In the News
Washington Times: Virginia Gov. McAuliffe rerouted funds for inaugural
By David Sherfinski
Mr. McAuliffe’s aides say the two $78,000 checks his inaugural committee sent to his campaign committee along with a $55,000 check to the state Democratic Party were expenditures for the rental of email lists. But campaign finance analysts told The Washington Times that the costs of the email rentals appeared to be exorbitant, and critics suggest the transactions look like an end run around the state prohibition.
“It’s Terry McAuliffe,” said Bradley A. Smith, a Federal Election Commission member during the George W. Bush administration. “It’s probably legal, but it may make you raise an eyebrow.” Mr. Smith said such transactions sometimes occur to abolish a committee’s debt or to get a campaign some assets.
CCP
Can’t Find Evidence If You Don’t Look
By Luke Wachob
Ms. Engelbrecht said that her family business faced harsh treatment from bureaucratic agencies that had never occurred prior to founding her tax-exempt organization, True the Vote. After nearly twenty years of operating without interference, Ms. Engelbrecht suddenly had multiple government agencies showing up at her home and business with investigations and audits once she started exercising her First Amendment rights. The Democratic members of the Subcommittee took issue with Ms. Engelbrecht’s testimony, and the hearing in general. They argued that anecdotes don’t make good evidence, and that the Republicans had organized the hearing simply to offer a platform for Tea Party groups to make the Obama administration look bad.
It’s true that the stories of four witnesses are not proof of a wide-reaching scandal, but you can’t find evidence unless you look for it. As Mr. Sekulow and Ms. Mitchell noted, none of the many groups they represent have been interviewed by any federal investigators. The Democratic members, much like President Obama when he asserted on Sunday that there was “not even a smidgeon of corruption” in the targeting, seem to be putting the cart in front of the horse. We can’t conclude corruption played no role until we conclude the investigation, which is still ongoing.
Independent Groups
The Blaze: Congressman Tried to Shut Down a Tea Party Leader at Thursday’s Hearing — That’s When a GOP Rep. Showed He Wasn’t Having Any of It
By Becket Adams
“Ms. Engelbrecht,” Jordan said, “in the first 20 years of business, did OSHA ever visit your place of business?”
“No sir,” she responded.
“Never once?”
“No sir.”
“After you filed the [tax-exempt application for King Street Patriots], OSHA visited then, right?”
“Yes sir.”
“In the first 20 years of business did the [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives] ever come to your business?” Jordan continued.
“No sir.”
“And they came a couple times once you filed your application?”
“Yes sir.”
“And in your first 20 years of business, did the IRS ever audit you?”
“No sir.”
“But once you filed your application, they audited you?”
“Many times.”
Fox: Conservative activist claims Rep. Cummings tried to ‘intimidate’ her, files complaint
“Congressman Cummings on three separate occasions sent letters on letterhead from this committee, stating that he had concerns and felt it necessary to open an investigation on True the Vote,” Engelbrecht said during the hearing, where she and other witnesses were otherwise testifying on IRS targeting.
She also said that after she applied for tax-exempt status, “an assortment of federal entities including law enforcement agencies, and Congressman Cummings came knocking at my door.”
Her complaint to the Office of Congressional Ethics claimed Cummings “misrepresented his authority as a Member of Congress to intimidate me and others associated with me, and which may be responsible for a series of incursions into my personal, organizational and business affairs by various federal agencies, agents and bureaucracies over the past four years.”
It continued: “We believe that Rep Cummings’ actions have violated the House rules, represent an abuse of power on his part and are unethical and arrogant.”
Wall Street Journal: Republicans Focus Anew on IRS Scandal
By John D. McKinnon
–The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held another hearing on the matter on Thursday, giving tea-party groups and their lawyers another chance to vent.
–Ways and Means Republicans put out a newly uncovered email on Wednesday, suggesting that Obama administration officials had been planning a rewrite of rules on political activity by tax-exempt organizations since at least 2011.
Mr. Koskinen, a veteran turnaround specialist, said this week that he will take an independent look at the proposed IRS regulations, noting that the 21,000-plus comments received to date are “more comments than ever on any regulation.”
CPI: Billionaires use super PACs to advance pet causes
By Michael Beckel
The first generation of super PACs operated as shadow party committees, embodied in American Crossroads, the pro-Republican behemoth co-founded in 2010 by Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie.
