Pretty sure this is what Jesse Jackson Jr and his wife went to jail for.
And you're 100% correct on how strict the reporting is. Check out the FEC website and search for a Congressional candidate.
http://www.fec.gov/finance/disclosure/candcmte_info.shtml
You'll notice they have to track everything. I looked up Lynch's filings and he tracks the $6 coffee at Starbucks in the filing.
It'll also tell us the people who are donating to this nut. Will Wu's estranged millionaire parents contribute to the cause? How much money will Frank have to put in to get the ball rolling? All these questions and many more will be answered on April 15th.
The thing about FEC regs is they are largely formalistic rather than substantive. It is ludicrous the absolute bullshit you can get away with so long as you dot all your i's and cross all your t's. However, unlike corporate law, the slightest fuckup in the formalities opens you to all kinds of scrutiny and prosecution, and also unlike corporate law, the exact details of what you did are, to some degree, open to the public.
Guess exactly what John is terrible at doing?
And
here's a link to the thread in which Flynt/Wu's old college pals recall his loathsomeness. I especially like the guy who felt sorry for Flynt/Wu's dog because there was "no telling what he did to it." Some things never change.
All that's Internet hearsay, of course, of dubious provenance. I'm pretty sure it's more or less accurate, as random memories of things years ago usually are, to some pretty variable degree.
It's not directly of much use in a campaign, though. "Some guy said in some random thread bla bla bla years ago about stuff that was years ago when he said it."
However, what an incumbent Democrat in a safe Democratic seat has is access to a national network that can feed him money and operatives and whatever, and stories like this are
strongly suggestive of where you go to find useful content. You send out some operatives just to ask some innocent questions of everyone who ever knew this dude at the place in question at the time in question.
This is highly Optimistic of course. It's more likely that Lynch simply refuses to acknowledge the existence of this idiot at all.