McCutcheon v FEC

==

no merri

cei open letter ~ irs disclose

see shaun bak

fire bs

MCCUTCHEON v. FEC | The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression:

{---}:

trump scotus immunity amicus

DAILY BEAST no lnx $

:{TRUMPLAND

:

The Unhinged Arguments the Supreme Court Is Fielding on Trump Immunity

BUNKER MENTALITY

“Friend of the court” arguments are coming from across the political spectrum—and are showing the potential consequences of siding with Trump on immunity.

Jose Pagliery

Political Investigations Reporter

Published Mar. 30, 2024

Retired American generals vehemently say that no, Donald Trump cannot deploy SEAL Team 6 to kill a political rival. Gun groups howl that the United States is turning into Communist China. And a convicted Jan. 6 rioter warns that President Joe Biden could someday get sued over the death of a jogger in Georgia.

These are among the 18 various groups that shared their wisdom with the Supreme Court earlier this month, filing amicus briefs on the same day that Trump told the high court why he should be able to dodge a federal prosecution for trying to overturn the 2020 election on false pretenses.

Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith’s election interference case against Trump has finally reached the nation’s highest judicial authority, which will determine whether the business tycoon can be put on trial. The timing of the nine justices’ eventual decision will determine if the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee is to face trial in court before Election Day in November.

But ahead of oral arguments next month, the Supreme Court is already getting inundated with all kinds of opinions about the main question in the case: whether a former president enjoys immunity for actions made while at the White House.

The Daily Beast reviewed the litany of uninvited legal arguments spanning 599 pages, ranging from breathless reiterations of Trump’s claims to head-turning warnings. Yet all bear the signs of a historic case that could determine the fate of the election, if not American democracy.

The most unusual and unexpected amicus brief comes from three former high-ranking military leaders: Retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, who served as Trump’s own acting national security adviser; Robert Wilkie, who served as Trump’s Veterans Affairs Department secretary; and retired Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin, who once led the Army’s elite commandos in Delta Force and Green Berets.

The three former military men felt it necessary to join together and address—in public and at the national level—one of the crazier Trump legal arguments: that Trump’s immunity from criminal prosecution is so beyond question that it would allow him to order the assassination of his political enemies.

“No—the president cannot order SEAL Team Six to assassinate his political rival and have the military carry out such an order,” they clarified, marking the first time former military leadership has ever had to utter such a phrase in court.

The trio went further, pointing out that a Reagan-era executive order already prohibits anyone acting on behalf of the United States government from taking part in an assassination. They dedicated a significant portion of their 18-page court filing to making clear that military officers would be legally justified in refusing to even carry out an official order from their commander-in-chief, an assertion rarely made by military brass—and one that underlies just how stark their concerns are at this point.

“That a person is a political rival of the president is neither a justification nor an excuse for an unlawful killing. And deliberately carrying out an order to murder such a person would be acting upon a premeditated design to kill or an intent to kill. Therefore, any officer engaged in murder on the orders of a president would be subject to the death penalty or life in prison—and the officer would know it,” they wrote.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of the other amici curiae—the so-called “friends of the court” who weighed in to give the Supreme Court their two cents—largely sided with Trump.

The right-wing nonprofit America’s Future—which screened a bonkers QAnon Hollywood conspiracy “documentary” at Mar-a-Lago earlier this week—joined forces with Gun Owners of America and similar firearms associations to warn the high court that Smith’s prosecution was making the United States look more like China, Russia, or Zimbabwe.

“The prosecution of President Trump by the Biden Administration has a parallel to a recent event in Communist China,” they wrote, recalling the way former Chinese President Hu Jintao has vanished from public view ever since he was mysteriously escorted out of a public ceremony where he had been sitting next to his successor, Xi Jinping.

The United States is heading down that same route, they warned, lamenting “the explosion of lawfare” aimed at Trump for doing what they deemed totally sensible political speech—an argument that rests, in part, on the gun-toting petitioners’ continued rejection of the 2020 election results. They referenced Trump’s “supposed” defeat in Arizona and Georgia.

The real danger here, though, is that while Trump is currently polling strong, the gun groups concede that “the effect of a conviction may be very different and could determine the outcome of the election.”

But it wasn’t the conglomeration of Second Amendment enthusiasts that made a veiled threat over the high court decision. That came from an Alabama electrical engineer who’s become a political financier.

In his court filing, Shaun McCutcheon describes himself as “a successful, self-made American businessman and constitutional patriot.” And he warned Supreme Court justices that the country’s MAGA loyalists aren’t going to suddenly start trusting the U.S. court system to select fair-minded jurors.

“The former President’s tens of millions of supporters cannot reasonably be expected to accept the typical legal fictions of voir dire under such extreme circumstances,” his lawyer wrote.

McCutcheon assigns malicious intent to the Special Counsel’s decision to indict Trump in the largely liberal District of Columbia—never mind that the U.S. Constitution’s Sixth Amendment ensures that a person will be subjected to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury drawn from the district where his alleged crime was committed, which in this case was the White House.

“A prosecutor appointed by a partisan presidential appointee of the opposing political party may prosecute a former president in a hand-picked venue deeply hostile to that former president, his beliefs, political expression, and legacy,” his lawyer wrote.

While the Supreme Court received various interpretations of presidential immunity that cast the Special Counsel’s investigations as a severe threat to the functions of the commander-in-chief’s job, the sharpest example came from someone who knows a thing or two about Trump’s insurrection.

