Fec Bak

5 25 estb

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no merri

see issue one analysis

CLC

2 25

When only a small group of people with extraordinary wealth have power over the government, our system is not responsive to the will of the people, but rather to the will of a handful of wealthy donors whose biggest concerns are lining their own pockets.

Yet, President Trump is rewarding his biggest donors with political favors and countless opportunities to enrich themselves at the expense of the American people.

In addition to funding his 2024 campaign, billionaires — with a combined net worth exceeding $1.2 trillion — also bankrolled President Trump’s inauguration.

But this was only the beginning. Case in point: Despite not being elected by the American people, billionaire Elon Musk's rise to power represents a dangerous new way Trump is manipulating our system so his biggest donors can use the government to line their own pockets.

Our government should not work this way. Presidents creating positions of power for and granting access to wealthy special interests as a thank you for their political donations is corruption and makes the executive branch less responsive to the will of the people.

Campaign Legal Center (CLC) has pushed for stronger campaign finance laws because the American people deserve a government that is transparent and responsive to all Americans, not just a tiny group of billionaires.

We hold all government actors — including Elon Musk — accountable to the laws that make sure public servants serve Americans and not their own business interests.

Elon Musk being gifted a position of power after financially supporting the Trump campaign makes our work fighting corruption more important than ever.

We must ensure that wealthy special interests cannot gain power through illegal coordination schemes, and we must hold all government officials to high ethical standards.

Americans are far too familiar with the ultra-rich using their wealth to access the halls of power. Campaign Legal Center has repeatedly sounded the alarm on the longstanding trend of presidents rewarding their biggest donors with powerful positions such as ambassadorships in their administration.

Now we’re witnessing President Trump reward his wealthy donors not only with ambassadorships, but also with positions in the Cabinet and new roles such as Musk’s unelected position that is influencing government decisions in the shadows.

While the public has little clarity on President Trump’s newly established “U.S. DOGE Service” (CLC has filed public records requests to bring clarity to the matter), Musk has already begun to exert sweeping control over agencies and the sensitive information they hold.

The experts in government agencies, like engineers, economists and scientists, help improve Americans’ daily lives and shouldn't be subject to threats and harassment by an unelected donor.

The Trump administration has already signaled that avoiding conflicts of interest will not be a priority for its political appointees.

The ethics pledge signed between his appointees and the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) has raised eyebrows by allowing several wealthy members of his administration to oversee matters they clearly have a vested interest in.

Perhaps nowhere are the dangers of conflicts of interest more apparent than with Elon Musk clearly standing to gain personal wealth from holding influence over the government’s approach to the federal budget and setting regulations.

He has many business interests intertwined with federal policy — from the hefty government contracts with his SpaceX rockets to the regulation of his electric vehicle company.

Now, in his largely undefined role with DOGE, Musk even has access to information about his company’s competitors.

While Musk only has money to gain, the American people have everything to lose — allowing a private citizen with billions in personal interest to dictate government actions threatens the public service mandate of our agencies.

The Supreme Court’s weakening of our campaign finance laws, the Federal Election Commission’s refusal to hold bad actors accountable and the lack of independent and enforceable ethics enforcement in our government have all played a key role in our country’s allowing only a few wealthy individuals to consolidate power.

However, we have the ability to uphold a government by the people and for the people before it is too late.

CLC will continue to hold the Trump administration accountable by uncovering and exposing corruption and self-dealing. We will also strenuously advocate for strong ethics laws and transparency requirements that ensure our officials remain beholden to the public good, not personal gain.

Now is the time to enforce the guardrails of democracy that will ensure that executive power cannot be auctioned off to the highest bidder by any president to come.

Campaign Legal Center will continue to push for transparent, accountable government at every turn.

Support CLC's work to make sure our government serves the American people, not the business interest of wealthy donors.

ref report: From Dysfunctional To Destructive: The Federal Election Commission's Disastrous New Trend Opening The Floodgates To Big Money In Our Elections | Campaign Legal Center

Opening The Floodgates To Big Money In Our Elections

Date January 22, 2025

Campaign Legal Center’s new report, “From Dysfunctional to Destructive: The Federal Election Commission’s Disastrous New Trend Opening the Floodgates to Big Money in Our Elections,” examines the most consequential of the FEC's recent deregulatory actions.

50 pp DL 5/25

30 plus dec in 2 yrs

IN MORE THAN 30 DEREGULATORY DECISIONS OVER JUST THE PAST TWO YEARS, A MAJORITY BLOC, MADE UP OF FOUR OF THE FEC’S SIX COMMISSIONERS, HAS USED THE AGENCY’S POWERS NOT TO ADVANCE ITS VITAL MISSION BUT TO FUNDAMENTALLY UNDERMINE IT.

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notus 4 25

The bipartisan Federal Election Commission has unanimously dismissed a complaint from conservative activists who alleged NPR is controlled by the Democratic Party and “clearly and unmistakably” advocated for 2024 presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

The 4-0 ruling, released Monday evening, affirms what the FEC has previously established: that NPR is a legitimate news organization exempt from election laws governing political committees and candidates.

This victory comes at a critical juncture for NPR, as President Donald Trump wants...

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an db 5 24

the cash-strapped Republican National Committee (RNC) continues to trail its Democratic counterpart in campaign fundraising. But a new rule recently passed by GOP-friendly officials on the Federal Election Commission (FEC) may end up being a critical lifeline for Republicans this election cycle.

According to the Daily Beast, three Republican members of the FEC appointed during former President Donald Trump's administration recently passed an obscure ruling that effectively approved the expenditure of RNC funds on the ex-president's legal bills. The Beast's Roger Sollenberger and Mini Racker wrote that the rule allows for the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) — the GOP's campaign arm for U.S. Senate races — to divert funds from its legal/recount account toward any overt campaign ad buy, provided that money raised from those ads eventually went back into the legal account.

"This means the RNC can run Trump ads that raise money for the legal proceedings account and then use those funds to pay Trump’s personal legal fees," campaign finance attorney Brett Kappel told the Beast.

"The Republican Party will no doubt be pleased by the holding of the three Republicans that Donald Trump appointed to the FEC," he said.

