1 million to the LGBTQ Victory Fund. In its policy blog, FTX praises three current digital currency regulation legislative initiatives: “FTX is enthused about these developments because they indicate the broadening interest from the Congress in providing protections for investors in digital assets as well as regulatory clarity to the industry as whole.”
Large, well-established firms in growing, under-regulated industries often seek regulation as a means of setting favorable ground rules and discouraging potential competitors.
The next largest donor to the Victory fund gave $10,000. The PAC then spent $991,000 on the Balint campaign. Simple arithmetic shows that the LGBTQ Victory Fund was just a pass-through from Singh to Balint’s benefit. In the final month before the August 9 primary, a plethora of mailers and advertising helped a surging Balint pummel Lt. Gov. Molly Gray.
Balint returned a $2900 donation from the founder of FTX but apparently has no plans to make amends for the $991,000 spent on her campaign’s behalf by another PAC.
Balint said in a Sept. 15 candidate forum she had no control over the contribution, and that in fact, she didn’t want it: “I want to really assure vermonters that I had absolutely no knowledge of who is donating money to the Victory Fund which is an LGBTQ organization. I did not want that investment in my campaign. I had no control over it. And the things I did have control over was how I ran my campaign, which was with many, many small dollar donors.”
Yet Balint’s campaign policy goals closely resembled those of the Protect Our Futures PAC established by the founder of FTX.
POF PAC website: “We must establish independent oversight of dual-use research including enforcement mechanisms to ensure safety and security.
Balint website: “Establish independent oversight of labs conducting dual-use research of concern.”
This was simply Balint parroting for profit, Republican nominee Liam Madden claimed in a campaign op-ed. “This policy is something that was inconvenient to support before. It was politically expensive, so Balint hadn’t the courage to breathe a peep about it—until it paid,” he said.
Categories: politics
I agree… Balint should resign now and if Welch and Sanders accepted any FTX money, they too must resign.
Exactly. She is not a vermonter, she is owned .
Vermont congressional elections are bought as easily as a lottery ticket.
Absolutely so. balint is firmly entrenched in the Vermont political corruption and soon to be in the national graft for politicians system. She’s following welch, who followed jeffords, who followed leahy. I’ll give bernie a pass on the good ol boy democrat system, he had to learn the graft system the hard way- mighty successfully too!
Yes, all three need to resign.
Picture that! Commiecrats never resign. Libtards would still vote for them no matter what they do. It’s about the agenda.
Exactly,she never cared about Vermont she was in it for the agenda they are forcing.
Oh, Beck…you say you didn’t know him, never met him, etc. This is as LAME and SPINELESS as it gets for someone who touts her advocacy for “democracy” and “the people”.
– If we are to believe you were clueless about this PAC / donor, what reason do you have for not endeavoring to check this PAC out as soon as the glossy ads etc. started running?
– Could you have taken all possible steps to put a stop to the PAC activities taken in her behalf?
There are a dozen more questions. These two are good to start. Bet you won’t have a decent and respectful answers, if any.
When you see Becca – let her know it is time to resign. Send a letter to becca and respectfully request that she resign immediately. Maybe we can reach her at the State House still? Does anyone have a better way to reach out respectfully?
bbalint@leg.state.vt.us
Vermont State House
Attn: Becca Balint
115 State St
Montpelier, VT 05633
No, resigning will do nothing. The “useful idiots” would just replace her with another loser. The issue is simple. The Balint campaign used the money from this LGBTQ Victory Fund to push her agenda. Unfortunately, the money wasn’t the donors money to give, it was other peoples money !
Ms. Balint, give the damn money back !
nobody will think of resigning because you cannot embarrass these people. they feel they can criticize others but they feel immune from public’s concerns
She won’t do it. She is like Sanders, only there to enrich her bank account. Vermonters keep sending these parasites. I guess they like being swindled.
Except it’s not “Vermonters” sending these parasites, it’s Chittenden and Bennington Counties.
It seems only a short time ago Molly Gray was being groomed to replace Peter Welch, then all of a sudden out of the blue, here comes Becca.
I thought at the time, what’s up with that?
Now we know what happened, the question is, where is the money FTX fronted for Becca’s campaign been returned to?
“Balint said in a Sept. 15 candidate forum she had no control over the contribution,..” Isn’t that a lie?
She states she doesnt know how contributes? Really? So, no one tells her? Is she just a puppet? Welch took money from them as well, Bernie? who knows? He takes from everyone, He has no pride.
I guess no one remembers that she went to the Biden White House for an LGBTQ meeting of some sort about 20 days before she got this money.
