Paul Ryan USA Today oped: On Wednesday, in his testimony before the House Oversight Committee, Cohen for the first time provided details to the American people of precisely how Trump directed and coordinated these hush payments in violation of federal … Continue reading
Category Archives: campaigns
Kim Bellware for NYT Opinion. … Continue reading
Important Eliza Newlin Carney column. … Continue reading
WaPo: Leslie McCrae Dowless, a political operative at the center of a Republican congressional campaign in North Carolina tainted by evidence of ballot fraud, was indicted by a grand jury on seven counts, a prosecutor announced Wednesday.Dowless, who worked for … Continue reading
NYT: The dramatic public testimony to Congress on Wednesday morning by President Trump’s former lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, could intensify the legal issues facing the president in the criminal and civil investigations that are swirling around him, legal experts said.Mr. Cohen’s testimony … Continue reading
WaPo: The U.S. military blocked Internet access to an infamous Russian entity seeking to sow discord among Americans during the 2018 midterms, several U.S. officials said, a warning that the Kremlin’s operations against the United States are not cost-free.The strike … Continue reading
Brad Smith fairly criticizes AOC’s use of his hush money article in the WSJ in her now viral video about campaign money and Washington. I don’t think this undermines many of the points AOC made in her discussion of the … Continue reading
NYT: Senator Elizabeth Warren on Monday escalated her presidential campaign’s battle against big money in politics, announcing that her bid for the Democratic nomination will forgo traditional fund-raising methods meant to cultivate a candidate’s relationships with the wealthy.The Massachusetts senator … Continue reading
Michael Bitzer for The Monkey Cage. … Continue reading
Brian Murphy profiles the NC09 candidate. Assuming the new law requiring a primary holds up to any legal challenge, I’d be shocked if Harris runs again. (If the new primary law is challenged and ruled illegal, and Harris has to … Continue reading
CBS 17: Following the state Board of Elections hearing on fraud in the 9th Congressional district, Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman says she expects to take the case before a grand jury in the next month.Freeman said that case … Continue reading
Montana Public Radio: Montana’s 2015 campaign finance law survived its biggest test Tuesday. The U.S. Supreme Court, without comment, declined to take up a case challenging the state’s Disclose Act. The high court leaves in place a lower court’s ruling that Montana’s so-called ‘Disclose … Continue reading
Amy Chozick for the NYT. … Continue reading
NCSBE attorney @josh_lawson says the documents were specifically mentioned in the subpoena and within its scope. Lawson- "we have been aware of those documents that have never been produced for quite some time." #NC09— Joe Bruno (@JoeBrunoWSOC9) February 21, 2019 … Continue reading
WaPo: The son of Republican congressional candidate Mark Harris testified Wednesday that he warned his father repeatedly that he believed a political operative now at the center of an election-fraud investigation had previously used illegal tactics to win votes.John Harris, … Continue reading
Politico: Recent posts that have received widespread dissemination include racially inflammatory memes and messaging involving Harris, O’Rourke and Warren. In Warren’s case, a false narrative surfaced alleging that a blackface doll appeared on a kitchen cabinet in the background of … Continue reading
News and Observer: The Bladen County political operative at the center of possible election fraud in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District assured the top consultant for Republican Mark Harris’ campaign that he was running a legal operation throughout the 2018 … Continue reading
This paper is what Dowless gave them and told them to say, Britt says. pic.twitter.com/dJ9kBHolq2— Ely Portillo (@ESPortillo) February 18, 2019 … Continue reading
News & Observer: The stepdaughter of a Bladen County political operative detailed how she said his ballot harvesting operation worked on the first day of a hearing Monday into voting irregularities in the unresolved 2018 election in North Carolina’s 9th … Continue reading
Follow Joe Bruno at the hearing. I’ll be very surprised if the board does not vote for a new election given what we are seeing so far. … Continue reading
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
WaPo reports. … Continue reading
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
WaPo reports. … Continue reading
Updated Campaign Finance Institute report. … Continue reading
Adam Entous and Ronan Farrow in the New Yorker: Psy-Group’s larger ambition was to break into the U.S. election market. During the 2016 Presidential race, the company pitched members of Donald Trump’s campaign team on its ability to influence the … 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
The DOJ press release headline refers to the worker as a “Board of Elections Election Official” but that seems incorrect. From an earlier HuffPost piece: The sole U.S. citizen facing charges ― Denslo Allen Paige, a 66-year-old Walmart worker who … 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
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
CBS News: There is no evidence to date of any foreign interference in the 2018 midterm elections, according to a new joint report released by the Justice and Homeland Security Departments on Tuesday. While specific conclusions remain classified, the report … 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
Interesting. … 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
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
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
WRAL: In the summer of 2017, the chief prosecutor for Bladen County sent the head of North Carolina’s State Board of Elections a series of increasingly insistent emails over the board’s voting integrity concerns in his county. The upshot: Why … Continue reading
NYT: When it came to sharing fake news on Facebook during the 2016 election, no age group was quite as active as those aged 65 and older, according to a new study. The study, published Wednesday in Science Advances, quantifies how … 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
BuzzFeed: The pair of outside groups tied closely to President Donald Trump has retained the top Republican opposition group in an effort to smother Democrats seeking to challenge him — and perhaps even help pick his 2020 challenger. The early … Continue reading
AP: Long before accusations of absentee ballot fraud in a small North Carolina county cast doubt on the results of a heated 2018 congressional race, a state elections investigator spent weeks probing whether the man at the center of the current scandal … 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
NYT: The “Dry Alabama” Facebook page, illustrated with stark images of car wrecks and videos of families ruined by drink, had a blunt message: Alcohol is the devil’s work, and the state should ban it entirely. Along with a companion … Continue reading
WaPo: A secret effort to influence the 2017 Senate election in Alabama used tactics inspired by Russian disinformation teams, including the creation of fake accounts to deliver misleading messages on Facebook to hundreds of thousands of voters to help elect … Continue reading