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At the trial of alleged FTX fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried on Monday, former executive Nishad Singh admitted to being a “straw donor” who helped SBF distribute millions of stolen dollars to Democratic candidates and committees across the country.

Among them: All four members of New Hampshire’s federal delegation and the state Democratic Party (NHDP).

And according to the available records at the OpenSecrets website, all four candidates still have stolen cash on hand.

“My role was to click a button,” Singh testified. Those “clicks” included $5,000 to the Granite State Democratic Party and $2,900 to each of New Hampshire’s four congressional Democrats last year. And SBF funneled thousands more to Hassan and the NHDP during the hotly-contested 2022 campaign.

In fact, Hassan accepted a total of $30,800 between her campaign and her PAC from Bankman-Fried, while the NHDP collected $20,000. That ranks the two as number five and six on the list of Democrats and Democratic organizations to total campaign cash from FTX and its affiliates.

And those aren’t the only problematic donations for New Hampshire Democrats. Hassan also received a $10,000 contribution last year from disgraced U.S. Senate Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), currently facing bribery charges after cash and gold bars were found in his home. Hassan has declined to return the money or answer any questions about it.

Not to be outdone, Shaheen’s PAC gave Menendez a $5,000 donation just three days before his more recent indictment. Her staff blames a “clerical error” but declines to say if she’s going to ask that the money be returned.

“It’s another colorful data point of the bigger picture that a culture of brazenness has taken hold,” says Dan McMillan with the campaign finance reform organization Save Democracy In America.

The fact Hassan and Shaheen haven’t made a greater effort to distance themselves from Menendez shows they are now part of a system that largely ignores voters and treats campaign donors and lobbyists as their real constituents, McMillan told NHJournal.

“‘We, the people,’ are now a nuisance, a necessary evil, an obstacle to [politicians] getting done what they need to get done.”

Bankman-Fried wanted to get things done, too. According to this week’s testimony, he saw donating to Democrats as a way to raise his profile, the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Singh said the contributions, largely to center-left recipients, were made in his name for optics purposes. ‘It was useful for my name to be associated with some donations, even if the end recipient understood they were really coming from something else,’ he said.”

McMillan said these are all examples of a system that rewards politicians who can raise the most money. The money gives the politicians greater access to the levers of power, and it buys favorable treatment for the donors, he said. The lax federal regulation of the cryptocurrency market is, in part, a result of donations like the ones Bankman-Fried made, McMillan believes.

Save Democracy In America is promoting a taxpayer-funded campaign system, and McMillan argues it’s necessary because donors have too much power.

“Donors have become the gatekeepers, they are picking the candidates people are allowed to vote for,” McMillan said.

For example. Democratic donors are starving any candidate who might challenge President Joe Biden despite Biden’s deep unpopularity. “Donors all closed ranks and now Democratic voters are not going to have a choice this cycle on a presidential candidate,” McMillan said.

As long as politicians like  Menendez, Hassan, Shaheen, Kuster, and Pappas are incentivized to get money from donors, they will do just that. McMillan wants to use campaign money to leverage power back into the hands of voters. He’s hopeful it will work.

“We’re not a country like any other. This is the only country on Earth that stands for something. Being an American is about ideals,” McMillan said.

All four Democrats have declined to respond to repeated questions about these donations.

The New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office said Democrat Steve Marchand lied about his role in a political scheme targeting his opponents in Portsmouth.

Marchand, a progressive Democrat who once served as Portsmouth mayor and sought his party’s nomination for governor, will not face criminal charges, the office said in a letter. Instead, it issued a letter of warning to Marchand for his involvement in Preserve-Portsmouth.com and other websites that targeted sitting city council members in the last municipal election.

“It’s pretty bad,” said Peter Whelan, one of the Portsmouth councilors targeted.

Whelan, Councilors Susan Paige Trace, Ester Kennedy, Greg Mahanna, Petra Huda, and Mayor Rick Becksted were all targeted by anonymous websites, fliers, and robotexts operated by Marchand, according to Myles Matteson with the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office.

