There are limitations on donations. They wanted to donate $50k. By law, they can't do that. So they manipulated how they donated that sum to circumvent that law.
It's perfectly legal to email your coworkers about a political campaign and to ask them to donate. Does this kind of suck? Maybe. Is campaign finance a mess? Definitely. But would you really want a federal law that restricts what you can say about political campaigns while at work? I'm not even sure the Constitution would permit such a restriction on speech.
because we need your help.
we have a great production incentive environment in NY
Because of all of this, I think it’s important to significantly support his reelection efforts and NY law only allows corporations to give him $5,000
we are trying to raise $50k overall.
Like I said, I'm not sure where this falls on the legal-side of things, but this clearly goes further than merely:
> It's perfectly legal to email your coworkers about a political campaign and to ask them to donate.
I'm actually glad to see that they cared about the law at all, and there was some level of effectiveness to it!