In his brief, Treniss Evans argued that if Trump can be put on trial for allegedly masterminding a months-long and multi-pronged attack on U.S. democracy, then President Biden could be held personally responsible for the death in February of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley, given that an allegedly undocumented Venezuelan man was arrested for her killing.

“If a President doesn’t have immunity from prosecution for his actions, what prevents Georgia murder victim Laken Riley’s family from suing Joe Biden for allowing her illegal migrant murderer into the USA? Or what if hundreds of families all sued, seriatim?” his lawyer wrote, using the Latin phrase that means “one-by-one.”

Evans made the filing through his “legal advocacy group,” which bears the emotionally charged name Condemned USA. He trivialized Trump’s 2020 election fraud claims, but then went on to assert that Trump and his followers can’t possibly be accused of trying to stop certification of the election with a violent riot because technically Jan. 6, 2021, was just the official counting of the already certified votes before Congress.

The Supreme Court justices will get the sense that this topic is deeply personal for Evans. After all, his brief says right up top that “Mr. Evans has been investigating and reporting events of January 6th since January 6th, 2021. He was present at the Capitol on that day.”

In reality, he was in the violent crowd, held a bullhorn, and entered the Capitol—only to be identified by a Facebook tipster, arrested in Texas two months after the insurrection, and eventually sentenced to three years’ probation. To convince the federal judge to go easy on him, his other lawyer wrote that “Mr. Evans is quite self-reproving, sincerely remorseful, and duly contrite. He is embarrassed of this criminal conduct and the shame he has brought upon himself and his family. He has entered his plea of guilty voluntarily.”

But his March 19 brief before the Supreme Court doesn’t exactly hint at that remorse, nor does it morph into any critique of the man who called on him and others to show up that day and march on the Capitol Building.

Yet another legal advocacy firm asked the Supreme Court to give even more deference to Trump for the actions that led up to the disaster at the tail end of his presidency. The Christian Family Coalition Florida, a conservative Miami group that recently lent its support to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ crackdown on transgender kids in girls’ sports teams, reduced Trump’s election interference efforts to merely “core political speech.” And it would give future politicians carte blanche to lie—and follow through with those lies—regardless of their claim’s merit.

“For the sake of the presidency and the nation, criminal liability cannot turn on a mere factual dispute over whether an ex-president’s communications in challenging an election were ‘knowingly false,’” a lawyer for the group wrote.

In this Trump case, justices also heard from a favorite villain of the American progressive movement: Citizens United, the nonprofit behind the Supreme Court’s 2010 landmark decision that opened the door to having corporations spend unlimited funds on elections.

The group joined with two former U.S. Attorneys General: the Reagan administration’s Edwin Meese III, and the George W. Bush administration’s Michael B. Mukasey. Together, they tried to strip the current team of federal prosecutors going after Trump from any legitimacy.

They argued that Smith “wields tremendous power, effectively answerable to no one, by design.” And they contend that’s something he can’t do without the Senate’s confirmation. Instead, they say, AG Merrick Garland should have taken the same approach he did with the separate Hunter Biden investigation and tap an existing, Senate-confirmed federal prosecutor in charge of a regional office, like Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss.

The two conservative former AGs and the nonprofit also claim that most cabinet officials have the authority to appoint officers—minus the Justice Department, a proposition that would give the heads of Agriculture, Education and Homeland Security departments more leeway than the nation’s attorney general. And they warn that Garland’s actions could “create by regulation an entire shadow Department of Justice.”

But leave it to a consortium of 18 state attorneys general—all pro-Trump Republicans led by Alabama AG Steve Marshall—to make the one point everyone can probably agree on.

“If he had not been president, none of this would be happening,” they wrote.

Political Investigations Reporter

@Jose_Pagliery

jose.pagliery@thedailybeast.com

---

---

stranahan

alexandra bruce

.... 

One of the other donors to the In Defense of Free Speech Jfc isplaintiff Shaun McCutcheon.

[doc]

link

Backer promotes the McCutcheon case as a free speech issue and has been using the case to promote himself,as this recent article from USA Today shows:

“The government shouldn’t be in the business of policing speech,” Backer said during an interview at last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference — an annual gathering that is part pep rally, trade show and media madhouse that attracts some of the Republican Party’s most ardent conservative activists.

It’s a place where Backer gets a lot of business done. It was at this conference three years ago that Backer met Shaun McCutcheon, a wealthy Alabama electrical engineer who is the named plaintiff in the case. A few months after their initial meeting, Backer helped McCutcheon launch a super PAC, Conservative Action Fund.

About a year after their first meeting, Backer persuaded McCutcheon to confront the aggregate limits in court.

Is this a conflict of interest?

Is this the way Tea Party supporters want their money spent?

Please help spread the word.

---

OS

McCutcheon v. FEC

The April 2014 Supreme Court decision in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission removed aggregate limits for individual donors giving to candidates, political parties and PACs. There are still limits on how much any individual may give to each of those committees. No longer, though, is there an overall cap on how much one person can give to these committees combined in an election cycle; the last such limit, which was in place until the court's ruling, was $123,200. [Read more]

---

off bs

:{:{:{ Coolidge Reagan Foundation is a not for profit, charitable organization formed under Section 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue Code. Donations are tax-deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes to the extent allowed by law. }:

.  Coolidge Reagan Foundation}:}:

1629 K Street, NW, Suite 300, Washington, DC 20006

http://www.coolidgereagan.org/crf-v-steele

:cOOLIDGE REAGAN FOUNDATION,}:

1629 K Street NW, Suite 300

Washington, DC 20006,

Complainant

,

v.

