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FEC forms: Mysterious presidential candidate reported raising billions in 2008

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Michael Bastasch DCNF Managing Editor
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Apparently, Hillary Clinton wasn’t Barack Obama’s only wealthy Democratic primary challenger in 2008. A Texas man named Lee L. Mercer, Jr. reported to the FEC that he raised $900 million during that presidential election cycle. That’s about $120 million more than Obama collected on his way to the White House.

Well, not exactly.

Mercer’s campaign finance reports seem to indicate that he never actually raised that much money. Maybe none at all. On other forms, he reported raising billions — yes, billions — of dollars for campaigns in 2008 and 2012.

His name doesn’t appear on any presidential candidate lists, but he has declared his availability for the job, registering “Intelligence of Lee Mercer” as one of the committees authorized to spend money on his behalf.

Mercer’s 2012 campaign websites claims endorsements from former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, the U.S. Congress, and the United Nations.

His apparent windfalls began after modest quarterly reports in 2007, when Mercer suddenly reported raising $900 million — self-financed of course. He reported raising and spending $73.8 billion, all his own money, in the second quarter of 2008.

Then Mr. Mercer did something truly remarkable, according to his FEC reports: He repeated that $73.8 billion miracle again in the very next quarter.

An FEC employee told The Daily Caller News Foundation that the commission only reports the numbers given to them by candidates’ committees.

According to his year-end 2009 financial disclosure, Mercer advanced his own campaign another $72 billion, again claiming to have spent nearly all of it. The FEC got a similar report from him at the end of 2010, and in April of this year.

Mercer’s 2008 campaign website describes him as a Texas native who is “proud to say that [he] was born a Negro American Citizen,” and adds that his “father and mother are both American Citizens.”

He also says he’s a “member of a Buddhist Church named Soka Gaakai International–USA,” and that the “United States Military Police and Federal Police are doing a biography and autobiography of me … that is stalled in a police debriefing.”

He also claims to have received many awards and degrees including the “scholar of the world in World Management at Rice University,” an award for “road scholar from the United States Navy/United States Marine Corp. at West Point,” and claims to have “a doctor degree Phd. as a doctor of laws, medicine…, theology, management, engineering and other subjects that are guaranteed by the United States Army in ROTC to be presented to me in a court of Law only.”

Mercer has 70 reasons for running for president, including:

Reason 10: “To prove the United States of America has two Governments and they are Government #1 and Government #2 and I own Government # 1 a Private Ownership named Eye Spy Community-Military Intelligence.”

Reason 23: “To Prove I have solved every crime in the world as it happens from zero to start to finish for every crime done in Business and Commerce Intelligence National and International.”

Reason 34: “To Prove the government owes me Zillions of Dollars in money and is refraining to pay me and my business.”

Reason 49: “To Prove the United States Government killed my sex life, my wife sex life, my daughter-in –laws sex life both [my] sons and other of my family members sex life with Espionage Experimentation and Espionage Exploitation sex killing.”

And, most importantly, Reason 66: “To Prove America is America.”

There are likely many reasons Mercer was unable to raise money — real or imagined — from anywhere other than his own wallet (again, real or imagined). But a big one is this: The “Donate Now” button on his campaign fundraising website leads to an error message.

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