Donald Trump created a permanent presidential campaign. Here’s how. – Center for Public Integrity Sidebar: https://publicintegrity.org/federal-politics/donald-trump-army-super-pacs-maga-nonprofits/ Inside Donald Trump’s army of super PACs and MAGA nonprofits – Center for Public Integrity Poll: https://publicintegrity.org/federal-politics/elections/center-for-public-i Center for Public Integrity/Ipsos poll: How should presidential campaigns … Continue reading
Category Archives: campaign finance
Ryan Scoville has posted this draft on SSRN (forthcoming Duke Law Journal). Here is the abstract: In making appointments to the office of ambassador, U.S. presidents often select political supporters from outside the ranks of the State Department’s professional diplomatic corps. This … Continue reading
Good Amanda Becker piece for Reuters: Legally, Super PACs are supposed to operate independently of candidates and cannot contribute to them directly. In reality, they often are run by donors close to the candidates and their campaigns.David Donnelly, president of … Continue reading
TPM: A super PAC closely linked to Paul Manafort is facing questions about why it failed to report a $1 million contribution received just before the 2016 presidential election.In a Tuesday letter, the Federal Election Commission asked the Rebuilding America … Continue reading
WaPo reports. … Continue reading
Updated Campaign Finance Institute report. … Continue reading
NYT: In the 2020 race for the White House, small donors are expected to play a more significant role than ever before. With so many Democratic candidates running, and only so much money to go around, whom small donors choose … Continue reading
Dan Weiner oped in The Hill. … Continue reading
The Trace: A joint congressional inquiry is demanding that National Rifle Association executive vice president Wayne LaPierre hand over internal documents showing whether the NRA made “illegal, excessive, and unreported in-kind donations” to the campaigns of Donald Trump and several GOP Senate … Continue reading
Potentially a big deal here: “In particular, the Government represents that aspects of its investigation remains ongoing, including those pertaining to or arising from Cohen’s campaign finance crimes.”A bad sentence for Individual 1 and the Trump Org execs who hatched … Continue reading
BREAKING: FEC releases new contribution limits for federal campaigns, parties and pacs for 2019-20. pic.twitter.com/M746S3N6c3— Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) February 7, 2019 … Continue reading
Mother Jones: From the looks of it, GOP politicians got what they wanted, too. From the time the tax bill was first introduced on Nov. 2, 2017, until the end of the year, a 60-day period, dozens of billionaires and … Continue reading
NYT: In the subpoena, investigators also showed interest in whether any foreigners illegally donated to the committee, as well as whether committee staff members knew that such donations were illegal, asking for documents laying out legal requirements for donations. Federal … Continue reading
Peter Overby for NPR: As Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand jumped into the Democratic presidential nomination contest, they staked out the same position against corporate campaign cash.“The money in politics is corrupting. It controls everything,” Gillibrand told a gathering in Des Moines, … Continue reading
Release: Today, Congressman Jamie Raskin (MD-08) introduced the Shareholders United Act, H.R. 936, to control billions of dollars in corporate political spending and put power back in the hands of the shareholders. The Shareholders United Act would prevent corporate expenditures for campaign … Continue reading
Robby Mook: Wow. Does Trump’s campaign have an 85% burn rate?! How is that possible?"The latest fundraising disclosures bring the total haul for Trump's reelection effort to more than $129 million…The campaign had more than $19.2 million in cash on … Continue reading
Politico: Billionaire Republican donors Sheldon and Miriam Adelson gave $500,000 to a legal defense fund set up to help aides to President Donald Trump that are involved in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. The Adelsons each contributed $250,000 on Oct. … Continue reading
CPI reports. … Continue reading
Here’s how the WaPo fact check ends: Trump says he never ordered Cohen to break the law and silence Daniels and McDougal. But when he says such payoffs are not criminal to begin with, his defense goes off the rails. … Continue reading
I have written this piece for Slate. It begins: Why didn’t Special Counsel Robert Mueller charge self-proclaimed dirty trickster Roger Stone with violating campaign finance laws? And what does this say about Donald Trump Jr.’s potential exposure for his Trump … Continue reading
Open Secrets reports. … Continue reading
Politico: President Donald Trump’s political team and top Republican officials have reached a landmark agreement to reshape the party’s fundraising apparatus and close the financial gap that devastated them in the midterms. With the deal, Republicans hope to create a … Continue reading
Latest WSJ bombshell: In early 2015, a man who runs a small technology company showed up at Trump Tower to collect $50,000 for having helped Michael Cohen, then Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, try to rig online polls in his boss’s … Continue reading
WSJ: Reformers are rejoicing that Democratic leaders of the State Assembly and Senate are set to approve a passel of bills to increase voter participation and tighten campaign-finance laws. But there’s still a push to go further on some issues, … Continue reading
Agenda: On Tuesday, General Electric announced it would become more transparent — starting this month — by disclosing any contributions it makes to so-called social welfare organizations. That’s a category of nonprofit groups that often sponsors campaign outreach and political … Continue reading
Mother Jones: The National Rifle Association appears to have illegally coordinated its political advertising with Republican candidates in at least three recent high-profile US Senate races, according to Federal Communications Commission records. In Senate races in Missouri and Montana in … Continue reading