CHRISTOPHER STEELE,

)

9- 11 Grosvenor Gardens

)

London SW1W 0BD, England

)

)

HILLARY FOR AMERICA,

)

FEC ID Number C00575795

)

P.O. Box 5256

)

New York, NY 10185-

5256

)

Jose H. Villareal, Treasurer,

)

)

DNC SERVICES CORPORATION /

)

DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE

)

FEC ID Number C00010603

)

430 South Capitol Street SE

)

Washington, D.C., 20003

)

William Q. Derrough, Treasurer,

)

)

PERKINS COIE, LLP

)

700 13th Street, N.W.

)

Suite 600

)

Washington, D.C. 20005

---

Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University,Rebecca Buckwalter, Phillip Cohen, Holly Figueroa, Eugene Gu,Brandon Neely, Joseph Papp, and Nicholas Pappas,Plaintiffs-Appellees,  v. Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, and Daniel Scavino, White House Director of Social Media and Assistant to the President,Defendants-Appellants._On Appeal from the U.S. District Courtfor the Southern District of New YorkBRIEF OF AMICUS COOLIDGE-REAGAN FOUNDATION IN SUPPORT OF DEFENDANTS-APPELLANTS_Dan Backer

POLITICAL.LAWPLLC441 N. Lee Street, Suite 300 Alexandria, VA 22314 (202) 210-5431 dan@political.lawCounsel for Amicus Coolidge- Reagan Foundation*Application for admission pending

==

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2016/11/in-first-post-mccutcheon-presidential-election-more-big-donors-giving-more/

No individual has given to every single congressional and presidential candidate yet, or even every Democratic or Republican candidate. But 2016 marks the first presidential election since the Supreme Court’s decision in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commissionremoved caps on a donor’s total campaign giving, and — as expected — a group of wealthy individuals have busted through the old $123,200 limit on what they could give.

Before 2014, individuals faced caps both on the amount they could give to any one federal candidate and the amount they could give to all federal candidates, parties and PACs, together, in a given two-year cycle.

That changed with McCutcheon, when the Supreme Court held that the caps “intrude without justification on a citizen’s ability to exercise ‘the most fundamental First Amendment activities.’”

In the post-McCutcheon landscape, then, an individual would be able to give a $2,700 check to every candidate in every federal primary and general election in the country, plus more to PACs and party accounts, if they were so inclined. While there is not yet evidence of this happening, some donors have taken advantage of unlimited aggregate contributions to give more cash than they ever could before.

As of Oct. 16, at least 1,174 people have contributed more than $123,200 during the 2016 election cycle – in some cases, far more. (These numbers, we should note, do not include contributions made to super PACs and other outside spending groups, which were never limited by law; more on this below.) Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas casino magnate, has given nearly $3.4 million, for instance, every dollar of which has gone to supporting Republicans. His wife, Miriam, has kicked in another $1.2 million. (They’ve have contributed )

On the liberal side, Newsweb Chairman Fred Eychaner contributed nearly $2.2 million to Democrats.

(The Adelsons have contributed $47.4 million when gifts to super PACs and other outside spending groups are factored in, which puts them at No. 2 on our top donors list. And at almost $35 million counting such donations, Eychaner comes in at No. 4.)

That’s not quite double the 727 people who made contributions in the 2014 cycle that would have exceeded the former limit, but it’s close. And they’re giving more, as well: The average contribution total from those shattering the old limit this cycle was $281,568, almost $100,000 more than the 2014 average.

The pre-McCutcheon rules included caps within the cap, too — for instance, gifts to candidates couldn’t total more than $48,600, and there were separate limits for donations to PACs and parties. In the 2016 cycle, Democratic Wall Street donor Donald Sussman gave at least $2,700 to no fewer than 86 candidates, almost quintupling the previous cap.

Overall, these post-McCutcheon contributions have favored the GOP: Over 53 percent of these donors so far have given more to Republicans than Democrats. Still, things are on the upswing for liberals, since just 36.9 percent of contributors favored Dems in 2014.

In fact — whether due to a calcifying partisan divide or not — a huge majority of donors give all their money to one side or the other. In 2014, 71.1 percent of donors gave only to Republicans or Democrats. This cycle, that number has climbed to almost 74.2 percent by mid-October, with 434 McCutcheon-level donors giving exclusively to Republicans and 437 to Democrats.

One effect of the no-limits landscape has been the turbocharging of joint fundraising committees — committees formed by candidates with their party and sometimes other candidates. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s Hillary Victory Fund, for instance, has seen at least 120 donors give at least $400,000, something that previously was against the law. In that case, the money is split between Clinton’s campaign, the Democratic National Committee and 38 state parties.

When outside spending — which was never covered by contribution limits even pre-McCutcheon — gets factored in, individual contribution totals rise dramatically. On both sides of the aisle, deep-pocketed megadonors pumped tens of millions of dollars into federal races this cycle to varying degrees of electoral success.

Tom Steyer

Steyer was the country’s top individual donor by a country mile in 2016. The San Francisco former hedge fund executive parted with more than $67 million this cycle, far outstripping fellow liberal Donald Sussman’s $40 million in gifts. Steyer gave $66 million of his total toNextGen Climate Action, the environmental super PAC he founded in 2013. NextGen focused its attention on Senate races and the presidential faceoff, making more than $22 million in independent expenditures, most of which opposed Trump. Of the six battleground Senate races Steyer and NextGen targeted, Democrats won three, in Illinois, Nevada and New Hampshire.

