Floor votes today and yesterday added several amendments to #HR1, a bill to crack down on political corruption in both parties and strengthen our democracy.
I want to highlight 3 of the amendments and the problems they aim to solve:
1) In 2018, @CampaignLegal and @lachlan documented how former candidates-turned-foreign agents used leftover campaign funds to donate to the same politicians they were lobbying on behalf of foreign interests... thedailybeast.com/ex-pols-took-y…
2) FARA is supposed to ensure that the public knows when foreign agents are trying to influence them. But you’d likely never know from looking at a tweet or other social media post whether the account is being run on behalf of a foreign power...
...so @RepSpanberger amended #HR1 to require foreign agents to include a disclaimer on the face of any digital communication made on behalf of a foreign interest, and to require that the disclaimer stay with the foreign agent's post if it is shared. amendments-rules.house.gov/amendments/SPA…
3) Finally, current campaign finance law has only a 5 year statute of limitations, even if violations aren’t discovered until years later. For example, Louis DeJoy’s alleged 2014 straw donations were only discovered in 2020—which means he might escape accountability for them...
......so @RepSpeier amended #HR1 to extend the SOL to 10 years for civil campaign finance violations, and 15 years for criminal. Under #HR1, wealthy donors can’t run out the clock to outrun the law.
There’s lots more in #HR1 to take power from wealthy special interests and return it to regular voters.
Today is the 11th anniversary of Citizens United, the SCOTUS decision that ushered in the era of super PACs, dark money, & megadonors.
But there are solutions. Here are some of the #HR1 reforms that address the impact of CU and protect the voices of voters in our democracy.
First, ending dark money. Citizens United opened the door to unlimited spending by corporations, including nonprofits that hide their donors. Thanks to CU, in the 2020 cycle, $750M was spent by secretly-funded “dark money” groups (most of it by Democrats). opensecrets.org/news/2020/10/d…
When donors remain secret, the public might never know whether politicians later take action to advance those donors’ interests.
Here’s Matt Oczkowski on a $3.5M+ Cambridge Analytica project for the US gun industry’s trade ass’n.
Gunmakers & sellers were to turn over data on millions of gun owners to CA.
“I can’t emphasize how big of a deal this is for us,” wrote Oczkowski (who now works for Trump 2020).
Oczkowski puts “voter education” in quotes, and describes the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) project as an obvious effort to help elect candidates while avoiding the tax and campaign finance implications of express electoral advocacy.
Gun owners might be surprised to learn that gun makers & sellers are using the personal info that they share on warranty cards to target them with thinly-veiled electoral messages. And that their personal data is being shared with firms like Cambridge Analytica.
NEW: newly-published internal Cambridge Analytica documents from 2016 show how the data firm operated as a tool for a billionaire family to unlawfully influence U.S. politics and help elect Trump.
What’s often overlooked is how Cambridge Analytica operated to unlawfully deepen the impact of its billionare owners’ political spending.
The new docs show that Cambridge Analytica facilitated illegal coordination between a Mercer-backed super PAC & the Trump campaign.
The materials show that Cambridge Analytica staff understood that the Mercers called the shots.
For example, an email from Alexander Nix showed that the Mercers installed Kellyanne Conway as the head of a Mercer super PAC, and that the PAC was expected to contract with CA.
The Trump campaign wants Omarosa to fund an $846K pro-Trump ad campaign as a “corrective” for her critiques of the president.
As I told @maggieNYT, if Omarosa were to give in to this demand, then both she and the Trump campaign would violate federal law. nytimes.com/2020/10/13/us/…
A person makes a “coordinated communication” by funding pre-election ads about a candidate at the request of the candidate’s campaign.
These rules apply even if the ads don't expressly advocate for the candidate’s election. fec.gov/help-candidate…
More specifically, a “coordinated communication” is made if a person other than the campaign (1) pays for communications (2) at the request or suggestion of the campaign, that (3) refer to a presidential candidate and are run within 120 days of an election.
Incredible new @NYTimes story that raises questions about whether Trump secretly financed his 2016 campaign with an undisclosed bank loan, backed by a billionaire developer, with taxpayers unwittingly helping to foot the bill. nytimes.com/interactive/20…
In the final stretch of the 2016 election, Trump quietly took out a $30M loan in the name of an LLC he co-owned with Phil Ruffin.
The LLC paid Trump over $21M and deducted those payments on its taxes.
Six weeks after obtaining the loan, Trump gave $10M to his campaign.
Bank loans obtained to finance a campaign must be disclosed on FEC reports. Trump's campaign never disclosed the $30M loan, nor did it disclose that Trump’s jointly-owned Vegas property was used as collateral (which itself could raise other legal issues). fec.gov/help-candidate…
NEW: Louis DeJoy's employees & family members continued giving big money in clusters through at least 2018--including $50K to Trump--suggesting additional straw donor violations well within the statute of limitations.
Last week, the Post reported that employees at DeJoy's old company, New Breed, were reimbursed for their political contributions through 2014.
The pattern of giving continued after New Breed was acquired by XPO in 2014, during the period that DeJoy was CEO and board member.
We found several instances where employees at DeJoy’s company (as well as DeJoy family members) gave to the same candidate, during the same period, and in similar amounts.
This included over $50K to Trump Victory, President Trump’s joint fundraising committee.