Federal statute, specific to 22 USC § 2697, allows for the Secretary of State to take gifts that are “unconditional” and allows for them to be appropriated by the Treasury. In other words, unconditional gifts must be declared by the Secretary. However the same does not apply to “conditional” gifts. Those are “held” by the Secretary, spent according to those arbitrary conditions, and unappropriated. Theoretically, the Secretary could spend those gifts’ amounts on anything, in secret. Like…paying for the dissemination of propaganda materials to the media as permitted by the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 that was tabled as a standalone bill but later snuck into the middle of the 2013 NDAA, for example? It is one of the few ways that could be funded without anyone knowing, and actually done by force of law
That example was rhetorical, look at Subsection (F) of the statute. The Broadcasting Board of Governors (now United States Agency for Global Media, an independent agency outside the direct control of the Executive Branch) miraculously is the only other entity besides the Secretary that can accept such “gifts” under 22 USC § 2697.
This loophole must be closed. It exists as one of the only statutory “formal” dark money loopholes that I have seen in the US Code outright, and I guarantee that if we looked at receipts of some of the things the likes of Hillary, Kerry, Pompeo and Blinken have spent “conditional gifts” on, our public skin would crawl.