Sheldon Adelson

Out of a total of more than $26 million, billionaire casino mogul Adelson gave an even $10 million each this cycle to the Congressional Leadership Fund andSenate Leadership Fund, conservative super PACs that supported Republican congressional candidates. Adelson’s wife, Miriam, matched his donations to these groups, and their joint $20 million was good for more than half of the Congressional Leadership Fund’s independent expenditure total this cycle. The money may have helped, as Republicans will kick off 2017 with majorities in both houses.

Donald Sussman

Paloma Partners investment firm founder Sussman invested heavily in liberal candidates and super PACs this cycle, giving more than $40 million. Almost half of that outlay came from a single $20 million donation toPriorities USA Action, the foremost outside group backingHillary Clinton’s failed presidential campaign. The super PAC’s independent expenditures added up to more than any other group’s; it poured more than $131 million into the presidential race, the lion’s share of which paid for attacks on Trump. Sussman also gave $10 million toHouse Majority PAC, which sought to support Democrats in House races. While they were unable to flip the chamber, Democrats did gain some ground – a bit of good news for liberals on their otherwise pretty bad night.

Fred Eychaner

As we’ve noted, Chicago-based businessman Eychaner also splashed major cash on liberal candidates, parties and outside groups. The vast majority of his $34 million-plus in donations stemmed from three eight-figure donations to left-leaning super PACs: $11 million to Senate Majority PAC, $11 million to House Majority PAC, and $10 million to Priorities USA Action. Ultimately, these cash infusions were unable to help Democrats win control of the presidency or either house of Congress. Eychaner also gave $489,448 to 35 Democratic state parties and committees.

Robert Mercer

The very conservative co-CEO of Renaissance Technologies, a quant hedge fund founded by a megadonor to the other party, Mercer and his wife Diana have given just shy of $24 million this cycle. A champion of returning the U.S. to the gold standard, Mercer has helped bankroll the conservative Heritage Foundation and Breitbart.com, the right-wing news site. He was deeply committed to Sen. Ted Cruz‘s (R-Texas) 2016 presidential bid, socking $13.5 million into a super PAC supporting him; eventually he signed on to back nominee Donald Trump, converting the previously pro-Cruz vehicle into one that benefited Trump and adding another $2 million to its coffers. His daughter, Rebekah, also was deeply involved with the pro-Trump effort. In the eight days ending Nov. 4, the super PAC, Make America Number 1, paid Mercer’s voter data firm Cambridge Analytica $1.4 million.

Paul Singer

Singer, the founder of hedge fund manager Elliott Management Corp., was one of 2016’s top conservative contributors, giving more than $23 million over the course of the cycle. Like Adelson, Singer donated heavily to the Congressional and Senate Leadership Funds – $1.5 million and $4 million, respectively. The New York billionaire didn’t stop there. Singer spread his money around a number of conservative super PACs, also making multimillion-dollar contributions to theAmerican Unity PAC, Conservative Solutions PAC,Ending Spending Action Fund,Freedom Partners Action Fund and Our Principles PAC.

Complete contribution data for the 2016 cycle will be available early next year.

Categories: Congressional Elections Election Overview Presidential Presidential Election

Tags: aggregate limit, American Unity PAC, Congressional Leadership Fund, conservative solutions pac, donald sussman, Donald Trump, Elliott Management, ending spending action fund, Fred Eychaner, Freedom Partners Action Fund, Hillary Clinton, House Majority PAC, McCutcheon v FEC, Miriam Adelson, newsweb, NextGen Climate Action, Our Principles PAC, paloma partners, Paul Singer, Priorities USA Action, senate leadership fund, Senate Majority Fund, Sheldon Adelson, Supreme Court, tom steyer

==

:{In a nutshell, if the court rules badly in McCutcheon, it would pretty much do for individuals what Citizens United did for corporations.  Specifically, those who can afford to do so could directly contribute up to $3.6 million per election cycle to a single party and its candidates.

 ==

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/04/shaun-mccutcheon-supreme-court-case-105646 Levick — a big public relations and public affairs firm — has been managing McCutcheon’s rise onto the national stage. The firm has been pitching journalists on McCutcheon interviews for the better part of a year — setting up meetings, bringing McCutcheon to Washington far in advance of the Supreme Court decision and helping him navigate the media environment.  Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/04/shaun-mccutcheon-supreme-court-case-105646#ixzz43rlpmEGj   }:

---

:{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCutcheon_v._FECMcCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, 572 U.S. _ (2014), was a landmark campaign finance case before the United States Supreme Court challenging Section 441 of the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA), which imposed a limit on contributions an individual can make over a two-year period to national party and federal candidate committees.[1]The case was argued before the Supreme Court on October 8, 2013,[2] being brought on appeal after the United States District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed the challenge. It was decided on April 2, 2014, by a 5–4 vote,[3]reversing the decision below and remanding. Justices Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, and Alito invalidated "aggregate contribution limits" (amounts one can contribute over the two-year period) as violating the First Amendment. Justice Thomas provided the necessary fifth vote, but concurred separately in the judgment while arguing that all contribution limits are unconstitutional.Contents  [hide]

