In the News
Daily Wire: WATCH: Ocasio-Cortez Hearing Goes Viral. Here’s What The Video Didn’t Show.
By Ryan Saavedra
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and her minions in the media clipped a 5-minute video of a House Oversight and Reform Committee on Wednesday which quickly went viral – but excluded a follow-up response that put a damper on Ocasio-Cortez’s pontificating.
In a video shared on Twitter by actor James Corden, and retweeted by Ocasio-Cortez, the 29-year-old politician used the opportunity at the hearing to promote her anti-establishment brand.
Ocasio-Cortez claimed that it was “already super legal, as we’ve seen, for me to be a pretty bad guy,” as she questioned several people about what she was allowed to do with her “special-interest, dark-money-funded campaign” money.
The video was retweeted over 350,000 times in under 24 hours and was viewed over 19 million times.
The video conveniently did not include the follow-up response by IFS Chairman Bradley A. Smith, who was asked by Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) to correct the record on a line of misleading questioning by Ocasio-Cortez.
Below is Smith’s response to Ocasio-Cortez.
National Review: The SDNY Investigation Is Real Peril for President Trump
By Andrew C. McCarthy
Jousting simultaneously with at least five congressional committees will exhaust the administration. Yet the more immediate threat of criminal jeopardy for the president is posed by federal prosecutors in Manhattan.
The SDNY has already obtained a guilty plea from Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and self-described “fixer.” Two of the eight felony counts involved campaign-finance violations arising out of hush-money payments to two women who claim to have had extramarital dalliances with the real-estate magnate a decade before he became president. In the guilty plea, prosecutors had Cohen name Trump as the superior who directed him in the transactions.
This was unusual: Prosecutors normally do not name people publicly unless and until they have been charged with crimes. Moreover, even if Trump and Cohen acted in concert, Cohen’s plea does not necessarily mean Trump is guilty. (As we’ve explained, the president has strong legal defenses if he is charged with a campaign-finance violation – a transgression that, by the way, is often addressed by an administrative fine, not a criminal prosecution.)
Still, the SDNY does not name names idly. It could be that prosecutors were locking Cohen in for purposes of a future campaign-finance case against the president. (Under Justice Department guidance, a sitting president may not be indicted.) It could also be, however, that they had other investigations in mind and hope to establish a pattern of Cohen taking direction from Trump.
The matter is worth considering in light of new revelations about the SDNY’s criminal investigation of the Trump Inaugural Committee. On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the committee (a non-profit organization to which campaign-finance laws apply) has received a grand-jury subpoena for a raft of documents.
By Chris Enloe
Video of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) needling experts during a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing last Wednesday went insanely viral last week, generating more than 30 million views on Twitter alone, thanks to the help of James Corden, who called the video “sensational.”
But the video, compiled by left-wing news outlet NowThis News, only included part of an exchange that positively frames Ocasio-Cortez – and excludes a follow-up response that deflated Ocasio-Cortez’s soapbox…
NowThis News described the exchanges as Ocasio-Cortez “explaining just how f***ed campaign finance laws really are.” …
NowThis News conveniently cut a response from Brad Smith, chairman for the Institute for Free Speech, where he was asked by Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) to correct Ocasio-Cortez’s “misleading questioning.”
Congress
Center for Responsive Politics: Democrats make second attempt to overturn IRS rule that could encourage foreign ‘dark money’
By Karl Evers-Hillstrom
Democrats are taking another crack at killing a 2018 Treasury Department rule that makes it so some 501(c) tax-exempt nonprofits – including politically active 501(c)(4) “dark money” groups – don’t need to disclose donor names and addresses in tax returns submitted to the IRS.
With every Democrat voting in favor, the Senate narrowly approved a resolution to overthrow the rule under the Congressional Review Act in December 2018, but the resolution did not get a vote in the GOP-held House.
The rule change was met with widespread outrage from campaign finance watchdogs that argue the new rules will encourage foreign individuals to contribute to politically-active nonprofits influencing U.S. elections.
