FEC Commissioner Ellen Weintraub with an NYT oped:

Throughout Citizens United, the court described corporations as “associations of citizens”: “If the First Amendment has any force,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote, “it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech.” In other words, when it comes to political speech, which the court equated with political contributions and expenditures, the rights that citizens hold are not lost when they gather in corporate form.

Foreign nationals are another matter. They are forbidden by law from directly or indirectly making political contributions or financing certain election-related advertising known as independent expenditures and electioneering communications. Government contractors are also barred from making contributions.

Thus, when the court spoke of “associations of citizens” that have the right to participate in American elections, it can only have meant associations of American citizens who are allowed to contribute.

But many American corporations have shareholders who are foreigners or government contractors. These corporations are not associations of citizens who are allowed to contribute. They are an inseparable mix of citizens and noncitizens, or of citizens and federal contractors….

Arguably, then, for a corporation to make political contributions or expenditures legally, it may not have any shareholders who are foreigners or federal contractors. Corporations with easily identifiable shareholders could meet this standard, but most publicly traded corporations probably could not.

Bloomberg BNA:

Democratic FEC Commissioner Ellen Weintraub drafted a motion calling for a new rule on foreign money—as well as campaign money from government contractors—and asked to place the issue on the agenda for the commission’s next open meeting.

Weintraub told Bloomberg BNA that she hopes the proposal will at least raise awareness of the threat that illegal money could seep into U.S. elections through obscure corporations without voters even knowing about it.

Her draft motion calls for a new FEC rule to “assist those accepting corporate contributions or making corporate expenditures in complying with existing campaign finance law,” which has long banned money from foreigners and contractors.