 1Background1.1U.S. District Court2Supreme Court2.1Concurrence and dissent3Subsequent commentary4See also5ReferencesBackground[edit]The Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) was first passed in 1971.[4] Amendments to FECA in 1974, after theWatergate Scandal, imposed aggregate limits on the direct contributions that individuals can make to national political parties and federal candidates in a calendar year.[5] The constitutionality of the FECA amendments was challenged in 1976, which resulted in the court upholding the aggregate limits in Buckley v. Valeo.[6] In 2002, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) was passed. The BCRA revised the aggregate limits, adjusted them to future (but not past) inflation, and changed the individual limitations from annual to biennial;[7] The aggregate contribution ceiling on individuals during the 2011-2012 election cycle stood at $46,200 for federal candidates and $70,800 for national parties, or a $117,000 aggregate limit.[8]Plaintiff Shaun McCutcheon is a businessman and electrical engineer from suburban Birmingham, Alabama, who is a campaign contributor and self described activist of the Republican Party.[9][10] The founder and CEO of Coalmont Electrical Development Corporation, McCutcheon began donating to Republican candidates in the late 1990s, and would ultimately join the Jefferson County Republican Party Executive Committee.[11] At a 2011 Young Conservatives Coalition event, McCutcheon met attorney and campaign finance expert Dan Backer, who would play a major role in encouraging McCutcheon to file suit against the FEC.[11] As of September 2012, McCutcheon had given $33,088 to sixteen federal candidates and over $25,000 in non-candidate contributions during the 2011-2012 cycle.[5] McCutcheon intended on donating to an additional twelve federal candidates, bringing his contribution total over the federal aggregate limit on federal candidates.[12] McCutcheon filed suit against the Federal Election Commission (FEC), where he was joined in his lawsuit by the Republican National Committee.[13]U.S. District Court...Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Kagan dissented, arguing that the decision "creates a loophole that will allow a single individual to contribute millions of dollars to a political party or to a candidate’s campaign. Taken together with Citizens United v. Federal Election Comm’n, 558 U. S. 310 (2010), today’s decision eviscerates our Nation’s campaign finance laws, leaving a remnant incapable of dealing with the grave problems of democratic legitimacy that those laws were intended to resolve."[24]}:

:{Subsequent commentary[edit]In response to the case, a coalition of environmental, voting rights, labor, and government reform groups rallied outside of the Supreme Court.[25] Environmentalists from Greenpeace and the Sierra Club protested what Phil Radford of Greenpeace called a "legalized system of corruption through money in politics" that had resulted in few major environmental laws passing in the U.S. since 1980.[26]Writing for The Nation, Ari Berman wrote that the ruling shows that "The Court’s conservative majority believes that the First Amendment gives wealthy donors and powerful corporations the carte blanche right to buy an election but that the Fifteenth Amendment does not give Americans the right to vote free of racial discrimination."[27] Countering Berman's quote Robert J. Samuelson pointed out that the rich is not one single block, but there are many different factions among them. He added that money does not "guarantee victory.

After a certain point, more money hits the law of diminishing returns. It can be and is misspent."[28] Samuelson also said that there are poor politicians who can't communicate and so they need money "to hire campaign staff, build a website, buy political spots and the like" in order to "affect how people behave."[28]The Center for Competitive Politics, a leading group advocating for deregulation of campaign finance, heralded the decision, releasing a statement saying, "the Court’s conclusion was common sense: the law limited an individual to contributing the legal maximum to just 18 candidates. If the first 18 aren’t “corrupted” by the contribution, why is candidate 19? What’s remarkable is that four justices of the Supreme Court continue to believe that such overt limitations on political speech are constitutional. Moreover, to reach that conclusion the dissenters relied on a series of preposterous hypotheticals bearing no resemblance to reality."[29]In The New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin wrote that "the language of Chief Justice John Roberts’s opinion suggests that the Court remains committed to the project announced most prominently in the Citizens United case, four years ago: the deregulation of American political campaigns."[30]}:

:{Shaun McCutcheon, the lead plaintiff in a high-profile campaign finance challenge the U.S. Supreme Court will soon consider, made an excessive contribution to the Alabama Republican Party’s federal political committee last year, records show.McCutcheon, a general contractor by trade, donated $1,000 to the Alabama Republican Party on Nov. 12, 2012, according to a Center for Public Integrity review of campaign finance records maintained by the Center for Responsive Politics. He had already contributed the legal maximum of $10,000 to the party’s federal account earlier in 2012.McCutcheon is an outspoken critic of existing federal law that limits the overall dollar amount that any one person may collectively donate to federal candidates, parties and political action committees. This aggregate contribution limit, which is indexed to inflation, is currently set at $123,200. The Supreme Court's McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission case — oral arguments are scheduled for Tuesday — will determine whether that limit is lifted or changed.===Dan Backer says he doesn't believe the Supreme Court's McCutcheon v. FEC ruling will lead to a proliferation of new PACs and joint fundraising committees, as so many election law observers have predicted.

Does Backer know what he's talking about? Besides being the lead attorney for Shaun McCutcheon, over the last three election cycles he has overseen a proliferation of new PACs and helped organize what may be the largest-ever joint fundraising committee, in terms of the number of participants. In the wake of the McCutcheon decision last week, donors still may give only a limited amount to a particular candidate or committee. But with the cap off on overall donations by individuals, critics of the ruling say we can expect a gaggle of new groups to pop up to harness the now limitless donation power of individual wealthy donors. And those PACs, along with candidates and party committees, can band together and create joint fundraising vehicles -- cooperative efforts to collect big checks from donors and then distribute the funds among the participants. What's envisioned -- or feared, depending on one's perspective -- are "super JFCs" that can ask each donor for a check in the millions.    In an interview with OpenSecrets Blog this week, Backer, 36, said the whole idea is nonsense."I assure you that anyone who thinks these super JFCs are going to proliferate is out of their freaking minds," Backer said.  Backer has done his fair share of creating new PACs and joint fundraising committees, especially lately. }:

According to OpenSecrets.org data, in 2010, Backer was the treasurer for four committees registered with the FEC. In 2012, the number was 18, and so far in 2014, he is listed as the treasurer for 38. And in many cases he's more than just a name on the paperwork; a number of the groups have paid his law firm, DB Capitol Strategies, for political and legal advice.   Correspondingly, his firm's receipts have sharply increased: According to an OpenSecrets.org analysis of expenditure data, in 2010 DB Capitol Strategies was paid about $9,300 by federal committees; that increased to $167,648 in 2012, and so far in the 2014 cycle it has been paid $288,127.  One of Backer's most prominent projects has been the Conservative Action Fund, which operates as both a traditional PAC and a super PAC, with two separate accounts and fundraising operations. On the PAC side, the group raised just $25,646 in 2012, but on the super PAC side, it raised $205,000 -- most of which ($185,000) was donated by Backer's star client, Shaun McCutcheon. McCutcheon also loaned an additional $121,620 to the group -- a loan Backer said he forgave. Conservative Action Fund reported making about$134,000 in independent expenditures, including some against a handful of Republicans.  The TeaParty.Net Leadership Fund has been, by far, Backer's biggest client, paying his firm more than $167,000 over the last two cycles. 

The organization, a hybrid that is part PAC and part super PAC, has raised more than $3.8 million so far in the 2014 cycle, and is an excellent example of how Backer's many groups serve multiple purposes. The group has spent $238,000 against Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) and has also transferred more than $138,000 to other organizations -- including $40,000 to the In Defense of Free Speech Joint Fundraising Committee, which lists another lawyer at Backer's firm as treasurer.   In Defense of Free Speech passed the money on to the Senate campaigns of Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and, interestingly, John Cornyn (R-Texas) -- the opponent of another client of Backer's, Rep. Steve Stockman. The only other contributor to In Defense of Free Speech JFC was a PAC, also run by Backer, called Unum E Pluribus, which lists the same address as the TeaParty.Net Leadership Fund.  Still another of Backer's committees, Freshman Hold 'Em PAC, was possibly the largest congressional JFC of the last election cycle. It raised $202,000 and distributed about $192,000 to at least 31 different candidates. And, Backer says, it was a huge hassle.  "You have a layer of complexity that is astronomical," he said. Each candidate or committee has to be wrangled into signing forms, lawyers have to be herded and there's endless administrative work.

:{ Was his super JFC worth it?  "No, I don't think so, not from my perspective," Backer said. "No, it was absolutely not worth it." According to expenditure reports, Backer's firm has been paid just $17,000 by Freshmen Hold 'Em.  Backer said he, for one, wouldn't be getting involved with this kind of work. "I wouldn't do this. I would refuse this kind of work," he said. "The burdens involved and the technical problems involved are not worth it." Losing the personal touch? Backer added that the biggest reason he thinks super JFCs won't take off is that, while they may be an efficient way to extract money from a single donor, from the donor's perspective, they are impersonal and don't offer any advantages -- an assertion that has many skeptics. "For the donors, they really prefer to cut the vast number of checks," he said. "For them, it's not about giving money, it's about building a relationship. You're not going to get any face time, they're not going to hear your story." Individual donors want to feel gratitude from the candidate -- legal, "completely non-corrupting gratitude," Backer hastened to note.

Backer dismissed the idea of a single donor who wants to give a multi-million dollar check to a joint fundraising committee. "If there's a donor who wants to cut a multi-million dollar check they won't get anything out of it," he said. "If I had that kind of money to screw around with, I'd much rather give to the candidates and then spend the rest of it on independent expenditures." But that perspective makes a big assumption that critics say just isn't likely: that the checks will be solicited only by representatives of the JFC, not any of the participants. A member of Congress participating in a JFC could solicit a major donor he or she has a connection with, accepting the maximum contribution for his or her own campaign and steering the rest to party committees or the campaign committees of other members, suggested Paul S. Ryan, senior counsel for the Campaign Legal Center. }:

The strongest current of money transfers won't be from the top down -- a large donor giving to a faceless JFC run by party honchos and attorneys who then distribute it outwards -- it will be from the bottom up, Ryan predicted. "It's about the individual who happens to be a candidate and their career trajectory in their own party," he said. "You build your position in the party by making rain for the party, and the striking down of aggregate limits will allow aspiring party leaders to make rain in a much bigger way."  And party leaders will have exponentially more power to solicit six- and seven-digit checks. Donors may be flattered or annoyed if the Speaker of the House or the Senate Majority Leader makes the ask, but many certainly will consider the opportunity to make such an impression on someone who wields considerable power.  "The check won't be given to some lawyer who represents the JFC, you can hand it to the member who asked you for it," Ryan said.  Backer may be among the first to know who's right. Follow Russ on Twitter: @russchoma 

 ===

http://www.opensecrets.org/overview/mccutcheon_about.php 

:{McCutcheon v. FEC is a federal lawsuit scheduled to be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 8, 2013. The case is about whether or not Congress may limit the total amount of donations an individual can make, at the federal level, in an election cycle.What is the limit?Many people are familiar with limits on how much individuals can give to a campaign; in the 2014 cycle, gifts are capped at $2,600 per candidate per race ($5,200 including both the primary and general election). In addition, they can give up to $5,000 per year to a PAC. However, there is also an overall limit: No individual can give more than $123,200 in a two-year cycle. Of that amount, only $48,600 can be given to candidates and only $74,600 can be given to PACs. This means that a donor can only give the maximum allowable donation to nine candidates and seven PACs in the 2014 election cycle. 

