It’s long been obvious that the Democratic National Committee, the supposedly neutral referee of the presidential nomination race, is favoring Hillary Clinton.  Limiting the debates to six and scheduling them for times guaranteeing low viewership, for instance.  Now we know why, and the answer has seven zeroes.  The Daily Caller News Foundation has a blockbuster investigative report:

Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee have an unusual and apparently unprecedented agreement in which an entity she controls has paid nearly $20 million to the political panel, even as its leadership plays a supposedly impartial role in fostering competition between the former secretary of state and her rivals for the party’s 2016 presidential nomination.

Clinton created a “joint fundraising committee” Sept. 10 that funneled big-money donations in excess of the per-campaign limit to the DNC. In the next 20 days, she raised and gave $600,000 to the DNC, and the figure ballooned to $18 million in the fourth quarter, according to newly released figures–a third of her total haul. Normally the party would only team up with a candidate that way if the candidate was [sic] the nominee.

Of course, the rules for ordinary people don’t apply to Hillary Clinton.  Barack Obama waited until he had a majority of delegates before setting up a similar joint fundraising mechanism.

The D.C. raises an interesting question: was the Sanders campaign pressured to create a similar committee to provide the appearance of parity?

Strangely, on Nov. 20, the Sanders campaign created its own joint fundraising committee. But because Sanders does not have a base of wealthy supporters, it is unlikely that it has raised much money for the party, if any–tensions between him and the party aside. The Sanders effort has not yet filed any fundraising reports.

The Sanders campaign would not tell the Daily Caller News Foundation whether the DNC pressured it to create its own joint fundraising committee to establish the appearance of parity, or put any strings in place, such as making it a requirement to access party data. The DNC did not immediately say whether any conflict of interest provisions went along with the early Clinton fundraising partnership, or how it was maintaining a neutral role.

There appears to be nothing illegal going on.  But providing almost 20 million bucks to the cash-strapped DNC does provide quite an incentive to favor Hillary.