Makes you wonder what promises were made….
Biden -> Ukraine -> FTX -> LGBTQ -> Balint.
Very insightful post.
The only contributions she and Welch admitted receiving were @ $2,900; first I’ve heard of an additional $1.1 million. That’s an election bending amount which gave Balint and Welch an unfair advantage.
All stolen money should be returned ASAP to be held in escrow for FTX’s victims.
I am not a fan of Becca she and peter welch did give the FTX money to charity but that is after the story broke
https://www.wcax.com/2022/11/16/balint-welch-donate-ftx-campaign-contributions-charity/
The money MUST go back to the customers of FTX who paid for this largess on the part of the Progressive weenies. It was not their money to give to charity. They are just playing a shell game.
Wishful thinking…impeachment. She has demoprog legal immunity. You can try to make her feel bad about it but she also has the demoprog attribute of immunity from feeling shame or responsibility. As long as the agenda prospers, the way they got there is meaningless.
I think anyone who takes dark money or an money outside of Vermont, should resign. This is buying/harvesting votes and favors. Should be game over!
Unfortunately, Progressives are not moral agents.
Wondered how she could afford the many mailings prior to the election… far more than Republicans.
Chris Erickson is as much of a progressive as Liam Madden is a Republican. I believed more in her when she wore her fancy hats.
Vermont really needs to find a way to filter out people who run for office on a lark.
Very true!
One month before primary day Balint received a $1.1 million donation from 26-year-old executive Nishad Singh, FTX’s head of engineering. Bankman-Fried also donated to Balint’s campaign, directly giving the maximum allowed, $2,900. Because Singh gave money through a PAC, he was not subject to that limitation. On July 9, he contributed his $1.1 million to the LGBTQ Victory Fund Federal politicial action committee, which subsequently spent $991,911 on an ad campaign in support of openly gay Balint. Singh has contributed $7.9 million to democratic PACs including Women Vote!, Mind the Gap — an organization led by Stanford University academics using Silicon Valley funds to support democratic candidates — and the Senate Majority PAC. Bankman-Fried said he planned to spend between $100 million and $1 billion on the 2024 U.S. presidential election campaigns.
The million $ was given to a PAC (politcal action committee) by one of the FTX big wigs…then the PAC gave the money to Balint. Ultimately this money was taken from investors. It’s a bad scenario for both Balint and Welch, and also Vermont. So much for clean politics in this state, all works on money form out of state for the Dems.
They bought the Vermont vote because it was cheap.
That’s all this was. Buying a vote for crypto regulations to bring in the new world order. You’re a slave to the almighty dollar and if you don’t change your ways you’ll continue to be a slave even more so to the central bank digital currency which is already being trialed as we speak.
FTX is just another way to rain in financial regulation over crypto currency. It will usher in the regulation necessary for the governments to start to provide crypto.
They’re a lot further along than any of you realize:
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/cbdctracker/
Has anyone contacted Tucker Carlson and/or Glenn Beck?
Yeah they’re on my speed dial! 😆😆😆
Sarcasm instead of honest answers is the hall mark of Left fascist trolls.
You’ve revealed yourself.
@ Scott
I don’t know Brian but I wouldn’t assume he’s a leftist troll just due to the use of sarcasm. He could just be expressing frustration as of course he doesn’t have access to Tucker Carlson, Glenn Beck or any other national conservative figure that might actually care about the way Becca bought her election with money stolen from the FTX investors.
That’s funny, I thought baseless claims about someone’s political views or intentions were the hallmarks of the left.
Obviously humor isn’t lost on you. 😆
This raises an important legal question. If illegally-obtained funds are used to get a candidate elected, what is the legal recourse?
What happens if a trillion dollars of crypto is stolen and used to flood the airwaves and somehow get Biden reelected in 2024 – but it’s only discovered once he’s inaugurated? Do we get a do-over at some point, or is it time for Civil War 2.0?
Many should remember when Balint was chastised for using the “little red box.” Despite what she told Vermonters, she signaled she was open to colluding with super PACs – and here we are. A case of dirty money at its finest.
https://www.samessenger.com/to-ms-balint-the-little-red-box-needs-to-come-down/article_45e410e0-eb42-11ec-9f14-1fc88190daf7.html
https://www.sevendaysvt.com/vermont/watchdog-group-balints-campaign-site-appears-to-use-questionable-red-boxing/Content?oid=35795224
https://vtdigger.org/2022/06/13/becca-balint-has-denounced-super-pacs-is-her-campaign-winking-at-them-anyway/