Foreign Influence on the 2012 Presidential Election

See United States presidential election, 2012, Mitt Romney presidential campaign, 2012, Barack Obama presidential campaign, 2012
President Obama once commented that “I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, and worse, by foreign entities.”

Though the president may have believed that be true, the 2012 presidential election became a playing ground for huge foreign influence through (oftentimes hidden) attempt sto intimidate, encourage, or persuade the choice of the United States voters through donations, advertisements, rhetoric, journalism, and other unknown sources.
Regardless of ideology, political party, or election results, one thing is clear: foreign companies or foreign governments—or both—are secretly influencing U.S. elections.
Money
See also Foreign Money in U.S. Elections
Earlier this year the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a federal law that bans foreign nationals from spending to influence U.S. elections. 
In the latest of a series of high-profile cases challenging limits to political contributions, the high court affirmed a lower court ruling that foreign citizens can be excluded from certain civic and political activities. The Supreme Court summarily upheld the lower court’s decision in the Bluman v. Federal Election Commission case without comment. 
Campaign finance reform advocates painted the court’s decision as a victory for keeping corporate foreign cash from improperly influencing the U.S. political system. 
Though the courts might have most recently ruled in favor of the ban of foreign donations, loopholes still exist. 

Lack of Transparency for Small Donations
Campaigns are not required to disclose donations from individuals who gave less than $200 in a campaign cycle unless the campaign is audited. Furthermore, campaigns do not even need to keep records of those who gave less than $50. Presidential candidates are raising large amounts of money that fall under the $200 threshold and audits are rare unless a campaign accepts federal matching funds. Neither President Obama nor candidate Mitt Romney accepted federal matching funds, therefore, they were not investigated.

Campaigns do not need to even itemize donations of less than $50 increases. Recently, vulnerability to foreign donation has skyrocketed due to “robot donations,” in which any number of small donations could be made with unique aliases, fictitious addresses, and other generated personal information over the phone. Through this service,Campaigns have every incentive to choose negligence over vigilance. A verification of identity could mean less money.
Concerns with Citizen's United
The abundance of political cash in the 2012 presidential election due to the rise of the super PACs in the wake of the Citizens United decision is causing concern about campaign donation disclosure. Under this interpretation of campaign finance law, anyone, American or not, can give any amount—$1 or $10 million—to politically active nonprofits.
Marcus Owens, a tax-lawyer and campaign finance expert, offered this hypothetical scenario: Say a Chinese businessman wants to funnel $10 million to a nonprofit that runs anti-Obama ads. For a few hundred dollars, that donor—or his attorney—can create a Delaware shell corporation that can funnel the $10 million to the nonprofit. And when the nonprofit discloses its donors to the IRS (as the law requires), all the taxman sees on the donor line is the shell corporation.
Obama.com
President Obama's re-election campaign found a huge loophole through online credit card donations. A report from the conservative Government Accountability Institute (GAI) shows that Obama bundler Robert Roche allegedly solicited donations from foreign nationals through a social media website that serves mostly users from outside the United States. The report cites that about 20 percent of visitors to the “my.barackobama.com” social media website “originated from foreign locations.” 

GAI noted that “At no point during the subscription process is a visitor asked whether he or she can legally donate to a U.S. election.” 
“Once a visitor signs up, he or she immediately begins receiving solicitations for donations. In fact, numerous foreign nationals report receiving solicitation letters and thank you emails from the campaign for their support. Some of these emails have been reposted on blog sites to encourage friends to click on the donate link or get their names on the email list.” 

All alleged donations were made by credit card, and under $200, therefore circumventing the requirement to disclose donors.
Fake RNC and DNC Websites
Even sophisticated campaigns and federal authorities seem to be unaware of individuals who are misrepresenting themselves and soliciting funds while posing as political party organizations. Indeed, these frauds operate out in the open. Consider the websites democraticnationalcommittee.org and republicannationalcommittee.org. Both websites appear legitimate, use the logos of the named party, and accept donations. However, these websites are not owned by either of the political parties but instead are both owned by a man who lives in Massachusetts. 

These sites solicit donations from multiple sources and fail to implement CVV or AVS codes, which determine the original location of the donor. This flagrant misrepresentation is taking place in a clear and conspicuous fashion. In fact, the fraudulent democraticnationalcommittee.org website is feeding information into the official Democratic National Committee’s Google Analytics account, suggesting that the DNC isn’t aware that its security has been compromised.

Putin of Russia has described Obama as a "genuine person" who "really wants to change much for the better." And during the summer, Cuban President Raul Castro's daughter Mariela Castro said, "As a citizen of the world, I would like Obama to win." - "World reacts to US presidential debate" has 843,000,000 results. 

This would give the impression that Americans are about 2.5 times more interested in what the world thinks of them than they are interested in the opinions of their own citizens. This type of attitude is easily exploited by foreign masters of propaganda and political warfare. 

Foreign media was more than excited to comment on the U.S. Presidential—and offer advice to the candidate. Just before the foreign policy debate, a high-ranking roster of British officials urged both Obama and Romney to tone down the trigger-happy war rhetoric on Iran and its nuclear program. Commenting that “"Obama is by nature cautious, we know that, we've seen that. My concern is Romney may have given the impression of a much more adventurous policy.” 

The main significance of this foreign press is the sentiment—negative or positive—is almost always immediately amplified by domestic media.
Gaining legitimacy through the American media
It is the dream of a foreign propagandist to gain the attention of America's mainstream media. China's Xinhau lived to see that day when the Obama campaign gave legitimacy to their anti-Romney editorial. 

Stef Cutter, chief campaign organizer, linked to a Reuters report about a strongly worded anti-Mitt Romney editorial in the state-run Xinhua news agency — a piece that accused the GOP nominee of wanting to spark a trade war, and hypocrisy in his business dealings. Cutter called it a "must read." 

The article exploited every Obama campaign talking point, a technique obviously used to attract an American audience with deep sympathies for the President.

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