Titled the “Spotlight Act,” legislation from Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.) – accompanied by an identical bill from Rep. David Price (D-N.C.) in the House – would overturn the rule change and restore donor disclosure to the IRS.
“At a time when our elections are plagued by unlimited corporate spending, anonymous donors, and illegal foreign meddling, the Trump administration’s decision to obscure millions in dark campaign money weakens our already failing campaign finance system and diminishes the power of voters,” Price said in a statement…
Mnuchin justified the IRS rule change by noting it will prevent confidential donor information from leaking – as it did in 2013 when the IRS posted unredacted tax forms revealing donors to the Republican Governors Association Public Policy Committee. He also noted that nonprofits must continue to keep donor information in their own records.
It’s unlikely the bill will ever see the floor so long as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell controls the upper chamber, as he applauded the rule change saying it “protects free speech and association.”
The Hill: FEC’s status quo is hazardous – proposed legislation would help fix it
By Daniel Weiner
At the hearing on H.R.1 before the House Oversight and Reform Committee, opponents of the bill set their sights on the bill’s reforms to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), charging that these changes would allow a dangerously partisan takeover of our nation’s campaign finance regulator. As someone who used to work at the FEC, I could not disagree more.
Right now, the FEC is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans and notoriously dysfunctional. It deadlocks on whether to pursue most significant campaign finance violations – often after sitting on allegations for years without even an investigation. Its process for issuing new rules has virtually ground to halt. The agency took five years just to delete the two regulations struck down by the Supreme Court in Citizens United…
And the commission is beset with management problems. There hasn’t been a permanent general counsel (the Commission’s chief legal officer and one of its two most important staff positions) in more than five years. Morale among rank-and-file is lower than in most other places in the federal government. H.R. 1 would go a long way towards addressing these issues.
H.R. 1 would overhaul the FEC by reducing its six commissioners to five, with no more than two for each major party and one independent. One of these commissioners would be designated by the president to serve as chair, responsible for hiring the agency’s staff director, submitting its budgets, and running it on a day-to-day basis. These changes would bring the FEC more in line with how most independent federal agencies run, except that, unlike those bodies, the president’s party would never have a majority. H.R.1 would also set up a bipartisan, blue-ribbon panel to vet potential nominees and make public recommendations to the president, which is not the usual practice for other agencies.
San Luis Obispo Tribune: Bill banning ‘secret political advertising’ by corporations introduced by Rep. Carbajal
By Matt Fountain
The Central Coast’s representative in Congress on Friday filed a federal bill that requires publicly traded corporations to disclose their political spending.
U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal reintroduced the bill after a previous effort failed to pass the Republican-controlled House Committee on Financial Services.
The Corporate Political Disclosure Act of 2019 would require publicly traded corporations to disclose political expenditures to their shareholders and to the general public through the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Carbajal was joined in authoring the legislation by Bill Ostrander, director of campaign finance reform nonprofit advocacy group Citizen’s Congress, and Carbajal’s former Democratic opponent in the 2016 primary election.
“Shareholders deserve to know exactly where their money is going when they choose to invest in a company,” Carbajal said. “The voices of Central Coast residents and small businesses shouldn’t be drowned out by billions of dollars in secret political advertising backed by corporations that place making a profit above the public interest.”
Center for Responsive Politics: AIPAC doesn’t contribute directly to candidates. Which pro-Israel groups do?
By Raymond Arke
Freshmen Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) garnered considerable criticism from Democrats and Republicans over the weekend for comments she made regarding the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) deemed by many as anti-Semitic.
Omar tweeted that AIPAC, a group which doesn’t actually have its own PAC, was paying Congress members, specifically Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), to support Israel. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in a joint statement with Democratic leaders condemned Omar’s remarks on Monday. Omar apologized in a tweet on Monday afternoon, but said that “I reaffirm the problematic role of lobbyists in our politics, whether it be AIPAC, the NRA or the fossil fuel industry.”
