WaPo: The Justice Department on Friday charged a Russian woman for her role in a conspiracy to interfere with the 2018 U.S. election, marking the first criminal case prosecutors have brought against a foreign national for meddling in the upcoming … Continue reading
Category Archives: campaigns
Nate Silver: The fundraising numbers are so good for Democrats — and so bad for Republicans — that it’s a little bit hard to know quite what to make of them. From a modelling standpoint, we’re extrapolating from years in which fundraising … Continue reading
KC Star: A conservative activist with Project Veritas posed as an intern with U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill’s campaign and had access to voter information, according to a stack of documents McCaskill’s lawyer delivered to Attorney General Josh Hawley’s office Friday. … Continue reading
Open Secrets: This year’s midterm election cycle is slated to become the first and only member of the $5 billion club. The Center for Responsive Politics projects that more than $5 billion will be spent during the 2018 election, making … Continue reading
This is very interesting, though I don’t give it much chance (for example, it doesn’t cite to a single law that the allegedly false speech violates). … Continue reading
Back in April, I had a post where I expressed skepticism that Facebook’s plan for voluntary disclosure of who is running political ads will actually work. Here’s a snippet: Here’s a hypothetical to flesh out some issues. Let’s assume that … Continue reading
CNET: On Oct. 7, during the first round of Brazil’s presidential election, Facebookemployees noticed something suspicious on the social network. A story posted to Facebook incorrectly claimed the election was delayed because of protests. The company’s data scientists and operations team … Continue reading
WaPo: Democratic candidates running for Congress this year collectively raised more than $1 billion for their campaigns — a record-shattering sum that highlights the party’s zeal to retake the House and Senate and underscores the enormous amount of money flowing into … Continue reading
Rebecca Green at the HLR Blog. … Continue reading
NYT: An army of Democrats giving money over the internet has lifted the party’s House candidates to a strong financial advantage over Republicans in the final weeks of the 2018 midterm election, with Democrats in the most competitive House races … Continue reading
Politico: A series of court orders in September appeared poised to force so-called dark-money groups — which raise and spend unlimited sums from anonymous donors — to reveal some of their funders for the first time. But a month later, … Continue reading
WaPo: President Trump has topped $100 million in fundraising for his 2020 reelection bid — an enormous haul for a president barely two years into his first term, according to new Federal Election Commission filings. Trump pulled in $18.1 million … Continue reading
Reuters: Facebook Inc (FB.O) will ban false information about voting requirements and fake reports of violence or long lines at polling stations in the run-up to and during next month’s U.S. midterm elections, company executives told Reuters, the latest effort … Continue reading
Pete Williams and Ken Dilanian for NBC News: The Department of Homeland Security says it’s working to identify who — or what — is behind an increasing number of attempted cyber attacks on U.S. election databases ahead of next month’s … Continue reading
Tiffany Muller oped in The Hill. … Continue reading
Sheera Frenkel for the NYT: What Right Wing News did was part of a shift in the flow of online disinformation, falsehoods meant to mislead and inflame. In 2016, before the presidential election, state-backed Russian operatives exploited Facebook and Twitter … Continue reading
Politico: Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson is pumping tens of millions of dollars more into Republican Party coffers in an 11th-hour push to save their congressional majorities, according to two senior Republicans familiar with the donation. The contributions were … Continue reading
LA Times report. … Continue reading
Justin Elliott for ProPublica: After decades as a major Republican donor, Adelson is known as an ideological figure, motivated by his desire to influence U.S. policy to help Israel. “I’m a one-issue person. That issue is Israel,” he said last … Continue reading
NYT: A top Trump campaign official requested proposals in 2016 from an Israeli company to create fake online identities, to use social media manipulation and to gather intelligence to help defeat Republican primary race opponents and Hillary Clinton, according to … Continue reading
NYT: The stock market may be booming. Unemployment is hitting record lows. Republicans pushed through $1.5 trillion in tax cuts. But despite all that, for the first time in a decade, the broader financial community is on pace to give … Continue reading
NBC News: California Gov. Jerry Brown drew plenty of headlines on Sunday when he signed the state’s net neutrality bill into a law, a move that was immediately met with a lawsuit from the Department of Justice. On Friday, he signed another bill that drew … Continue reading
Adam Bonica and Gisel Kordestani oped in The Hill: We at Crowdpac are among the 78 percent of Americans who want to see Citizens United overturned. We are well aware that if Crowdpac’s conditional fundraising platform is challenged in court, it … Continue reading
CFI: Independent expenditures (IEs) spending for congressional primaries went up once again. This unsurprising conclusion was based on a Campaign Finance Institute (CFI) analysis of data supplied by the Federal Election Commission for all federal primaries from 2006 through the … Continue reading
Tim Mak for NPR with a fascinating report: Russian social media agitators who pushed pro-gun messages in the United States sometimes copied the language of the National Rifle Association. And sometimes, the NRA copied them. What isn’t clear is whether … Continue reading