Next came candidate-specific super PACs, like those that last year aided President Barack Obama and his GOP rival, Mitt Romney.
The latest iteration is the single-issue vanity super PAC — a group backed by a single, wealthy donor focusing on an issue of national importance, such as climate change or gun violence.
Buzzfeed: Key Democratic Group Will Sit Out Midterm Elections
By Ruby Cramer
The Democratic Party’s biggest super PAC, recently retooled as an early pro-Hillary Clinton effort, will sit out the midterm elections this year.
A spokesman with the group, Priorities USA Action, confirmed to BuzzFeed on Wednesday night that it would not be involved in House or Senate campaigns.
“House Majority PAC and Majority PAC are doing everything right and making a real difference. We fully support their efforts,” said the spokesman, Peter Kauffmann, referring to the main groups supporting Democratic congressional candidates.
Roll Call: Business Bid to Counter Tea Party Fizzles
By Eliza Newlin Carney
Business-friendly GOP organizers who launched a new crop of super PACs to counter the tea party have failed to cash in, recent campaign disclosures show, leaving them badly outraised on both the right and the left.
Close to a dozen super PACs backed by the GOP’s business wing, including those with ties to Republican leaders on Capitol Hill, pulled in just under $10 million in 2013. That’s less than half the $21 million collected by a handful of tea party and anti-tax groups, including the Senate Conservatives Fund and the Club for Growth.
Disclosure
Mother Jones: The Koch Brothers Left a Confidential Document at Their Last Donor Conference—Read It Here
By Andy Kroll and Daniel Schulman
There’s one main rule at the conservative donor conclaves held twice a year by Charles and David Koch at luxury resorts: What happens there stays there.
The billionaire industrialists and their political operatives strive to ensure the anonymity of the wealthy conservatives who fund their sprawling political operation—which funneled more than $400 million into the 2012 elections—and to keep their plans private. Attendees of these summits are warned that the seminars, where the Kochs and their allies hatch strategies for electing Republicans and advancing conservative initiatives on the state and national levels, are strictly confidential; they are cautioned to keep a close eye on their meeting notes and materials. But last week, following the Kochs’ first donor gathering of 2014, one attendee left behind a sensitive document at the Renaissance Esmeralda resort outside of Palm Springs, California, where the Kochs and their comrades had spent three days focused on winning the 2014 midterm elections and more. The document lists VIP donors—including John Schnatter, the founder of the Papa John’s pizza chain—who were scheduled for one-on-one meetings with representatives of the political, corporate, and philanthropic wings of Kochworld. The one-page document, provided to Mother Jones by a hotel guest who discovered it, offers a fascinating glimpse into the Kochs’ political machine and shows how closely intertwined it is with Koch Industries, their $115 billion conglomerate.
Candidates, Politicians, Campaigns, and Parties
Roll Call: Republican Hedges His Bets by Targeting House Seats in 4 States
By David Hawkings
There have been a fair share of congressional carpetbaggers in history, but Allan Levene may be the first to assemble an entire set of matched luggage. And he’s using it to run this year for no fewer than four open House seats in four different states.
In a year when the roster of candidates is filled with the usual collection of career politicians,war veterans, minor celebrities and hard-luck cases, Levene stands apart. He’s a 64-year-old information technology expert, financial planner and sometime inventor who is “willing to offer myself up wherever required” in order to get to Washington — because he’s so convinced of his aptitude as a policymaker, so concerned about his life expectancy and so worried about his country.
State and Local
Minnesota –– More Soft Money Hard Law: Minnesota on Candidate Fundraising for Independent Committees: Round Two and Still Struggling
By Bob Bauer
Having worried about candidate fundraising for independent committees—officials were “vexed” about this prospect, the press reported—the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board appears poised to act on that worry. A new draftit will consider next week concludes that any candidate fundraising support for an independent committee is “coordination” and blocks the committee from proceeding with unlimited expenditures for the candidate. Minn. Campaign Fin. & Pub. Disclosure Bd., Draft Advisory Op. 437 (Feb. 11, 2013).
On this second try, the Board misconstrues the theory of independence established under Buckley v. Valeo, evidently expecting to overcome this difficulty by ignoringBuckley and distinguishing away the Colorado Republican case of 1996. The draft winds up as a ringing statement of the policy the Board prefers, but it works less well as a piece of cogent legal analysis.