That ruling was prompted by a lawsuit filed by campaign finance watchdog groups End Citizens United and the Campaign Legal Center, which argued that millions of dollars in ad buys the NRSC made from its legal proceedings account during the 2022 midterm elections were illegal. Campaign finance expert Brendan Fischer told the Beast that the Republican members of the FEC effectively "opened a huge loophole" for Trump by allowing separate committee accounts typically funded by "mega donors writing six-figure checks" to be used on ads.

“These segregated accounts were created with much higher contribution limits and the understanding that they’d only be used for very narrow purposes,” Fischer said. “The party committees aren’t really chasing small-dollar donors with these ads. They are spending big money on campaign ads pretending to solicit small dollar donations.”

While the ruling is beneficial for the former president's reelection campaign, it also means that the GOP's down-ballot candidates and state party organizations will end up with less money. Former senior Republican strategist Stuart Stevens told Sollenberger and Racker that the FEC's decision could hurt the GOP's efforts to keep the House of Representatives and take back the Senate.

"They’re gonna lose race after race after race because Trump is sucking up all the money," Stevens told the Beast. "There’s not one honest state party chairman who isn’t furious about this. There’s not one executive director of a state party that doesn’t believe that they’re being cheated, but they’re all just going to be quiet about it."

This ruling is welcome news for the RNC, whose "Trump 47 Victory" joint fundraising committee with the former president's reelection campaign is badly trailing the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and President Joe Biden's own joint fundraising operations. The Beast reported that Trump 47 Victory brought in $90 million from major donors in the first quarter of 2024, with just $26.5 million in cash on hand.

Meanwhile, the "Biden Victory" joint fundraising committee raised roughly $130 million, and has $60.5 million in cash on hand. While the RNC transferred just $1.5 million of Trump 47 Victory funds to its election account, the DNC got $27 million of Democrats' joint fundraising money, with $13.8 million going to state party organizations to help down-ballot Democratic candidates running for federal office.

Click here to read the Beast's report in full (subscription required).

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an 8 23

no lnx

Machine gun-maker violates federal election law with illegal super PAC donation

Mark Alesia

andRaw Story

August 13, 2023

An Ohio maker of firearms and warfare weaponry, which says its “notable customers” include the U.S. Army, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Navy, has violated federal election law.

Ohio Ordnance Works of Chadron, Ohio, whose fully automatic machine guns are “currently deployed by U.S. and international forces” and “ready for battle right out of the box,” will pay a $19,000 fine, according to an agreement with the Federal Election Commission.

The company admitted making money from the U.S. government as a contractor and, later, making a $100,000 donation to a right-wing super PAC, said the conciliation agreement with the FEC, a bipartisan regulatory agency.

That’s against federal election law, which bars “contributions to political committees by any person who enters into a contract with the United States or its departments … if payment on such contract is to be made in whole or in part from funds appropriated by Congress.”

ALSO READ: Oops, I did it again: This Democratic congresswoman violated a federal law for a second time

A complaint to the FEC said Ohio Ordnance Works made the donation in 2022 to the Club for Growth Action, which lists as a priority “defeating big-government Democrats in red seats and swing districts and replacing them with pro-growth conservatives.”

Club for Growth Action refunded the $100,000 contribution in May of this year, and the FEC did not penalize the super PAC.

As a super PAC, Club for Growth Action may raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to advocate for and against political candidates, and it frequently does so in support of conservative politicians. During the 2021-2022 election cycle alone, it spent nearly $70 million to back or attack federal-level candidates, according to nonpartisan research organization OpenSecrets.

Ohio Ordnance Works had argued that while it did have a “master contract” with the Defense Logistics Agency, an agency within the U.S. Department of Defense, it wasn’t a federal contractor because there were no active purchase orders when it made the donation to Club for Growth Action.

ALSO READ: Federal regulator’s verdict: ‘Judge’ Jeanine Pirro committee is breaking the law

But the FEC’s legal office disagreed, and the agency’s six commissioners — three Republicans, three Democrats — unanimously voted to approve the $19,000 fine.

Ohio Ordnance Works says it has “grown into a world class manufacturer of light, medium, and heavy machine guns able to compete globally with much larger manufacturers.”

The company’s website features the OOW249 Squad Automatic Weapon (S.A.W.), which “provides infantry fire teams with the heavy volume of fire of a machine gun combined with light weight and accuracy. It fires the NATO standard 5.56mm cartridge from a belt or magazine, and is capable of engaging targets out to 800 meters.”

From Your Site Articles

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'Absolutely repulsive': Some House Republicans are now wearing an assault weapon lapel pin ›

knowingly and willfully': Another Trump ally gets caught by the law in the hush-money case

Jon Skolnik Salon

June 03, 2021

The tabloid publishing company that owns the National Enquirer will be fined $187,500 by FEC for a hush money payment to a woman with whom Donald Trump had an extramarital affair – a transaction

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/automated-donors-to-gop-campaigns-are-smashing-fec-limits-and-making-headlines-on-fake-news-websites/

in recent weeks, a number of political campaigns and committees have received letters from the Federal Election Commission notifying them that they may have violated federal rules and regulations governing campaign finance, such as inaccurately reporting expenditures or accepting campaign donations in excess of the legal limit from dozens of people.

These letters are not uncommon, and not necessarily indicative of wrongdoing — the assumption is that campaigns want to follow the rules but may have made mistakes in the heat of the contest. When the FEC notifies a campaign that it has taken too much money from donors, for instance, the letter lists the names and donation histories of the supporters who gave too much, so the campaign can isolate the over-limit amounts and refund, reattribute or redesignate that money. They have 60 days to do this before they must report back to the FEC.

Some of those lists this year, however, have been exceptionally long — a phenomenon that election experts attribute to automated recurring donations over a long and particularly intense campaign season.

For instance, Sen. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., received two separate notices last week, one of them 38 pages long and the other 41 pages. Each flagged excessive contributions from around 60 donors, for adjacent reporting periods. Her colleague, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, received a nine-page list that alone flags a total well above $150,000 in excessive donations that the campaign must explain to the FEC.

In a similar letter to President Trump's re-election campaign last month, the FEC flagged more than 35,000 contributions from 1,045 donors, totaling more than $4.5 million in donations that the campaign needs to explain and reconcile. That list was 855 pages long. On Oct. 1, the FEC sent the campaign another letter flagging excessive donations, this one 814 pages long.

