The Courts
Politico: Court paves way for FEC to reveal anonymous $1.7 million super PAC donor
By Maggie Severns
While investigating a complaint from the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the FEC found the money had originally come from a donor and been routed through a Delaware-based LLC, and then the American Conservative Union, on its way to Now or Never PAC…
Two judges on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia joined an opinion stating the plaintiffs – a trust and a trustee named as “John Doe 1” and “John Doe 2” in the case – should be named by the FEC. One judge dissented…
The plaintiffs argued that the FEC did not have the authority under federal election law to disclose their name as it released information on its investigation into what happened at Now or Never PAC. But Circuit Court Judge A. Raymond Randolph rejected that argument on the grounds that the court has in the past recognized “deterring future violations and promoting Commission accountability may well justify releasing more information than the minimum disclosures required by” law.
And the plaintiffs did not make enough of a case that revealing their identity would harm their First Amendment right to participate in campaign giving without experiencing harm, Randolph said.
The plaintiffs “did not allege that they would be subject to threats or reprisals,” wrote Randolph, who wrote the opinion of the court. “They did claim that disclosing their identity would ‘chill’ them from engaging in political activity. But this does not distinguish them from others who make campaign contributions.”
Weintraub, who now chairs the FEC, said in a tweet on Friday that she plans to release the names of the donors “as soon as we know this decision won’t be reviewed.”
Great Falls Tribune: Great Falls judge sets hearing date for dark money case
By Karl Puckett
A hearing has been scheduled in U.S. District Court in Great Falls in June on a lawsuit brought by the state of Montana against the IRS over a rule change the state says hides sources of so-called dark money spent in political campaigns…
By telephone, a scheduling conference for attorneys with the state of Montana and the U.S. Department of Justice was conducted Wednesday before District Judge Brian Morris.
After the conference, Morris signed an order setting June 5 as the date he will hear the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the state’s lawsuit against the IRS.
On July 24, Gov. Steve Bullock and the Montana Department of Revenue sued the IRS and the U.S. Department of Treasury in U.S. District Court in Great Falls.
Prompting the lawsuit was a July 16, 2018 IRS rule change exempting several classes of federally tax-exempt organizations from disclosing the names and addresses of substantial contributors, which the state argues violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA)…
The state of New Jersey joined Montana lawsuit against the IRS in March…
In a motion filed in March, U.S. Justice Department attorneys representing the IRS call the lawsuit “an extraordinary case” of two state tax agencies suing the IRS in an attempt to dictate information it must collect from federal taxpayers.
“Neither state has ever before sought or received from the IRS the information they are now trying to force the IRS to continue collecting, and both states lack the ability to obtain this information from the IRS even if it was collected,” the IRS says in its rebuttal.
First Amendment
The Hill: Pentagon Papers lawyer: The indictment of Assange is a snare and a delusion
By James C. Goodale
Under the U.S.-U.K. extradition treaty, one cannot be extradited from the United Kingdom if the extradition is for “political purposes.” This explains why the indictment does not contain any charges alleging that Assange conspired with the Russians to impact the 2016 presidential election. It may also explain why the indictment focuses on hacking government computers rather than on leaking stolen government information, in as much as leaking could be characterized as being done for political purposes.
When Assange arrives in the United States through extradition, as many expect he will, the government will then be able to indict him for his participation in that election. It is not out of the question that the government will come up with additional charges against Assange.
While it is true, as others have noted, that the government has not charged Assange under the Espionage Act – against which Assange would have the strongest defense under the First Amendment – the government has alleged that he and Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning participated in a conspiracy under the Espionage Act. (For the legal eagles, you can see this on Page 5 of the indictment, referring to Title 18 U.S. Code, Sections 793(c) and 793(e).)
I have some familiarity with Section 793(e) because, in 1971, it was the basis on which the government enjoined the New York Times from publication of the “Pentagon Papers” for 17 days, until the U.S. Supreme Court decided that such an injunction violated the First Amendment. I was then vice president and general counsel of the New York Times and led the team of lawyers who defended the Times in that case.
References to a conspiracy under the Espionage Act in the Assange indictment raise the question of whether the U.S. government is going for a bait-and-switch – get Assange past the English courts and to the United States, only to charge him with espionage when he is on American soil.