“It was shameful. There were robotexts sent by the thousands,” Whelan said.

Trace said the attorney general’s investigation revealed there was an effort to mislead the voters of Portsmouth.

“It’s about being transparent and behaving in an honorable manner,” Trace said.

All of the candidates targeted by Marchand were defeated. Current Portsmouth Mayor Deaglan McEachern declined to comment, as he had not seen Matteson’s letter.

“I didn’t have any interaction with the (Marchand) in my campaign,” McEachern said. “I have no idea what the former mayor was doing or not doing.”

Marchand did not respond to a request for comment. His attorney, Joseph Foster, is currently out of the country and unable to be reached.

Marchand’s bogus website was built to mirror a legitimate site with a similar name, Preserve Portsmouth, and purported to support the same city council candidates the original site endorsed. But it falsely described them as far-right Trump supporters. According to documents obtained by the Attorney General’s Office, Marchand wanted to depress voter turnout among Republicans in order to benefit Democrats on the ballot.

Marchand initially lied to investigator Anna Croteau when she questioned him about his part in the campaign, according to Mattson’s letter.

“When she first asked about Preserve-Portsmouth.com, you stated that you had heard of the website. You denied you had ever claimed responsibility for the website but noted that other people had been saying you were responsible for it,” Matteson wrote.

However, Croteau already had screenshots of a text conversation in which Marchand took credit for the content of the websites.

“To be very clear, I am the one to create the content,” Marchand wrote.

Matteson’s letter states the Attorney General’s Office has records of Marchand’s communications with at least four other people about the campaign, in which he stated the goal was to create guilt by association aimed at the targeted candidates, linking them to Trump in the mind of Portsmouth voters.

“(i)s really meant to help get Democrats who gave Becksted and others a vote in 2019 to really think about what they are doing in 2021,” Marchand wrote.

Whelan suspects the true purpose of the campaign was to get rid of council members who oppose development in the historic sections of the city. Marchand’s record as mayor includes changing zoning ordinances to make development easier, Whelan said. Whelan wants to know who Marchand was working with and for, and who funded the operation.

“Somebody spent a lot of money to do this,” Whelan said.

The attorney general’s report found that while Marchand would have violated campaign finance law by not disclosing who was behind the websites, fliers, and robotexts if it could be proved that he acted in concert with others. However, Marchand claimed, eventually, that while he acted alone in creating the content he did not set up the websites. Matteson noted the claim he acted alone was the last of many explanations Marchand offered to investigators.

New Hampshire law on campaign finance transparency allows a narrow exemption for individuals engaged in advocacy. Marchand was cautioned, however, that if he continues to engage in similar campaigns he could lose the exemption and face possible prosecution.

Last year, Portsmouth Democrat Committee Chair Shanika Amarakoon and New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley issued a statement condemning Marchand’s campaign.

“We cannot let our local elections be undermined by national-style political tactics. The city councilors who were attacked, after all, are our neighbors. While we may not agree with all of their decisions, they did not deserve this attack, and we do not stand for it,” Amarakoon and Buckley wrote.

The headline at left-leaning InDepthNH reads, “Questions raised about donation from Gunstock to Sununu’s 2020 campaign.”

Right-wing secessionist state Rep. Mike Sylvia (R-Belmont) called it “inappropriate and possibly illegal.”

So, what is the deal with the $500 campaign donation from the Gunstock Area Commission (GAC) to Gov. Chris Sununu’s 2020 campaign?

The answer, according to experts on New Hampshire election law, is “not much.”

Sununu actually received two campaign donations made to the Friends of Chris Sununu from the Gunstock Area Commission, one for $500 to his 2020 campaign and another to his 2022 re-election bid of $1,000. His opponents have suggested the money — approximately 0.07 percent of the $1.9 million Sununu raised for the 2020 campaign — may have influenced his behavior toward the county-owned facility.