Along with the limits on how much can be given to candidates, committees and parties, the overall cap is increased every election cycle. First established in the 1970s, the limits on how much an individual can give to a candidate or committee were designed to prevent a handful of individuals from having undue influence over a candidate by being his or her dominant source of funding. However, to make the limits on how much an individual can give to candidates and committees effective, Congress also had to establish an overall cap.  }:

:{Didn't Citizens United allow unlimited donations?The U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 decision in Citizens United v. FEC lifted limits on how much money can be given and spent by outside spending groups; many of these are super PACs and politically active nonprofits. Although an outside group may favor a particular candidate, it does not give directly to the candidate and is not allowed to spend the money in coordination with the campaign. The Supreme Court did not touch the limits on donations to candidates or committees in Citizens United.  Who is McCutcheon?The plaintiff challenging the limits, Shaun McCutcheon, is an Alabama businessman and member of the Republican National Committee. What is the court trying to decide in McCutcheon?

The Supreme Court is being asked to decide whether those overall limits are unconstitutional. In 2012, McCutcheon gave donations to 15 different federal candidates. He has said that he wanted to give more money to even more candidates, but the limits prevented him from doing so. Citing the argument successfully made in the Citizens United decision that political contributions are a type of expression that should fall under the First Amendment's protection, McCutcheon is claiming that the overall cap infringes on his right to freedom of speech. Opponents are arguing that without the overall limit, any limits are essentially useless. Even if an individual may only give $5,200 to a candidate in an election cycle, if the donor is allowed to give an unlimited amount to other committees -- such as the candidate's leadership PAC, joint fundraising ventures or other organizations affiliated with the candidate -- the money can still flow directly to the candidate, who will be aware of the source of the funds. This would allow wealthy individuals to dominate candidate fundraising and possibly give them undue influence.  }:

How many people are actually affected by these limits?While it's impossible to say how many people would like to donate an unlimited amount of money but don't because the limits exist, we do know that only a very small handful of people even come close to reaching those limits. Few people make substantial political contributions at all. Out of an estimated 310 million Americans, we estimate that just 0.4 percent make a political contribution of $200 or more (large enough to be individually tracked in FEC data). And even among those who give more than that, only about 0.1 percent give $2,500 or more. The number of donors who max out on the overall cap for donations is much smaller. According to CRP data, only 591 donors in the entire country - or 0.0000019 percent of the population -- gave the maximum of $46,200 to federal candidates in 2012, accounting for only $34.1 million of the estimated $3.1 billion raised by federal candidates in the cycle. Based on data released by the FEC on 12/13/2013. Feel free to distribute or cite this material, but please credit the Center for Responsive Politics. For permission to reprint for commercial uses, such as textbooks, contact the Center.

---

Brennan ctr; October 2, 2013

:{Money in Politics

Combating Citizens United

Ian Vandewalker

Why are senators from Kentucky and Utah meeting with a Republican Alabama businessman? Why did that Republican businessman get visits from presidential candidates last year? The answer is money, and Shaun McCutcheon wants to give more of it to politicians.Some background: McCutcheon is the lead plaintiff in McCutcheon v. FEC, a campaign finance case the Supreme Court will hear next week, and he wants the Court to strike down federal laws limiting the total amount individuals can give in federal elections. These aggregate limits currently stand at $123,200 for every two-year election cycle. Last year, only a few hundred people in the entire country gave enough to hit these donation caps – less than a thousandth of a percent of the American population.

If McCutcheon wins his case, those who can afford it would be able to spread more than $3.5 million across federal candidates and parties.McCutcheon lives in Alabama, where he runs an engineering firm that specializes in coal mining systems. He has rapidly risen in the ranks of GOP donors in the past two years, giving more than $416,000 in federal political donations to candidates all over the country since his first in 2010. But it’s not enough — he feels too constrained by spending limits.The seeds for his lawsuit were sown at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2012 when McCutcheon described his annoyance about the aggregate cap to election lawyer Dan Backer and reportedly wondered if he could just ignore the limits. Instead, McCutcheon and the Republican National Committee sued to overturn the limits.In a New York Times interview today, McCutcheon said he doesn’t understand how the aggregate limits protect against big-money donors’ ability to gain undue influence over elected officials. }:

:{But the answer is clear: Through loopholes like joint fundraising committees, a single prominent candidate can accept millions of dollars from wealthy donors. The money is officially shunted to hundreds of committees, which gives the fundraising candidate valuable political capital, or the money could simply be sent back to that candidate.The inordinate sway big donors wield is also evident from their appointment books. Since he started making big donations and asking the courts to let him make more, McCutcheon has had the ear of many politicians. “I met all the presidential candidates that came to Alabama, one-on-one meetings, including Mitt Romney,” he said. And he’s met 15 senators on visits to Washington, including “extended discussions” with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah). 