Though AIPAC as an organization cannot contribute to campaigns, individuals who work for the organization have. In the 2018 election cycle, individuals affiliated with the organization donated just $21,350 to 14 different candidates, nine of whom were Democrats. No one associated with AIPAC gave any contributions to McCarthy.
AIPAC said in a tweet on Sunday night that “We are proud that we are engaged in the democratic process to strengthen the US-Israel relationship. Our bipartisan efforts are reflective of American values and interests. We will not be deterred in any way by ill-informed and illegitimate attacks on this important work.”
The Media
The Atlantic: Can Freedom of the Press Survive David Pecker?
By Bob Bauer
American Media Inc. admitted to breaking campaign-finance laws when it coordinated closely with Donald Trump’s lawyer in paying for, then burying, a story about an alleged extramarital affair. Its problem was fundamental. It was not engaged in the performance of the journalistic function on which the press’s constitutional and legal protections depend.
Once AMI chose to subsidize a presidential candidacy, it was subject to the legal restrictions and requirements that apply to super PACs and political-action committees. Now the company faces more legal trouble after using the acquisition of personal materials to pressure a critic of its publishing activity, Jeff Bezos, into silence. In other words, it did not cover this story: It engaged in what looks like extortion to suppress it…
By passing over from the pursuit of news to corporate bullying for self-interested purposes-or, in the campaign-finance case, coordinated political activity with a candidate-a media organization risks forfeiting the constitutional protections normally working in its favor. Adherence to professional norms constitutes the first line of legal defense, the backbone of the claim for privileged treatment based on First Amendment values.
Legal exemptions for news organizations often rest on explicit appeals to these norms. To escape the reach of the campaign-finance laws, a press entity has to be acting as a press entity, performing what the Federal Election Commission has characterized as a “legitimate press function.” The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which requires reporting of political or public-relations work on behalf of foreign nationals, carves out protections only for press entities’ “bona fide” news coverage.
It is unsettling to strong supporters of press freedom (and I consider myself one) to accept that, because of the absence of overriding constitutional immunities, a press entity can find itself a corporation like any other having to defend against campaign finance, extortion, FARA, or other charges. But AMI’s case shows that a media organization can assume too much.
Wall Street Journal: Google and Facebook Worsen Media Bias
By Mark Epstein
After the news industry laid off some 2,100 workers from Vice, Gannett, McClatchy, BuzzFeed and the Huffington Post, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blamed “tech monopolies” that have no “incentive to disseminate high-quality, true information.” President Trump blames the press itself: “Fake News and bad journalism have caused a big downturn.”
While these diagnoses of journalism’s ills appear contradictory, both stem from the same root. Allowing a few platforms to control financing and distribution exacerbates the groupthink Mr. Trump rails against.
More than two-thirds of Americans get news from social media. Google and Facebook control a large majority of the digital advertising market that used to be a major source of revenue for the news industry. Tech companies have leveraged their control of news distribution to entrench their advertising dominance…
Mr. Trump-who has also accused Google, Facebook and Twitter of political bias-should be more concerned about the concentrated power of Big Tech than any news outlet.
While antitrust law focuses on economic effects, the Supreme Court said in Red Lion Broadcasting v. Federal Communications Commission (1969) that it also complements the First Amendment’s “uninhibited marketplace of ideas,” which does not “countenance monopolization of that market.” The antidote to media bias isn’t schadenfreude over a few publications’ travails but antitrust policies to ensure news outlets across the political spectrum can be independent of Silicon Valley.
Candidates and Campaigns
Mother Jones: The One Thing All the 2020 Democratic Candidates Agree They Hate
By Nihal Krishan
The field of Democratic candidates running for president in 2020 is still taking shape, but so far the contenders have agreed on one policy: Cash from corporate political action committees (PACs) is bad…
Corporate PACs aren’t big players in the campaign finance world for presidential elections, so most candidates aren’t really giving up that much money. “I think the corporate PAC pledge is basically a signifier for how a candidate approaches the broader issue of money in politics,” says Daniel Weiner, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law. “In that regard, it is not without value, but the practical significance of refusing these particular donations is not that great.” …
PAC money in general from corporations or other groups has played a very small role in recent presidential campaigns, with less than 1 percent of all contributions for any major party nominee coming from PACs in the last four presidential elections, according to data from the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.
