Constitutional Law

Cooper Arms followup

From the FEC webpage:

Here's the image of a $2100 Obama contribution by a Daniel Cooper of Pound Ridge, NY, no occupation given. The FEC webpage lists this under Daniel Cooper/Copper Firearms, I believe by mistake.

Here's an image of a 2/6/08 donation of $1,000 by Dan Cooper of Akron OK, President/CEO of Cooper Firearms. (For some strange reason the report says his cumulative donations are $3100 -- maybe the Obama Campaign got him confused with the NY Cooper, since this would be the total of the above two).

Here's the image of a 2/6/08 $800 contribution by Dan Cooper of Akron OH, President/CEO of Cooper Firearms of Montana. Cumulative donations given as $3200, which matches nothing.

Here's the image of the $800 refund made the same day to him. Cumulative donations now become $3100 again.

All quite confusing. It looks as if his donations were under the limit, and the Obama Campaign didn't have to send the refund. My theory: the Obama Campaign (whose reports these are) got him confused with the NY Cooper, and somehow thought he'd reached his limit ($3200), and thus sent him the refund. The FEC made the same mistake. And OpenSecrets all the other secondary sources picked up the FEC mistake and are reporting that.

If you do a search for him on the FEC webpage, you'll see what I mean. His address for some reason is given as Montana, even tho every image of paperwork gives his address as in Ohio. It confutes him with the New York Cooper, and even gets amounts wrong, $900 instead of $800.

The above was just trying to settle a mystery. The core question is why did the owner of a firearms company donate to an anti-gun candidate, then lamely claim it was only intended to defeat Hillary, when what stirred everything up was his endorsing Obama quite recently in a news story.

Full post as published by Of Arms and the Law on October 29, 2008 (boomark / email).