In a similar letter to President Trump's re-election campaign last month, the FEC flagged more than 35,000 contributions from 1,045 donors, totaling more than $4.5 million in donations that the campaign needs to explain and reconcile. That list was 855 pages long. On Oct. 1, the FEC sent the campaign another letter flagging excessive donations, this one 814 pages long.

"You have to consider the possibility that some of these serial donors may not have fully appreciated what they were doing when they signed up for recurring contributions," Kappel said.

The McSally notices illustrate this point. The contribution history of one single recurring donor, Bruce P. Bengtson, accounts for more than 10 full pages, or 25% of the list. Other donors take up multiple pages, such as Bill Deaton, whose name appears on 215 line items in one letter.

Deaton, founder of a Kentucky-based data-processing company, was fined $1 million and sentenced to a year of home detention in a federal fraud case in 2010. FEC records show he has contributed $6,706 to McSally this year. The individual limit for a full election cycle is $5,600.

The Graham campaign also appears to have erred in some of its bookkeeping, according to the FEC, and the Harrison campaign needs to explain several donors with foreign addresses and three sources identified as "possible prohibited entities." (While the letter does not elaborate on the latter, one of the names — PCCC, LLC — appears to have been identified as a difficult-to-trace entity in a Center for Public Integrity analysis of 2016 donations to Hillary Clinton.)

One of the over-limit donors to Graham, who has taken to begging for campaign cash in recent Fox News appearances, was Washington attorney Ty Cobb,formerly a lawyer for Trump during the Russia investigations. Cobb has given Graham $1,000 above the $2,800 general election maximum.

A handful of names, however, are on the lists for both Graham and McSally. All those people, according to FEC searches, appear to be retirees. A closed-quote Google search of these donors brings up something unusual: Their names also appear in the headlines of what look like online news articles announcing their donations.

For instance, a man named Henry L. Collins III gave $4,350 to Graham's campaign between April 30 and June 30, in a series of dozens of donations between $50 and $500. During that same period, he gave $4,425 to McSally. FEC records show that as of July 15, Collins had contributed a total $14,745 to McSally, nearly $10,000 above the individual limit, and as of June 30 had given about $8,400 to Graham, an excess of $2,800.

On July 1, Collins' name was featured in a headline for an article in something calling itself PHX Reporter that read: "Martha McSally's campaign committee receives $2,705 from Henry L. Collins III."

But PHX Reporter is identical to another site called Western South Dakota News, which on July 14 announced Collins' $500 contribution to Liz Marty May, a Republican congressional candidate. (Collins did not reply to Salon's request for comment.)

For that matter, Western South Dakota News looks exactly like the Treasure Coast Sun, which looks like the Columbia Standard — a site that published stories about individual contributions to both Graham and Harrison. Collins' name appears in a list of top donors for the month of May on a Columbia Standard article — and three other donors on the list appear to have exceeded the legal limit with contributions from that month alone.

These sites are part of a larger network of what could fairly be described as fake news sites — webpages that publish algorithm-driven content, much of it anonymous and automated, targeted at hyper-local audiences. Those networks of sites — dubbed "pink slime," a play on "yellow journalism" — have tripled in size as Election Day approaches. And they're part of an even larger network, connected to a conservative PAC.

That network, however, also appears to publish campaign refunds at times. One repeat McSally donor who spoke with Salon said that he had been refunded money multiple times over the last year, most recently last week, after the McSally campaign's most recent FEC letter. Earlier refunds made it into the pink slime headlines. The latest news apparently has yet to break.

The McSally, Graham and Harrison campaigns declined to comment for this article.

ref1

https://www.cjr.org/analysis/as-election-looms-a-network-of-mysterious-pink-slime-local-news-outlets-nearly-triples-in-size.php

tHE RUN-UP TO THE 2020 November elections in the US has produced new networks of shadowy, politically backed “local news websites” designed to promote partisan talking points and collect user data. In December 2019, the Tow Center for Digital Journalismreported on an intricately linked network of 450 sites purporting to be local or business news publications. New research from the Tow Center shows the size of that network has increased almost threefold over the course of 2020, to over 1,200 sites.

Identifying these new sites is a result of further analysis of the closely linked entities with conservative ties illustrated in Figure 1 (below). The Tow Center focused predominantly onMetric Media, Franklin Archer, Local Government Information Services (LGIS), and Locality Labs. Both Metric Media and Franklin Archer claim to be the largest local news provider in the US, though many of their sites have low visibility in both search and social media. Over 90 percent of their stories are algorithmically generated using publicly available data sets or by repurposing stories from legitimate sources.

In the remaining stories that have an authentic byline there is often a conservative bent. As reported by the Lansing State Journal and The Guardian, [guk] this includes articles about voter fraud using data from the Heritage Foundation, negative pieces about elected Democratic representatives, and stories supporting conservative candidates. This low-cost automated story generation has come to be known aspink slime journalism. In addition to the hundreds of titles that ape the look and feel of local news, our research has detected new sites in this network that address single subjects, appeal to religious orientation, and focus on business news.

no pix ]Figure 1: The organizational structure of the network]

The recent increase in activity is in line with the election cycle. It is becoming an increasingly common campaign strategy for pacs and single-interest lobbyists to fund websites that borrow credibility from news designto help advance particular agendas. The proliferation of politically funded local news sites across the political spectrum raises questions about how these entities represent themselves to the public, and how they are categorized by search engines and social platforms.

The number of news media properties funded by often obscure political interests has been growing for a number of years and will reach a new peak in the 2020 election cycle. A recent report from Open Secrets highlighted “dark money” networks funded by liberal-leaning donors. Academics Jessica Mahone and Phil Napoli recently plotted some of these known entitieson a mapto show the geographic concentration of the networks. But the definitions of what constitutes a politically funded network are hard to establish, particularly if the financial and ownership structures are not clear.

A recent report from Politico outlined how Courier Newsroom, a group of politically affiliated local news sites, was spending large amounts of advertising money on Facebook on articles promoting Democratic candidates. Establishing how politically funded networks are intrinsically different from news organizations with strong political affiliations such as Breitbart or Fox News is often difficult.Politically funded networks can appear on Facebook pages classified as “Media/News company,” and articles from partisan sites are indexed by Google News.