“The amount of money that candidates are leaving behind isn’t huge,” says Michael Beckel, head of research and policy at Issue One, a nonprofit advocacy group that wants to reduce the influence of big money in politics…
Prior to the past year, though, many of the 2020 candidates didn’t shy away from corporate dollars…
While corporate PACs may have never been the biggest source of outside money, outside groups that push campaign finance reform say that these pledges could affect their approach to 2020. “At minimum, the corporate PAC pledge will be a major factor in our decision-making process on who to support in the 2020 election,” says Adam Bozzi, communications director of End Citizens United, a group that supports the overhaul of campaign finance laws.
Richmond Times-Dispatch: Editorial: To rake in the money, federal candidates should forswear corporate donations
By Editorial Board
If you want to secure the Democratic presidential nomination – and who doesn’t – you’d be advised to announce that you will not accept campaign contributions from corporations. Elizabeth Warren, Kirstin Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Bernie Sanders have all “taken the pledge,” as Carrie A. Nation and other temperance movement luminaries would say. So you better do so, too.
Even if you are just running for Congress, it will behoove you to announce that you will forthwith forswear this tainted money proffered by big business. If you don’t, you will look, at least to the uninformed, like a corrupt tool of the special interests. And guess what? It’s not going to cost you anything, anyway. In fact, you will get more money, in the long run, if you do take this road increasingly traveled, which really might make all the difference, at least in Democratic primaries.
The plain facts are these: Corporate PAC money, which is not only highly regulated but also totally transparent, plays a tiny role in federal elections. Corporations are forbidden by law to contribute to candidates. They can contribute through their political action committee, or PAC, which raise money – and relatively small amounts of it – from members who join of their own free will and cannot be penalized if they don’t.
The amounts corporate PACs can give to candidates is limited to $5,000 to any given candidate in any given election cycle, and individual employees can’t give more than that amount to their PAC. The CEO can’t give more than the receptionist, and these limits were set in 1974 and haven’t been increased since.
It can be confusing – and the politicians who are taking the pledge seem to like it this way – but corporate PACs are small fry in the campaign finance game.
Disclosure
U.S. News & World Report: Public Remains in the Dark on Nonprofit Political Spending: Report
By Peter Olsen-Phillips
Politically active so-called “dark money” groups spent more than $50.7 million on direct advocacy at the height of the midterm campaigns last year, but just 8 percent of that money came from groups that identified some of their donors, according to a new analysis by the Campaign Legal Center.
The finding comes despite a recent court decision that seemed to open a path to increased transparency. The August decision from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington v. the Federal Election Commission required all groups making independent expenditures – spending on things like advertisements or mailings that directly advocate for or against a candidate – to report the names of donors that contributed money for political purposes.
But the center’s report, issued Wednesday, concludes that just a few months removed from that decision, most of these organizations have sidestepped the new rules. It draws on year-end reports from the 2018 midterms that show most dark money operations – which include nonprofits and other corporations – are remaining dark, indicating to the FEC that they did not receive any donations expressly for political activities.
Majority Forward, a nonprofit corporation that spent more than $40 million on independent expenditures supporting Democratic candidates in the 2018 cycle, disclosed none of its donors, noting that “as a matter of policy, Majority Forward does not accept funds earmarked for independent expenditure activity or for other political purposes in support or opposition to federal candidates.”
That seems unlikely, according to the Campaign Legal Center.
“It strains credulity for groups like Majority Forward, Patriot Majority USA, and Texas Organizing Project to claim that no donors gave for political purposes,” the group says in its report, naming other prominent dark money operations that also did not disclose their donors. “These groups may be calculating that the FEC is unlikely to second-guess these implausible assertions.”