Deep NYT dive: For many Americans, the Trump-Russia story as it has been voluminously reported over the past two years is a confusing tangle of unfamiliar names and cyberjargon, further obscured by the shout-fest of partisan politics. What Robert S. … Continue reading
NYT: Facebook invited two New York Times reporters into the War Room before it opens next week to discuss the work of the elections team and some of the tools it has developed to try to prevent interference. The company … Continue reading
NYT: Representative Chris Collins, the New York Republican indicted on insider trading charges last month, reversed course on Monday and planned to announce he would seek another term, according to two Republicans familiar with his plans. Mr. Collins opted to … Continue reading
Newsweek: Ted Cruz’s Texas senatorial campaign has sent hundreds of thousands of mailers seeking donations that are meant to look like official county summons, a high-ranking campaign official confirmed to Newsweek. The brown envelopes read “SUMMONS ENCLOSED-OPEN IMMEDIATELY” in large black … Continue reading
Daily Beast: Before the National Rifle Association dropped hundreds of thousands of dollars to try to flip a competitive, Democratic-held Senate seat, the gun-rights group’s chief lobbyist apparently gave the race’s Republican challenger a heads-up. Chris Cox, the top political … Continue reading
Release: The top 25 special interest groups in 2017 spent more than $74 million trying to influence elections and government policy in New Jersey, according to a new analysis by the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission (ELEC). The analysis … Continue reading
The Sixth Circuit reversed a denial of a motion to dismiss, tossing an incitement claim based on then-Candidate Trump’s exhortation at a rally to “Get ’em out of here.” … Continue reading
NYT: House Republicans withdrew on Thursday from negotiations with Democrats over a pact that would have effectively barred both parties from using hacked or stolen material on the campaign trail this fall. Leaders of the National Republican Congressional Committee, the … Continue reading
WaPo: A Richmond Circuit Court judge on Wednesday ordered independent candidate Shaun Brown removed from the ballot in Virginia’s 2nd District congressional race, finding that her qualifying petition was tainted by “forgery” and “out and out fraud.” Many of those … Continue reading
WaPo: Rep. Scott W. Taylor (R-Va.) sat in the backroom of his campaign office in a strip mall. Mini-blinds closed, a modest “Scott Taylor U.S. Congress” sign taped to the door was all that identified his reelection headquarters. Inside, a … Continue reading
NYT: An American lobbyist who worked with Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs pleaded guilty on Friday to failing to register as an agent of a foreign power and disclosed to prosecutors that he helped a Russian political operative and a Ukranian … Continue reading
Release: U.S. District Court Judge Janet Neff denied a motion by Michigan Secretary of State Ruth Johnson to dismiss a voting rights claim against the state’s ballot exposure laws today. The lawsuit, brought by the Pillar of Law Institute on behalf of … Continue reading
Tallahassee Democrat: Mayor Andrew Gillum may have run afoul of little-known provisions of Florida election law when he posted a photo of his ballot on social media today. But his chances of getting in trouble over it are virtually nil, … Continue reading
McClatchy reports. … Continue reading
Does Michael Cohen’s guilty plea to campaign finance violations implicate the President in criminal campaign finance activity? What about the defenses that the President has raised to these charges? Did Trump or the Trump campaign violate the prohibition on soliciting … Continue reading
Peter Overby for NPR. … Continue reading
Paul Ryan for Just Security. … Continue reading
CPI: BlackPAC — an upstart super PAC that’s raised millions to support Democrats — has received a new infusion of “dark money” to fuel its 2018 midterm election efforts, according to new federal filings. BlackPAC received $100,000 in July from Propel Capital … Continue reading
EXCLUSIVE: President @realDonaldTrump on if he knew about the Cohen payments. See more from his interview with @ainsleyearhardt tomorrow 6-9amET. pic.twitter.com/HPJPslOG6X — FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) August 22, 2018 (via Jonathan Chiat) … Continue reading
Abby Wood and Christian Grose have posted this draft on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Do audits by executive agencies impact the behavior of those audited? Does revealing negative information about candidates affect electoral results and behavior? Institutions that encourage … Continue reading
I have written this piece for Slate. It begins: For the first time since the Trump presidency began, President Donald Trump is in some real legal jeopardy, providing potential grounds for his eventual impeachment, if not indictment. Most people watching … Continue reading
WaPo: A group affiliated with the Russian government created phony versions of six websites — including some related to public policy and to the U.S. Senate — with the apparent goal of hacking into the computers of people who were … Continue reading
NYT: President Trump’s lawyers do not know just how much the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, told the special counsel’s investigators during months of interviews, a lapse that has contributed to a growing recognition that an early strategy … Continue reading
NYT: Federal authorities investigating whether President Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen, committed bank and tax fraud have zeroed in on well over $20 million in loans obtained by taxi businesses that he and his family own, … Continue reading
Politico: t wasn’t the first super PAC to pull that trick: The scheme is part of a sharp escalation in super PACs avoiding reporting requirements and keeping voters in the dark about their funding until after key elections. Two other … Continue reading