Today, along with further analysis of this network, we are publishing the full list of websites, the geographic focus of each publication where one exists, and the corresponding organizational entity each site belongs to. However, due to the convoluted connections between these organizations, precise ownership is difficult to establish. Often a site will carry different information about its provenance on its “About” page, its Facebook page, and in the terms and conditions it publishes on its own site.

The overlapping networks seem designed to confuse casual observers as to their provenance and ownership, and delineations between them are fuzzy.The publishers involved are incorporated in different states, have different business models, and provide different services. However, they all share certain distinguishing traits that suggest close overlapping relationships, such as the same authors, story templates, analytics identifiers, and other technological resources.

to identify these new sites and the evolution of the networks, we adopted the same techniques we used for our investigation in December, relying heavily on third-party tools like RiskIQ and Farsight DNSDB.

In our latest research, we found the vast majority of the domains were under the umbrella of Metric Media, a Delaware limited-liability company that is a division of Situation Management Group. Metric Media properties now account for over 960 sites, or 80 percent of all the domains we’ve identified that belong to this network. All publishing is done “under a licensing agreement with the Metric Media Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit news content provider.”

Over seven hundred of these local sites have been activated in 2020, pointing to a sharp acceleration in activity in the lead-up to the November elections. The new activity has seen a host of titles such as the Philly Leader and San Francisco Sun added to the network, with the number of states expanding from ten to all but one. (While Metric Media doesn’t have any titles for Illinois, LGIS does.)

Beyond Metric Media’s rapid expansion, our research showed that Franklin Archer had also expanded the number of networks under its umbrella. The organization boasts that it is “the largest producer of local news in the United States,” with 200-plus active websites and two networks: Metro Business Network and Local News Network. A third network, American Catholic Tribune Media Network, was created in March 2020. There are currently six sites in the network, including the American Catholic Tribune. Further, Franklin Archer products now also include a handful of stand-alone titles that are either single-subject (e.g., Current Science Daily) or geographically focused on specific towns or neighborhoods (e.g., West Loop Today), as well as two podcasts hosted by the Freedom Media Network. Franklin Archer also lists public relations activities on its website, where user testimonials boast about the effectiveness of sponsored content as a marketing tool. [pix]

volution and Sprawl of the Network in 2020

The bulk of sites that went live in 2020 are under the Metric Media banner. In 2019, when we were first looking at Metric Media, itsstated goal was to launch “hundreds [of sites] nationwide to inform citizens about news in their local communities.” Today, the language on the same page indicates it has reached the goal of creating “hundreds” of sites. Awebsite lists its publications by state, along with a one-line explanation of what the company is: “a digital firm managing the online presence of the portfolio of local news sites known as Metric Media.” Based on passive DNS data (RiskIQ and DNSDB Scout),by the end of January 2020, Metric Media had publications devoted to all but one of the forty states that weren’t already covered in 2019; the domains for these were registered in the second half of 2019. The one exception was Illinois, which we cover in more detail further down.

Some sites cover entire states, whereas others are devoted to specific cities and metropolitan areas. The nomenclature is often formulaic, combining compass directions with the names of the states or cities and then generic terms for news publications. Site names include SW Oklahoma News, NE Ohio Times, and West SFV Today (in California’s San Fernando Valley). Many major cities get their own “wire” publication: Detroit City Wire, Dallas City Wire, Seattle City Wire.

Figure 3: Metric Media and LGIS# sites per state

Figure 3 illustrates the number of publications present in each state. Rhode Island has the fewest devoted to it (four), California the most (seventy-four). We didn’t find any publications for either of these two states in 2019; in fact, we only found Metric Media properties in ten states then. Now there are sites covering forty-nine states; only Illinois and Washington, DC, are absent from the Metric Media network.

The absence of Illinois publications may have a relatively simple explanation: LGIS, a stand-alone corporation devoted to covering Illinois since 2015, is part of the extended network, with connections to Metric Media. LGIS hasties to conservative figures in the state, including Dan Proft and Brian Timpone. Proft, who through his pacshas raised millions to back conservative candidates in Illinois,shut down two pacs earlier this year. Timpone has a long history creating businesses focusing on automated low-cost journalism (or “pink slime” journalism), including thecontroversial Journatic and its successorLocality Labs. Locality Labs appears to be the organization creating the technology that allows for the automation of news stories using publicly available data sets across this entire ecosystem of 1,200 websites. One of Proft’s now-shuttered pacs has paid one of Timpone’s other companies, Newsinator, for “Advertising – newspaper,” according to campaign finance records.

Until December, theAbout Us page of the Illinois sites stated they were a “product of LGIS—Local Government Information Services,” while theTerms of Service andPrivacy pages indicated they were properties of Locality Labs LLC. As of March, however, theTerms of Service andPrivacy pages are blank. The language on theirAbout Us pages hasn’t changed, maintaining that the sites are part of LGIS and funded in part “by advocacy groups who share our beliefs in limited government.” (Most of the Illinois websites have similar language in their About Us pages, where they mention details specific to the publication, and then details about the objectives of LGIS and its funding. However, for some sites, like theGrundy Reporter andSouthern Illinois News, the About Us pages have been blank since at least last year, based on snapshots in the Internet Archive.)

In March, these Illinois sites adopted the same website theme (and thus the same look and feel) as the sites that Metric Media explicitly states it runs.

Additionally, Metric Media has at least two single-subject sites: Insurance Rate Reporter and Education Daily Wire. The About Us page for the former is blank, but its Privacy Policy and Terms of Service pages say the site is operated by Metric Media LLC. Education Daily Wire’s Privacy and Terms of Service pages are blank, but its About Us page says it’s funded by the Metric Media Foundation. These publications are not mentioned on either Metric Media website: the LLC or the foundation.

Also absent from any Metric Media website are the fifty-one Metro Business Network publications operated by Metric Media LLC, per their privacy policies and terms of service. According to theMetro Business Network site, these publications “aim to cover news from Fortune 500’s to SMB’s on Main Street [sic].” While the site does not mention anything about the ownership or funding of these publications, the Privacy Policy and Terms pages state that the network is operated by Locality Labs.