Fox Baltimore: Trump dismisses fears Assange case signals effort to stifle media
By Stephen Loiaconi
President Donald Trump likened WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s practices to those of mainstream news organizations Thursday, but he downplayed concerns Assange’s arrest signals an intent by the Justice Department to target journalists who publish classified information.
“I guess the concept is perhaps he is a reporter type, and, you know, The New York Times is doing the same thing maybe and The Washington Post maybe the same thing,” Trump told “America This Week” host Eric Bolling. “I just don’t know very much about it.” …
Pressed by Bolling on whether Assange’s arrest could be seen as a step toward stifling the media, Trump expressed confidence in Attorney General William Barr’s judgment.
“Well, you know, we have a great attorney general that’s handling that,” Trump said.
Trump, who praised WikiLeaks often on the 2016 campaign trail after it released documents stolen from Democrats, told Bolling he knows “nothing” about Assange. In an interview with CNN, Vice President Mike Pence dismissed Trump’s past enthusiasm for the organization.
“I think the president always, as you and the media do, always welcomes information,” Pence told CNN. “But that was in no way an endorsement of an organization that we now understand was involved in disseminating classified information by the United States of America.”
Initial word of Assange’s arrest sparked fear among First Amendment advocates that the Trump administration may be cracking down on the publication of classified material. Details of the indictment that zeroed in on attempted hacking assuaged some concerns, but the potential ramifications of the case for the media still make some organizations uneasy.
DOJ
By Kevin Johnson
Attorney General William Barr plans to release the final report of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian efforts to sway the 2016 election Thursday, Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said Monday. The investigation probed links between the Kremlin and President Donald Trump’s campaign, and the report could detail connections that did not produce criminal charges.
The 400-page document, anticipated since last month when the attorney general disclosed a bare-bones summary of its major conclusions, will be transmitted to Congress and made public at roughly the same time. Barr has said he will keep parts of the report secret.
For weeks, Democrats have demanded that Barr make the full, unredacted report public…
Since Mueller delivered the document to Barr last month, a Justice Department team – including Mueller’s prosecutors – has been sifting through the document to remove secret grand jury information, material related to ongoing investigations, classified information and other material related to uncharged individuals who were swept up in the wide-ranging investigation. Barr has said he would remove four types of information from the report and color-code the redactions to signal the reasons for secrecy…
House Democrats are expected to fight for an unredacted version of Mueller’s report. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and the chairmen of six committees have called for Barr to provide Mueller’s unaltered report to Congress. The Judiciary Committee voted April 3 to authorize Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., to subpoena the report. Nadler has said he would issue the subpoena if Barr provides a redacted report.
New York Times: After Arrest of Julian Assange, the Russian Mysteries Remain
By Mark Mazzetti and Julian E. Barnes
[A]n indictment unsealed on Thursday charging Mr. Assange with conspiring to hack into a Pentagon computer in 2010 makes no mention of the central role that WikiLeaks played in the Russian campaign to undermine Mrs. Clinton’s presidential chances and help elect President Trump. It remains unclear whether the arrest of Mr. Assange will be a key to unlocking any of the lingering mysteries surrounding the Russians, the Trump campaign and the plot to hack an election.
The Justice Department spent years examining whether Mr. Assange was working directly with the Russian government, but legal experts point out that what is known about his activities in 2016 – including publishing stolen emails – is not criminal, and therefore it would be difficult to bring charges against him related to the Russian interference campaign.
Numerous significant questions are left unanswered, including what, if anything, Mr. Assange knew about the identity of Guccifer 2.0, a mysterious hacker who American intelligence and law enforcement officials have identified as a front for Russian military intelligence operatives…
Another question is whether Mr. Assange was a conduit between the Russian hackers and the Trump campaign. Mr. Assange exchanged emails with Donald Trump Jr., Mr. Trump’s eldest son, during the campaign, and a Trump campaign official sent Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime adviser to the president, to get information about the hacked Democratic emails, according to a January indictment by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel.
Mr. Mueller concluded his investigation without an indictment that directly connected WikiLeaks, the Russians and the Trump campaign, suggesting that prosecutors did not find sufficient evidence that Mr. Assange knowingly engaged in a conspiracy with Russia to help the Trump campaign.
National Review: Why Isn’t Assange Charged with ‘Collusion with Russia’?