Leaders in the New Hampshire Democratic Party suggested Sununu broke the law, or at least created the possibility of criminal action, by accepting the GAC donation. Gunstock is owned by the people of Belknap County and operated by the management team hired by the commissioners. The commission is appointed by the members of the county’s House delegation, led by Sylvia.

“Gunstock is publicly funded by Belknap County taxpayers, and if Sununu were to have used that public funding for his 2020 gubernatorial campaign, that donation could be in violation of campaign finance law,” the New Hampshire Democratic Party said in a statement.

Sununu’s team, led by campaign advisor Paul Collins, has maintained from the beginning the allegations were nonsense.

Sen. Bernie Sanders has a new book out,“Where We Go from Here: Two Years in the Resistance, ”and he sat down with New Hampshire Public Radio on Monday to promote it. When asked if he is going to run for president in 2020, he said it depended on the reaction he got to his message that “we need an unprecedented grassroots political movement to stand up to the greed of the billionaire class and the politicians they own.”

Well, if Bernie really wants to battle “millionaires and billionaires,” all he has to do is file his papers for the 2020 Democratic primary. The list of 33 (and counting) potential 2020 candidates includes several billionaires, including former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, coal-magnate-turned-green-activist Tom Steyer and Starbucks ex-chief executive Howard Schultz, along with Dallas Mavericks owner/reality TV star Mark Cuban (who may or may not be a Democrat).

When it comes to “billionaires buying elections,” Steyer is the leader of the pack. With a net worth of $1.6 billion, Steyer has been the top individual donor in two out of the last three election cycles, giving a total of more than $226 million dollars over that period.  Steyer is open in his efforts to connect his donations to environmental policies he supports.

Steyer’s $59 million in this cycle was edged out this cycle by fellow billionaire liberal Michael Bloomberg (Net worth: $45 billion), who gave $61 million, much of it through his pro-gun-control efforts. Bloomberg is just as clear that he wants his money to impact public policy on the Second Amendment.

Big spending by these billionaires, however, doesn’t seem to bother Bernie. When asked about Bloomberg and Steyer, Sen. Sanders said Steyer “is a very decent guy,” while he said he didn’t know Bloomberg personally. Then Sanders went on to add:

“The issue that concerns me–it’s not just those guys– it’s that, as a result of Citizen’s United, we have a corrupt campaign finance system. The Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson, they’re trying to buy elections. Billionaires shouldn’t be buying seats for themselves.”

But how is Tom Steyer, who has literally used his billions to build a campaign infrastructure many believe he will use to run for president in 2020, different from the Koch Brothers–other than the fact that they’re not running for anything, and their Americans for Prosperity Action PAC spent a measly $6.5 million this cycle?

The problem for progressives like Bernie Sanders and Liz Warren with their “millionaires and billionaires” schtick is that the Democratic Party has become the party of America’s wealthy elites. For every Republican billionaire like Sheldon Adelson (who was the top individual donor this cycle at $113 million) there are a dozen left-leaning tech billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook and Jeff Bezos at Amazon, or rich Hollywood millionaires and movie stars, or liberal activists like George Soros, etc. etc.

The Trump GOP is the party of rural working-class Americans more than it is “millionaires and billionaires.” And making the case that the rich are stealing democracy is tough when they are (based on the numbers) apparently “stealing it” for Democrats.

And why do the Democrats even need leftover rabble rouser Bernie Sanders?  Tom Steyer is at least as populist as Sanders–if not more so. Michael Bloomberg is at least a socially liberal–once again, if not more so. And there’s a whole bevy of college-student-friendly far-Left activists like Booker, Brown and Beto who haven’t achieved AARP status yet. For a guy who should be considered top dog for 2020, Sen. Sanders current poll numbers are unimpressive.

Bernie’s real problem isn’t “billionaires.” It’s his bad luck that the last real chance he had of being the Democratic nominee was stolen from him by Hillary Clinton and the DNC.