Tracing the ownership of sites within the network is made more complicated by how the sites label themselves on Facebook. The Facebook pages for the business news sites include information about the page owner, which is where information about news and media properties on the platform can be found. However, sites within the same subnetwork (Metro Business Network, in this case) have different confirmed page owners, and in a handful of cases, no confirmed owner at all. Those with confirmed page ownership are split between Franklin Archer and Metric Media, and while the addresses for the two owners are different, their phone number is the same. The social presence of the network is very small, with negligible interactions (followers, likes, and shares) on each page.

Franklin Archer, a fictitious name for Iowa-incorporated DirecTech LLC, “brings coverage to underreported areas of American life,” according to its website. It has two networks: the “Metro Business Daily Network” and the “Local News Network.” As reported byThe Guardian, the CEO of Franklin Archer is Timpone’s brother, Michael Timpone. On the corporate front, the relationship between Metric Media LLC and Franklin Archer remains unclear, but they appear to share not only technology resources and authors, but also the publications themselves. To wit, as can be seen below in Figure 4: at the time of writing, the Arizona Business Daily is owned by Franklin Archer, according to Facebook, and the Michigan Business Daily by Metric Media LLC. The New Jersey Business Daily has no confirmed page owner.

[pix]

2020, a third network was added to the Franklin Archer portfolio, although it is not mentioned on its website: the American Catholic Tribune Media Network, which includes five state-specific publications (in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Florida, and Arizona) and one national one (the American Catholic Tribune). These sites relay information about parishes and churches, including updates on how various churches intend to conduct Mass every week. Earlier this year, the sites mentioned they are “a product of Franklin Archer,” but that disclaimer no longer exists. Their Facebook pages, however, state they are owned by Franklin Archer.

These sites follow the exact same model as all the other sites in the extended network: rewrite original reporting from existing sources, including diocesan newspapers, repurpose announcements (including Mass timings and homilies) published by various churches under the guise of “press release submissions,” and sprinkle on some original reporting.

:{Yet another new product of Franklin Archer is the Freedom Media Network, which hosts podcasts and a YouTube channel with just under a thousand subscribers. The channel is described as “your source for positive news and content aimed at helping you become more purposeful, productive, and prosperous.” One of the podcasts, Freedom Mindset Radio, is rife with anti-science positions,}:{the suggestion that getting a diagnosis is dangerous, as “they’re labeling a bag of symptoms.” The YouTube videos started being uploaded in January, and the website went live in March. }:

One-off sites continue to be created alongside these dedicated networks and channels. Sites created since our last investigation include the Neighbourhood Guardian, West Loop Today, the Midland Times, and Current Science Daily.

If you have examples of similar networks operating in your area or would like access to more granular data, please get in touch with us here.

ref 2

https://mainebeacon.com/anonymous-maine-news-site-tied-to-conservative-pac-funded-network/

at first glance, Maine Business Daily seems like some kind of local corporate newsletter, combining niche industry reports, localized data summaries, and press releases from regional Maine Chambers of Commerce. The earliest articles on the site date back to spring 2018 and the vast majority of the articles are attributed to anonymous bylines “Maine Business Daily reports” or “Local Labs News Service.”

However, nestled amid the banal business reporting are two recent stories on the allegations that Democratic Maine House Speaker Sara Gideon, who is mounting a challenge to U.S. Senator Susan Collins, violated campaign finance rules. Jason Savage, executive director of the Maine GOP, is quoted heavily in the posts, which are attributed to West Virginia-based freelance journalist Kyla Asbury (and are the only stories on Maine Business Daily that have an actual name as a byline).

The publication and promotion of these pieces raised some flags for Maine readers, with one Reddit user writing “I’ve never heard of Maine Business Daily, but two of the top three articles in their ‘public policy’ section right now are political articles about Sara Gideon that have nothing to do with policy.”

Screenshot of a portion of the Maine Business Daily website featuring stories on House Speaker Sara Gideon.

Maine Business Daily’s “About” section also provides scant information about who is operating the site, though it does note that part of its mission is to “inspire productive discussion among policy makers, business leaders and the public.”

The Maine State Chamber of Commerce told Beacon that, despite the reposting of local chamber releases, it is not affiliated with the website.

The homepage of Maine Business Daily includes a link to theMetro Business Network, which lists 30 other state-based sites as part of its organization. According to its website, the Metro Business Network “provides a fresh take on business news. Launching in all 50 states plus DC, we aim to cover news from Fortune 500’s to SMB’s on Main Steet [sic].”

Matt Gertz, a senior fellow with Media Matters for America who specializes in conservative media infrastructure, says that these kinds of networks have flourished amid the decline of local news.

“As local newspapers get wiped out or bought out by big chains and reporters get laid off and chains try to seek efficiencies, you see a void around local news and these news networks try to fill that void,” Gertz said. “A lot of sites are providing information about local events that previously you would get from local newspaper, so you come for information about a local event and if you end up with some sort of ideological screed about the terrors of government, it’s a win for them.”

The Metro Business web

The Metro Business Network sites are uniform in appearance and content. The same stories appear across the entire network, with each “Education” page filled with versions of this story: “Graduates earn 91 degrees, certificates from the University of Maine at Machias” and each “Public Policy” section has a regional version of this one: “Maine ranks 3rd for rental car tax rates, study finds.”

Gertz said the content is likely being generated by an algorithm, which provides “a way to mass produce seemingly local content almost with no overhead, because you are paying no reporters to write stories but you can pump out a huge amount of stuff.”

Buried amid the posts, however, are partisan landmines such as this op-ed that appeared on numerous publications in the network, “Next Step in Dismantling Obamacare: Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB),” that concludes: “This is America. Rationing is for commies. Repeal IPAB now!” The column is written by notorious fake pollster and right wing conspiracy theorist Dean Chambers.

Other articles are more subtle, such as this Illinois news story arguing against the local minimum wage increase.

Anonymous news with a worldview

The website’s privacy policy states that Maine Business Daily and these other business news sites are operated by theDelaware-based Locality Labs, LLC, which, according to an April 2018 investigation by the Chicago Tribune, is owned by the conservative Chicago-based media entrepreneur Brian Timpone.