Ciara Torres-Spelliscy blogs. … Continue reading
Release: Today, Common Cause released a new report on the many ways presidential candidates bend and break campaign finance laws as they barnstorm early primary states, fundraise, evade contributions limits, and build their campaign teams while denying they are running … Continue reading
NYT: Senator Doug Jones, the Democrat who was an unwitting beneficiary of misinformation tactics during a special election in Alabama in 2017, asked the Federal Election Commission on Wednesday to investigate the episodes. Mr. Jones made his formal request for … Continue reading
WaPo: The solicitations piled into voters’ email accounts — sometimes multiple times a day. And they carried alarming messages, often in blaring capital letters. “We’re on the verge of BANKRUPTCY.” “Our bank account is ALMOST EMPTY!” “Trump is INCHES away … Continue reading
Norm Eisen and Fred Wertheimer in Politico: Much attention has focused on H.R. 1, the comprehensive package of democracy reforms introduced on Thursday by Representative John Sarbanes (D-Md.) on behalf of the new Democratic House majority. The unprecedented legislation is … Continue reading
Oped in USA Today. … Continue reading
Bloomberg BNA: The Securities and Exchange Commission could require publicly traded companies to disclose their political spending under one of the first bills the new House Democratic majority introduced Jan. 4. … Continue reading
From today’s opinion granting a preliminary injunction in Washington Post v. McManus: In May 2018, as Americans were continuing to learn the details of a far-reaching Russian campaign to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential contest, the state of Maryland enacted … Continue reading
NYT: Last year at this time, Republicans feared the “blue wave,” a surge of voter enthusiasm for Democrats in the midterm elections. With the election over, and the fears of Republicans partially realized, the party’s worry has shifted to the … Continue reading
David Brookman and Neil Malhotra have posted this draft on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Influential theories indicate concern that campaign donors exert outsized political influence. However, little data documents what donors actually want from government; and existing research largely … Continue reading
Fred Wertheimer & Norm Eisen USA Today oped: In asking Russia to find Clinton’s emails, presidential candidate Trump violated this statutory prohibition on seeking help from a foreign country to influence an election. Trump in essence called on a foreign adversary to … Continue reading
ProPublica: Allies of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell used a blind spot in campaign finance laws to undercut a candidate from their own party this year — and their fingerprints remained hidden until the primary was already over. Super PACs, … Continue reading
Mark Joseph Stern for Slate: Last Monday, the Washington Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to Seattle’s “democracy vouchers,” an innovative public financing scheme that’s already spreading to other cities. The measure has already allowed more young people, women, racial minorities, and low-income voters to contribute to … Continue reading
Somehow missed this NYT story yesterday: As Russia’s online election machinations came to light last year, a group of Democratic tech experts decided to try out similarly deceptive tactics in the fiercely contested Alabama Senate race, according to people familiar … Continue reading
AP: Michigan Republicans voted Tuesday to make it a crime for government agencies to require the disclosure of nonprofits’ donors and other information, a move decried by critics as shielding political “dark money” but defended by supporters as protecting people’s … Continue reading
Campaign Finance Institute: There is every reason to believe campaign finance reform will be high on the agenda for the New York State Legislature in 2019. The state’s governor, Andrew Cuomo has proposed small-donor matching fund programs since he took … Continue reading
Center for Responsive Politics: The Trump campaign funneled money to ad buyers alleged to have facilitated illegal coordination between the campaign and the NRA by routing funds through a secretive LLC that appears to be little more than a shell … Continue reading
WSJ: Sworn statements by President Trump dating back several decades indicate he has a deep understanding of campaign-finance laws, legal experts say, which could be critical if investigators ever pursue a case against him over his alleged direction of hush-money payments in … Continue reading
Montana Free Press: Thousands of newly uncovered documents and recently filed court records bolster already mounting evidence tying the anti-union National Right to Work Committee to the political activities of conservative nonprofit groups accused of improperly coordinating Republican legislative primary … Continue reading
Cert. petition in Kesari v. U.S., awaiting a response from the SG’s office. This question of disclosing the ultimate recipient of campaign money could have relevance to the Trump hush money payments issue and other issues as well. … Continue reading
Report: As Democrats and Republicans battled for dominance in both the House of Representatives and the Senate in 2018, super PACs and dark money groups collectively outspent the candidates’ own campaigns in a recordbreaking 16 races, according to data provided … Continue reading
Detroit Free Press: A Senate Republican power play proposal to shift campaign oversight from Democratic Secretary of State-elect Jocelyn Benson to a new political commission is poised to die in the Michigan House. The House Elections Committee will not take … Continue reading
Frank Wilkinson for Bloomberg View: It’s amazing that corporations have gotten away with it for so long. Cheerios had a social moment back in 2013 with an ad featuring a mixed-race family. Racists didn’t much like the idea of little … Continue reading
Daniel Wiener oped in the Detroit Free Press. … Continue reading