By Andrew C. McCarthy
To sum up: If the Justice Department had indicted Assange for collusion, Mueller’s Russian-hacking indictment would no longer stand unchallenged. Assange would deny that Russia is behind the hacking, and prosecutors would have to try to prove it, using hard, admissible courtroom proof – not top-secret sources who cannot be called as witnesses without blowing their cover, or other information that might be reliable enough to support an intelligence finding but would be inadmissible under courtroom due-process standards. If the prosecutors were unable to establish Russia’s guilt to a jury’s satisfaction, it would be a tremendous propaganda victory for the Kremlin, even if – as I believe – Russia is actually guilty…
But now, having with great fanfare filed charges against Russia that implicate Assange, the government shrinks from lodging these same charges against Assange – who, unlike the indicted Russian officials, may be in a position to put the government to its burden of proof. This just makes Mueller’s indictment of Russians look more like a publicity stunt than a serious allegation. If the government is afraid to try the allegations against Russia in court, people will naturally suspect the allegations are hype.
Meanwhile, let us remember: Despite a dearth of evidence that he was complicit in Moscow’s hacking, President Trump was forced by the Justice Department and the FBI, urged on by congressional Democrats, to endure a two-year investigation and to govern under a cloud of suspicion that he was an agent of the Kremlin. Now we have Assange, as to whom there is indisputable evidence of complicity in the hacking conspiracy, but the Justice Department declines to charge him with it – instead, positing the dubious Manning conspiracy that may very well be time-barred.
Candidates and Campaigns
The Intercept: These House Democrats Pledged Not To Take Corporate Cash – But They’re Using A Loophole To Do It Anyway
By Lee Fang
The pledge loophole being exploited by these Democrats hinges on the Federal Election Commission’s designations for noncandidate-affiliated PACs. The elections regulator allows six different registrations, which include corporate, labor union, and trade association PACs. Trade associations are private groups typically formed by a collection of businesses from the same industry to advance shared interests in politics and public policy…
Some Democrats who pledged not to take corporate PAC money are leveraging the different FEC designations to stay true to the letter of their promises while violating their spirit.
Paul S. Ryan, the vice president of Common Cause, which opposes corporate money in politics, noted that the differences between corporate trade association and corporate are minor at best.
“Importantly, a corporate PAC can solicit contributions from its stockholders and executive or administrative personnel,” said Ryan. “Likewise, a trade association PAC can solicit contributions from the stockholders and executive or administrative personnel of the member corporations of such trade association.”…
The Democrats’ evasion of their pledges raises the question: How can politicians decry the influence of corporate money, but say there’s no problem when two or more corporations partner for influence? …
Some have argued that the no corporate PAC pledge is largely a rebranding effort. Corporate executives continue to cut up to eight-figure checks to so-called joint fundraising committees, which funnel the money to campaign committees. The Democratic leadership has largely continued accepting all forms of corporate PAC money and used its leadership PACs to redistribute the funds to candidates taking the no corporate PAC pledge.
By Tara Golshan and Theodore Schleifer
Raising money used to be a behind-the-scenes part of politics. Now how much campaigns raise – and from whom – is a big part of the political message.
This week, each 2020 campaign’s financial filings with the Federal Election Commission, the regulatory agency that enforces campaign finance laws, become public. In other words, we will know just how much this packed field of presidential hopefuls is fundraising, where they’re spending, who their biggest donors are, and more.
Candidates have begun releasing selective pieces of information in advance of the Monday deadline.
Independent Groups
Center for Responsive Politics: In hyperpartisan political environment, major corporations stay away from controversial super PACs
By Karl Evers-Hillstrom
Thanks to the landmark 2010 Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court decision and subsequent rulings, corporations can give unlimited funds to super PACs, which can spend unlimited sums on ads and other literature to influence elections.
But five elections later, most corporations aren’t taking advantage of their potential political influence. Corporations contributed $71.5 million to super PACs and hybrid PACs in the 2018 election cycle, accounting for less than 5 percent of contributions to the powerful outside groups.
Last cycle’s total corporate spending was a midterm record, but overall, this kind of giving remains stagnant compared with rapidly rising individual contributions…
Within the small subset of politically-active companies, most major corporations stay far away from super PACs. Thirty-six S&P 500 companies and their affiliates have given $25,000 or more to these outside groups since 2012.