“A firm of Timpone’s called Journatic once used database mining and low-cost freelance writers to create hyperlocal news stories for the Tribune until complaints emergedof plagiarism and faked bylines,” the Tribune reported. That firm is “now known as Locality Labs.”

An earlier piece published in the Columbia Journalism Review in 2016 revealed that Locality Labs, or Local Labs as it is often called, is part of a web of content creators, online and print publications run by Timpone and his cohorts that were accused of electioneering due to their coverage of and connection to candidates and political action committees. Some of Timpone’s news ventures received hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding from theLiberty Principles PAC, whose objective is to “support candidates for state and local offices who are committed to the economic liberty policy agenda.”

Ashbury, who authored the two stories on Gideon, has bylines published on other Locality Labs-owned sites, including the Cook County Record, West Virginia Record, and Legal Newsline — the website of which explains that its coverage is focused on how state court rulings impact the “legal landscape for corporate executives.”

Asbury’s LinkedIn profile says that for the past year she has worked as a freelance writer for a company called Interactive Content Services. The 2018 Tribune article said that another Trimpone-owned firm Newsinator “has a history of doing paid political work and offers marketing services to companies under the name Interactive Content Services.”

It’s not clear if the Liberty Principles PAC has a stake in Maine’s U.S. Senate race, or if it or another entity are funding the specific, anti-Gideon coverage. The articles feature no campaign finance disclosures.

This is not the first time an anonymous, conservative news site has been launched in Maine. In January 2018, evidence was released connecting Savage and the Maine Republican Party to the Maine Examiner, a then-anonymous publication which often published false and misleading attacks against Democratic candidates.

GOP Moves to Stack FEC in Its Favor

By Alex Kotch | March 9th, 2020

Trump nominates a Republican to the Federal Election Commission who has fought against donor transparency and has ties to the Koch political network, while leaving the Democratic seat vacant.

Alabama[

Alabama HB 56, an anti-illegal-immigration bill co-authored by Kris Kobach and passed in 2011, required proof of citizenship to be presented by voters on Election Day.^[90] Much of the law was invalidated on appeal at various levels of appeals courts or voluntarily withdrawn or reworded.^[91][92][93]

In its 2014 Shelby County v. Holder decision, the Supreme Court of the United States allowed jurisdictions with a history of suppression of minority voters to avoid continuing to abide by federal preclearance requirements for changes in voter registration and casting of ballots.Within 24 hours of that ruling, Alabama implemented a previously-passed 2011 law requiring specific types of photo identification to be presented by voters. The state closed DMV offices in eight of ten counties which had the highest percentage black population, but only three in the ten counties with the lowest black population. In 2016, Alabama's Secretary of State (SOS) John Merrill began the process to require proof of citizenship from voters, despite Merrill saying he did not know of any cases where non-citizens had voted. Four-term Republican Representative Mo Brooks found that he himself had been purged from the rolls. Merrill also declined to publicize the passage of legislation that enabled some 60,000 Alabaman former felons to vote.^[94][95] Alabama's requirement regarding proof of citizenship had been approved by federal Election Assistance Commission Director Brian Newby.^[96]

===

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/9/28/1888560/-FEC-Chair-Releases-Its-Digest-To-Public-After-Trump-Lackey-Tries-To-Suppress-It

no lnx twt

Ellen Weintraub is the the FEC Chair. She lets us know that a Trump lackey, GOP FEC Commissioner Caroline Hunt, took the unprecedented step of suppressing the FEC’s weekly Digest because Weintraub most recently included a “Draft Interpretive Rule Concerning Prohibited Activities Involving Foreign Nationals".

Ellen L Weintraub

Funny story. The @FEC puts out a "Weekly Digest" of everything we do, an immensely helpful public resource. Check it out, and subscribe, here:https://www.fec.gov/updates/?update_type=weekly-digest …

Latest updates - FEC.gov

Find what you need to know about the federal campaign finance process. Explore legal resources, campaign finance data, help for candidates and committees, and more.

fec.gov

Ellen L Weintraub

This week, I published a “Draft Interpretive Rule Concerning Prohibited Activities Involving Foreign Nationals" on the http://fec.gov web site:https://www.fec.gov/documents/1796/mtgdoc_19-41-A.pdf …

Home - FEC.gov

Find what you need to know about the federal campaign finance process. Explore legal resources, campaign finance data, help for candidates and committees, and more.

fec.gov

After commenting about how Republicans view the First Amendment Weintraub goes on to release the Digest in its entirety to the American people:

GOP FEC Commissioner Caroline Hunter took the altogether unprecedented step of objecting to its being added to the Digest and blocked publication of the whole Digest as a result.

Ellen L Weintraub

I always thought these anti-regulatory people liked the First Amendment well enough. I guess they think it's just for corporations.

I'm not fond of anyone trying to suppress my speech.

9,141

4:03 PM - Sep 27, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

1,719 people are talking about this

So here’s the beginning of Weintraub’s release of the Digest. Please click through for the info which includes examples of rules coming into play that include Roger Stone :-)

Please click through the tweets to find the Digest!

ref

implemented?

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2018/03/new-fec-new-rules-for-digital-ads/

Federal Election Commission (FEC) voted on Wednesday to move forward with newrules that would bump up disclosure requirements for certain political ads on platforms like Facebook and Google.

The move comes as spending on the 2018 midterms is ramping up and as both lawmakers and digital platforms look to prevent continued foreign influence in American elections.

Any rule change may not be in place for the bulk of this election year as well, and last week FEC Republican Chairwoman Caroline Hunter expressed apprehension about “changing the rules of the game” midway through an election cycle.

At the meeting, commissioners presented two proposals that would require new disclaimers on “express advocacy” ads on digital platforms. “Express advocacy” ads advocate for the election or defeat of a candidate and makeup just a small percentage of online ads.

The commission voted 4-0 to open 60 days for public comments and have scheduled a June 27 public hearing on the matter.

The two proposals vary in their requirements for the size and content of disclaimers, among other differences. One proposal would also define the term “internet communication.” The measures would also only cover a small portion of political advertising on digital platforms and likely not affect the types of ads that allowed for the harnessing of Facebook and other digital platforms by Russian actors in 2016.

