First, most dark money is never reported to the FEC, because current law narrowly defines the types of ads that trigger reporting.
Second, when spending IS reported to the FEC, the donors who gave the funds are kept secret.
Dark money groups spent $330M on political ads in 2020. But just $88M was reported to the FEC.
That’s because dark money groups evaded current law's reporting requirements by running ads that were carefully worded, strategically timed, and/or run online.
For example, two Dem dark money groups together spent over $40M on TV ads promoting or attacking candidates, but never reported any of that spending to the FEC.
They didn’t have to, because the ads didn’t say “vote for,” and ran just outside of current law’s reporting windows.
It requires that dark money groups file FEC reports when they spend over $10K on ads run at any time that promote, support, attack or oppose a candidate’s election. And, it makes sure digital ads are subject to the same rules as broadcast ads.
Broadening reporting requirements is only half the battle. Under the FEC’s current interpretation of the law, when dark money groups do file FEC reports, they generally only disclose their SPENDING, but not the group’s DONORS.
For years, dark money groups, both D and R, have reported millions of dollars in political spending while making the miraculous claim that NOT A SINGLE DONOR gave money to fund those ads. And the FEC has let them get away with it.
#HR1/#S1 closes these wink-and-a-nod loopholes: a dark money group that spends big money on politics has to disclose donors over $10K.
A dark money org can also set up a segregated fund, and only disclose donors who gave to that fund.
The other way that dark money stays dark is when funds are passed through intermediaries.
For example, dark money groups gave $660M to super PACs in 2020: the super PACs disclosed the dark money groups as donors, but whomever gave the money in the first place remained secret.
There are tons of examples of this.
A Mitch McConnell-aligned super PAC disclosed $85M from an associated dark money group; a major Democratic super PAC disclosed $70M from two dark money groups.
We have no idea where that money really came from.
The bill requires that big donations passed between groups be traced back to the original donor.
So rather than McConnell’s super PAC disclosing that it received $85M from a dark money group, the dark money group’s big donors would be disclosed too.
Finally, Supreme Court confirmation battles have attracted huge dark money spending, but none of that spending is subject to disclosure.
#HR1 / #S1 would finally bring judicial dark money into the sunlight.
Finally, the #HR1/#S1 transparency provisions ONLY apply to big donors who give over $10K. Moderate amounts given by regular Americans won’t be made
public.
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…
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…