Tag Archives: campaign-legal

Campaign Finance Watchdog: Both Sides Are Breaking the Rules in This Election

by Rudolph8843 Posted on October 6, 2016

Mother Jones

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A campaign finance watchdog has bad news: Everyone is breaking the rules in this election. The nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center announced Thursday that it had filed two sets of complaints with the Federal Election Commission, charging that the campaigns of both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are improperly coordinating with super-PACs that support them.

Under the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision, super-PACs are given wide latitude when it comes to fundraising and spending money. But there are a handful of rules to ensure that the super-PACs, which can raise funds without limit, don’t coordinate with the actual candidates. The theory is that there’s nothing wrong with unlimited money, as long as the candidates aren’t involved. That’s not working, Campaign Legal Center general counsel Larry Noble says, because nobody is bothering to enforce the rules.

“We have been forced to file these complaints because a dysfunctional Federal Election Commission has been sitting idly by as the campaigns of the presidential candidate of both major parties are involved in unprecedented coordination with super PACs in violation of the law,” Noble said in a statement. “These are not minor or technical violations.”

A Republican super-PAC operative who has done work to support Trump—though not with any of the super-PACs listed in the Campaign Legal Center’s complaints—said the accusations were on the mark.

“In my opinion: no question,” he told Mother Jones when asked whether coordination is occurring. “And the FEC is really dysfunctional.”

He added that making the correct accusation is one thing, but proving it is an entirely different matter.

It is true that the FEC is barely functioning. It frequently deadlocks, and last year Ann Ravel, the then-FEC chairwoman, and another Democratic commissioner filed a complaint against their own agency, accusing it of failing to enforce laws. Ravel later told the New York Times that this election, “the likelihood of the laws being enforced is slim.” And any action, or even inaction, on these complaints is likely to take some time: It was only this spring, five years after the complaint, that FEC commissioners deadlocked over whether to investigate complaints about pro-Mitt Romney super-PACs in 2011.

On both sides, the groups being accused by the Campaign Legal Center don’t necessarily deny the close relationship with the campaigns; they simply use justifications that the watchdog group says are improper and could lead to new loopholes in campaign finance regulation.

The accusations on the Trump side are leveled at two super-PACs that are believed to have the campaign’s blessing: Rebuild America Now, founded by longtime Trump associate Tom Barrack, and Make America Number 1, a pro-Ted Cruz super-PAC that was repurposed after its primary backers, hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah Mercer, decided to back Trump.

In the case of Rebuild America Now, the Campaign Legal Center is arguing that close Trump aides left the campaign and joined the super-PAC while continuing to work closely with their old colleagues at Trump headquarters. The revolving door went the other way with Make America Number 1, the group says in its complaint, with the super-PAC’s former president, Kellyanne Conway, now working as Trump’s campaign manager. Further, Make America Number 1 used a data analytics firm owned by Mercer that the campaign is now using. The group also notes that the right-wing news site Breitbart.com, which was run by Stephen K. Bannon before he became Trump’s campaign chairman, is at least partially owned by the Mercers.

On the Democratic side, the Campaign Legal Center’s complaint takes aim at Correct the Record, a super-PAC led by Democratic operative David Brock, which focuses on opposition research and which has worked closely with the Clinton campaign. Correct the Record has argued that as long as it doesn’t produce paid content, it is not in violation of campaign finance laws. The Campaign Legal Center says that arrangement is intended to apply to volunteer efforts, not highly sophisticated, multimillion-dollar operations that post research online for free.

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Campaign Finance Watchdog: Both Sides Are Breaking the Rules in This Election

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The Nation’s Election Watchdog Just Hit a New Level of Dysfunction

by BarbraRodriquez Posted on March 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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In 2011, former Bain Capital executive Edward Conrad decided to give $1 million to the super-PAC supporting the presidential bid of his pal Mitt Romney. But he didn’t contribute the cash directly. Instead, he put the money in a generically named shell company he had recently created, which then cut a check to the super-PAC, Restore Our Future. Election law prohibits donors from taking steps to hide their identities, and campaign finance activists pressed the Federal Election Commission to investigate. Five years later, the FEC—which since at least 2010 has been existing in a fugue state of partisan paralysis—has finally rendered a decision on whether it will probe the matter, which is something of a post-Citizens United test case. Nah, we’ll pass on this one, the FEC decided on Monday.

In a letter sent to the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan campaign finance watchdog that complained about the donation in 2011, the FEC reported that its six commissioners deadlocked 3-to-3 on whether to open an investigation into the donation. Keep in mind that they didn’t split on whether there had been a violation of law, or if Conrad should be punished—just whether they should open an inquiry. The FEC also informed the Campaign Legal Center that the commission had deadlocked on a similar case from 2011, involving donations made via two other shell corporations to Romney’s super-PAC.

The FEC has been mired in a messy standoff for years now. With three Republican commissioners and three Democratic commissioners, it deadlocks on nearly every question put to it, even the minor ones. But this case was essentially a big softball. Conrad eventually publicly acknowledged he was behind the shell corporation. Donations from anonymous corporations to super-PACs are becoming increasingly common, but it is rare that the original source of the money reveals himself.

The FEC’s inability to open an investigation ends this case, but it doesn’t create a legal precedent. The commission could theoretically pursue future cases over the use of limited liability companies to fund campaigns. But don’t hold your breath, says Paul S. Ryan, the deputy executive director for the Campaign Legal Center.

“We have seen a pretty dramatic increase in the use of the LLCs to contribute to super-PACs, and I don’t think that’s going to change anytime soon,” he says, noting that the Campaign Legal Center has filed three similar complaints in the last two weeks alone. “But I think the dismissal of these complaints from 2011 will be viewed as a greenlight to continue laundering money into super-PACs.”

For the gridlocked commission, Ryan fears that this is far from rock bottom. “I’ve thought on several occasions that we’ve reached bottom, and they continue to surprise me with greater and greater dysfunction every year. This is a new low, that’s for sure. This does seem to be a million-dollar violation with an admission, and the FEC won’t even do anything about that. If they won’t do this, what hope is there for them to do any investigations in the context of less clear-cut violations?”

Ryan says the Campaign Legal Center will decide in the coming weeks whether to sue the FEC over its failure to act in this case.

Charlie Spies, an attorney for Restore Our Future, the Romney super-PAC that took the donation, told Mother Jones that the organization had followed the law.

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The Nation’s Election Watchdog Just Hit a New Level of Dysfunction

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