However, Democrat Ellen Weintraub, the FEC’s vice chairwoman, called the commission’s vote a “step in the right direction” for transparency of digital advertising, a medium that is expected to be increasingly experimented with since the Trump campaign successfully harnessed it in 2016.

Political spending on digital ads is projected togrow by 2,539 percent between 2014 and 2018, according to a recent study.

“I think it will be an improvement,” Weintraub said of the FEC’s proposals. “It will bring greater transparency to political ads. It’s not going to solve all the problems that we saw in the last election.”

Despite butting heads in the process ofdrafting the proposed rules, commissioners noted the urgency to create rules to regulate the growing realm of digital advertising.

“It has taken another event like Watergate to make everyone realize we have to act in a bipartisan [effort] in order to do something,” said Commissioner Steven Walther, an independent.

Republican Commissioner Matthew Petersen said they were “threading the needle,” trying not to overregulate but also working toward greater transparency.

“We have a strong interest in ensuring that we are not impeding the further development of the internet and technology as a means of allowing and facilitating political communication,” Petersen said, “but at the same time ensuring that the disclaimer requirements … are also being met.”

craig holman don mcG and b43 broke it

https://kpfa.org/episode/talkies-september-5-2019/

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/08/30/category-6-big-money-hurricane-coming-fec-gutted-first-responders-arent

A Category 6 hurricane of Big Money is barreling toward us in 2020, and now the nation’s first responders are unable to act.

On Tuesday, Federal Election Commission (FEC) Vice Chair Matthew Peterson announced his resignation at the end of the week, which will leave the agency without the quorum it needs to be able to police our nation’s campaign finance laws. By Saturday, only three members will remain on the six-member commission—meaning the FEC will no longer be able to meet, adopt rules and regulations, offer formal advice to candidates and committees, or enforce the law.

"The stakes couldn’t be higher. Whether you call it a democracy or a republic, our system of self-government is in existential danger from of a hurricane of Big Money spending."

As the nation heads into the 2020 cycle—an election that is expected to set an all-time record for both regulated and dark money political spending—we need a tough and vigilant watchdog in charge of monitoring and enforcing compliance with our campaign finance laws. But now that watchdog is effectively closed for business and won’t reopen until new commissioners are chosen and confirmed.

In ordinary times, Public Citizen would call on the president to nominate and the U.S. Senate to immediately confirm new commissioners to fill the vacant FEC positions, restoring the quorum and allowing the agency to act.

But who are we kidding? We already know they won’t.

President Donald Trump and many Senate Republicans—chief among them, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)—are openly contemptuous of campaign finance limits or electioneering rules of any kind.

Republican politicians have shown time and again that they’re eager to lie, cheat, steal and rig elections to keep themselves and their party in power. Why would Trump or McConnell put a cop on the beat?

The few so called Republican “moderates” that remain won’t lift a finger either. The most we can expect is for U.S. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) to wring her hands in a practiced display of feigned disappointment, like she always does.

When you step back and look at the big picture, what’s happening at the FEC is part of a long-term project by the right. For decades, anti-government extremists have tried to shut down watchdog agencies and put billionaires and big corporations in charge. Now they’ve succeeded.

To paraphrase right-wing ringleader Grover Norquist, they’ve drowned the FEC in a bathtub.

What we’re facing now is a perfect storm of corruption and criminality on a scale that’s almost impossible to fathom. The 2020 elections are expected reach or even exceed $8 billion in political spending. And as of Saturday, not one penny of it will be subject to meaningful oversight.

The question is whether Senate Democrats, the press and the public will raise holy hell to put a campaign finance cop back on the beat. Or will they meekly acquiesce to yet another Republican scheme to shut down a vital public interest watchdog in government and rig the political system in their favor?

The stakes couldn’t be higher. Whether you call it a democracy or a republic, our system of self-government is in existential danger from of a hurricane of Big Money spending. Representative government cannot and will not survive wave after wave of barely regulated spending by multimillionaires, billionaires and giant corporations. In its wake will be an endless swamp of legalized corruption and bribery with self-serving autocratic cretins like Trump as king.

"We The People have a choice: We can allow ourselves to be victims of this disaster, or we can become first responders."

If we want a better future…if we ever want our government address the climate emergency, pass Medicare for All, end student debt, fight racism and sexism, and reduce inequality, we have to start by fighting for a political process and government that represents us.

That means revitalizing and empowering public interest watchdog agencies like the FEC, enacting tough anti-corruption laws and campaign finance regulations, overturningCitizens United—which opened the floodgates of corporate political spending—expanding democracy with legislation like H.R. 1, and electing leaders who’ll fight to roll back corporate power on behalf of regular workers, consumers and families.

We The People have a choice: We can allow ourselves to be victims of this disaster, or we can become first responders. Already, the skies are darkening, the winds are picking up and the waves are getting bigger. No one’s coming to save you.

Time to choose.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/how-a-single-republican-managed-to-completely-derail-the-agency-that-oversees-federal-election-law/

no lnx

How a single Republican managed to completely derail the agency that oversees federal election law

MSNBC

Written by Alex Henderson August 27, 2019

The Federal Election Commission has continued to shrink in size: Republican Commissioner Matthew S. Peterson has announced his resignation,which will bring the FEC down to only three members.

With only three commissioners, the FEC, which enforces election law, won’t be able to form a quorum— the minimum number of members — required to take substantial actions. As the New York Times reported, this includes: “holding board meetings, starting audits, making new rules and levying fines for campaign finance violations.”

As the 2020 presidential election is only 15 months away, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow finds Peterson’s departure to be a “very alarming” development — and Maddow voiced her concerns when FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub appeared on her show on Monday night.

Maddow asked Weintraub, a Democrat, if she could assure her that Peterson’s departure is “not as bad as it seems.”

“Well, it’s not great,” the chair responded. “It’s definitely not great, Rachel. But I want to assure the American people that the agency is not closing its doors. We have a dedicated staff who will continue to show up for work every day, and we will make sure that we fulfill our core mission of disclosure — of following the money and making sure the American people can follow the money, and finding out who is supporting which candidates, and how they’re spending their money.

Weintraub quickly added, however, that lacking a quorum poses some major problems for the FEC.

“It is definitely not good for us not to have a quorum because we can continue to do investigations that have already been authorized, but we can’t authorize any new investigations,” Weintraub told Maddow. “We can’t issue any rules. We can’t issue any advisory opinions.”