The States
Atlanta Journal-Constitution: The Jolt: Stacey Abrams’ team alleges a ‘political vendetta’
By Jim Galloway, Greg Bluestein, and Tamar Hallerman
David Emadi told reporters on Thursday that he plans to subpoena bank records from the campaign of 2018 Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams and groups that raised money to help her in last year’s nationally watched race.
Emadi, whose support for Gov. Brian Kemp during his GOP election bid included cash, would not say what suspected violations of state campaign finance law prompted his decision…
Emadi denied any partisanship. He replaces Stefan Ritter, whom commission staffers alleged had sat on violations by the Abrams campaign…
Lauren Groh-Wargo, Abrams’ former campaign manager, senses a pattern. “For those keeping track, this is the third investigation of us in 21 days by Kemp and his folks,” she said this morning. “It’s distraction and retaliation on a whole series of fronts.”
She described Emadi’s promise of a probe into the Abrams campaign — in a first meeting with journalists — as “insane political posturing.”
“They don’t have to subpoena us. They just have to call us up and ask us for documents. Everybody expected to be audited,” she said…
On March 20, a GOP-affiliated group called the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, or FACT, filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service. From the Associated Press:
The group points to roughly $100,000 worth of Facebook ads featuring Abrams, an advertisement for a “Stacey Abrams Fundraiser” that featured Fair Fight Action’s logo, travel for Abrams’ post-election “thank you” tour of Georgia and a professionally produced “highlight reel” of Abrams footage on the group’s website.
The complaint argues Fair Fight Action is supporting Abrams’ political ambitions, not advocating for voting rights.
Arizona Republic: 1 win for cities, or is it? Arizona Attorney General finds Tempe’s disclosure law does not violate state law
By Paulina Pineda
A voter-approved measure in Tempe that would curb anonymous political spending in local elections does not violate state law, the Arizona Attorney General’s Office ruled.
But it appears to be just on a technicality.
In a report issued late Tuesday, Evan Daniels, chief counsel in the AG’s Government Accountability Unit, wrote that Tempe’s so-called “dark-money” ordinance can exist in harmony with a state law that prohibits municipalities from requiring political non-profits to disclose their donors.
Evans wrote that not only did Tempe’s ordinance go into effect before the state law, it is also broadly written in a way where it does not specifically enforce the ordinance against nonprofits.
However, he wrote that if the city seeks to enforce the new disclosure rules for nonprofits in the future, the two laws would conflict and lead to another investigation.
“The Ordinance and the State Law do not conflict because they can be harmonized through principles well-established in Arizona law, with the Legislature’s later-in-time and more specific rules in the State Law controlling as to Non-Profits and the Ordinance controlling otherwise,” he wrote…
In a complaint filed March 11, Sen. Vince Leach, R-Tucson, wrote that Tempe’s new disclosure rules conflict with House Bill 2153, a 2018 state law that prohibits municipalities from requiring that political non-profits disclose their donors.
He also alleged that Tempe’s law violates donors’ constitutional rights to free speech.
Washington Post: Indictment claims charity money went to Missouri politicians
By David A. Lieb, AP
Officials at a Missouri nonprofit organization accused of bribing Arkansas lawmakers also illegally used the charity’s money to funnel campaign contributions to Missouri politicians, according to a federal indictment.
Three former Republican Missouri lawmakers confirmed Friday to The Associated Press that they had participated in fundraisers and received campaign donations from people affiliated with the Springfield-based nonprofit Alternative Opportunities Inc., a provider of mental health and substance abuse services that has since merged with Preferred Family Healthcare Inc.
But former state Sen. Ryan Silvey, former state Sen. Bob Dixon and former state Rep. Ward Franz each said they didn’t know the nonprofit’s resources may have been used for the political fundraising, as alleged in the federal indictment released Thursday.
None of the Missouri lawmakers are accused of wrongdoing in the indictment, which targets former nonprofit executives Tom and Bontiea Goss and former Arkansas state Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson, who is the nephew of Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson. The Gosses and Hutchinson have pleaded not guilty.
The indictment is the latest in a long-running investigation involving the U.S. attorney’s office in southern Missouri that already has resulted in several guilty pleas and convictions of former nonprofit officials and Arkansas lawmakers. The details of the nonprofit’s involvement in Missouri politics are included in the indictment’s list of acts constituting an alleged conspiracy.
Federal law prohibits charitable organizations such as Alternative Opportunities from making contributions to or participating in political campaigns for candidates.