How many of these senators’ average constituents have had “extended discussions” with them? How can McCutcheon really believe the current rules don’t let him give enough money to politicians?Just 0.4 percent of Americans donated more than $200 to federal candidates in 2012. These wealthy few, like McCutcheon, already have undue influence over our elected officials. Striking down aggregate limits would create an even smaller class of political kingmakers. And it would drown out the voices of average citizens — the ones politicians are supposed to listen to, but clearly aren’t. http://www.brennancenter.org/blog/six-figure-contribution-caps-aren%E2%80%99t-high-enough-shaun-mccutcheon}:

== ===

:{The Wall Street Journal editorial board has come out in favor of eliminating aggregate campaign donation limits in federal elections, falsely claiming that the Founders didn't intend such contributions to be closely regulated.On October 8, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in McCutcheon v. FEC, a case that has been called "the next Citizen's United" because a ruling in favor of the Republican plaintiffs will allow billionaire donors to flood federal elections with even more cash. By disregarding long-established precedent, Citizens United has already made it easier for corporations to indirectly support conservative candidates and redistricting campaigns that have secured seats in Congress for Republicans. McCutcheon could do the same for individual donors contributing to the candidates directly, a possibility for institutional corruption that the Founders specifically warned against when drafting the U.S. Constitution.But that didn't stop the WSJ from incorrectly claiming barely regulated election donations were what the Founders always had in mind.

From the October 6 editorial:The Supreme Court re-opens for business this week, and one of its first cases is a splendid opportunity to restore the First Amendment as a bulwark of free political speech. The result in McCutcheon v. FEC will likely hang on whether Chief Justice John Roberts has the courage of his constitutional convictions[...]Alabama businessman Shaun McCutcheon and the Republican National Committee are challenging limits on the total amount of money a person can contribute to multiple candidates and political parties. In the 2011-2012 election cycle, Mr. McCutcheon donated $1,776 to each of 15 candidates as well as sums to the RNC and other political party committees. Though his donations were all below the legal limits to individual candidates and political parties, he was prevented by the aggregate limits from making the donations he wished.Donors are currently limited to contributing $5,200 to a candidate for each election cycle ($2,600 each for the primary and general election). }:

:{But they are barred from exceeding overall ceilings of $48,600 for direct contributions to candidates and $74,600 to non-candidate political committees. So though a contributor might give $1,000 to 48 candidates, further donations violate federal law, even if they are well below the $2,600 threshold per candidate.[...]The left is already warning [Roberts] in the media, much as they did so successfully last year in advance of his salvaging of ObamaCare. They will denounce a ruling they don't like as "activist" though it would merely restore the First Amendment's central role in protecting free political speech. ... [P]olitical participation is more heavily regulated today than are video games and pornography.

That is not what the Founders intended.The WSJ's editorial board echoes the same arguments as McCutcheon and the Republican National Committee (RNC) - that limits on campaign contributions are a form of unconstitutional censorship of political speech, a radical departure from decades-old campaign finance law. In truth, this argument represents a fundamental misunderstanding of First Amendment law and the original intent of the Founders, something that the conservative justices on the Court say guides their interpretation of the Constitution.

Those who call themselves originalists should take note that the Founders never intended the First Amendment to systematically allow a small number of wealthy donors to control American politics.In fact, historical research demonstrates the Founders were particularly concerned with campaign finance and the potential for money to corrupt the democratic process. Though the Supreme Court held in Citizens United that the Founders were especially wary of "quid pro quo corruption" (i.e., explicit bribery), it turns out that was just one of many serious flaws in the Court's analysis of that case.

According to an extensive report on the Founders' use of the word "corruption" by Lawrence Lessig, a law professor at Harvard and campaign finance scholar, the Founders were far more concerned with what he calls "dependence corruption" than they were about quid pro quo corruption. Lessig filed an amicus curiae brief in the McCutcheon case in support of the FEC and limits on aggregate campaign donations. In his brief, he argues that the original meaning of "corruption" was concerned with "securing a government free from corrupting dependence on high-dollar donors," not the cramped and outdated quid pro quo definition favored by McCutcheon and the RNC. Because other base contribution limits for each separate candidate can be easily circumvented by joint-fundraising committeesbetween party and politician, aggregate campaign limits prevent such dependence corruption from taking place. }:

As the nonpartisan campaign finance reform group Democracy 21 points out:If the Supreme Court were to strike down the limits on overall contributions at issue in the McCutcheon case, it would reverse almost 40 years of Supreme Court precedents upholding the constitutionality of federal contribution limits. Such a decision would allow individual donors to give million-dollar and multi-million contributions to directly support federal candidates and parties[.] This would return to federal elections the huge contributions that the Supreme Court has held could be prevented and would recreate the system of legalized corruption that existed prior to the Watergate scandals.A decision in favor of big-money Republican donors will hardly "restore" the First Amendment, as the WSJ erroneously claims, because the First Amendment was never meant to protect the "right" of the wealthy few to hijack elections with money. The WSJ may want to rethink its decision to rely on the Founders' intent to argue in favor of near-unlimited campaign donations.

 ==

2012 PAC Summary Data   Total Receipts$352,542Total Spent$354,023Begin Cash on Hand$0End Cash on Hand($1,481)Debts$0Independent Expenditures$134,798Date of last reportDecember 31, 2012 2012 PAC Contribution Data Contributions from this PAC to federal candidates (list recipients)  $0Contributions to this PAC from individual donors of $200 or more ( list donors)$0 Official PAC Name: CONSERVATIVE ACTION FUND  Location: HOOVER, AL 35226  Industry: Republican/Conservative  

Treasurer: MCCUTCHEON, SHAUN  FEC Committee ID: C00496505  (Look up actual documents filed at the FEC)===2014 house Chabot, Paul (R-CA)$1,000$0Dietzel, Paul (R-LA)$1,000$0Mooney, Alex (R-WV)$1,000$0Zinke, Ryan K (R-MT)$1,000$0 Senate Total direct contributions to Democrats: $0 Total direct contributions to Republicans: $11,807

==

6/18 adv lookuo open sec