Weintraub added, “We’ve been limping along with four members for a while now…. It’s hard to maintain a quorum when you’ve only got the bare four.”

The FEC chair told Maddow that it would be quite possible for new FEC commissioners to be nominated by President Donald Trump and confirmed by the U.S. Senate “in fairly short order if they decide to do so.” But when the FEC “ran out of a quorum” in 2008, Weintraub noted, it “took months before they decided to fill the empty seats and bring us back to full strength.”

“I am sincerely hoping we are not going to run into that situation again,” Weintraub told Maddow.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/07/how-fundraisers-convinced-right-wingers-to-donate-10-million-to-defeat-obama-and-then-kept-almost-all-of-it/

no lnx

How fundraisers convinced right-wingers to donate $10 million to defeat Obama — and then kept almost all of it

Written by ProPublica July 27, 2019

After recruiting thousands of donors for the American Conservative Union — the powerful organization behind the annual CPAC conference — a Republican political operative pushed the same contributors to give millions to a PAC that promised to go after then-President Barack Obama, but then steered much of their donations to himself and his partners.

The PAC, called the Conservative Majority Fund, has raised nearly $10 million since mid-2012 and continues to solicit funds to this day, primarily from thousands of steadfast contributors to conservative causes, many of them senior citizens. But it has made just $48,400 in political contributions to candidates and committees. Public records indicate its main beneficiaries are theoperative Kelley Rogers, who has a history of disputes over allegedly unethical fundraising, and one of the largest conservative fundraising companies, InfoCision Management Corp., which charged millions of dollars in fundraising fees.

The saga of how politically connected fundraisers used one of the nation’s leading conservative organizations as a springboard for fundraising that mainly benefited the fundraisers themselves sheds light on the growing problem of so-called scam PACs — organizations that take advantage of loosened campaign finance laws to reap windfalls for insiders while directing only a small portion of receipts to actual political advocacy.

Watchdogs have long complained that ethics laws fail to prevent the exploitation of donors by organizations operating with little or no oversight, and even President Donald Trump’s campaign issued a warning this year about “dishonest fundraising groups” using the president’s name to raise funds.

Rogers’ and InfoCision’s work on behalf of the ACU also shows how lax regulation allows big-name political organizations to recruit donors without identifying either the source of the calls or the ultimate beneficiaries of the donations. ACU appears to have had little control over the PAC’s operation and was not the source of its fundraising scripts.

“The individuals — or many of the individuals — who seem to be profiting off of scam PACs are the same people who also provide services to mainstream players,” said Adav Noti, a lawyer who worked for more than 10 years at the Federal Election Commission. “Obviously not every political consultant is fleecing small donors. But the consultants who are fleecing small donors, largely the way they’re able to do that is because they have experience and connections.”

Rogers and InfoCision did not respond to repeated requests for interviews — including lists of detailed questions. But the extent of their operation is detailed in a series of emails and documents obtained by ProPublica and Politico from a person with direct knowledge.In the records, Rogers and his cohorts discuss how to contour their pitches to collect the most money, betting that the most red-meat appeals would draw the most dollars.

“This makes me a little queasy … which is good,” Rogers wrote after reviewing a script for a fundraising call that questioned Obama’s citizenship. “This is approved.”

The emails raise questions about Rogers’ work ostensibly on behalf of theACU, which burst to fame in the 1970s and calls its conference “the birthplace of modern conservatism” for its role in elevating Ronald Reagan. The CPAC conference, most recently held at National Harbor, Maryland, is widely considered a crucial point of connection between GOP leadership and the grassroots activists who whip up excitement for the party’s agenda.

In 2010, the ACU enlisted Rogers to find new donors for the organization. To do so, Rogers formed a political nonprofit called the New Conservative Coalition and began soliciting money. It raised nearly $3.4 million between 2010 and mid-2012, although none of that money went to the ACU, IRS filings and records from Colorado show, because prospecting for new donors routinely consumes most or all of the money brought in.

By early 2012, the group appears to have test-marketed pitches to donors that were too extreme or embarrassing to be associated with the ACU itself. The emails reflect the insistence of then-ACU Chairman Al Cardenas, the veteran conservative lobbyist, and others in the organization that no trace of the ACU’s fingerprints be visible in the scripts given to telemarketers.

“Kelley just left me a voicemail that ACU has received a few calls in their office from people who ACU thought had received a [fundraising] call … [and] been directed to the ACU’s conservative.org website (and then called the ACU office.),” wrote one of Rogers’s colleagues. “… it may be nothing … but would you double check to make sure their [sic] in NO reference to ACU, conservative.org or Al Cardenas in any script, including the thank you call script?”

After finding references to ACU affiliates in some of the scripts, an operative asked, “I’m assuming we need ALL ACU references removed — is that right?”

“Yes … just get rid of all of them,” responded another.

At another point, Rogers’ colleagues expressed concern about Cardenas’ Hispanic heritage and the tenor of their anti-immigration message to donors. The script, drafted in January 2012, declared that undocumented immigrants “account for a large percentage of our crime — and prison costs … and take jobs away from Americans.” Those claims are not supported by evidence.

“Cardenas, the ACU Chairman, is Hispanic,” the consultant working with Rogers wrote. “In an effort to keep this script under the radar I think we should re-name it ‘Obama’s Plan.’”

In an interview, Cardenas said he didn’t recall any disagreements between ACU and InfoCision. He said ACU had been careful to run the fundraising project by its lawyers.

“The only thing I remember is making sure our executive director thought it was a good idea” to seek out new donors, Cardenas said. “Probably, the consultants got upset with the parameters that our legal counsel set.”

Asked why ACU would shield its identity when pitching donors, Cardenas said, “Using our name and my name is something we wouldn’t want to happen because a) it would hurt our own fundraising purposes, and b) we have very little control over content and we didn’t want our reputation to be tainted in any way — but I’m only guessing.”

The ACU executive director at the time, Gregg Keller, declined to comment. The ACU and current director Matt Schlapp did not respond to repeated requests for comment, including an emailed list of specific questions concerning the organization’s dealings with Rogers and InfoCision.

By the end of the summer of 2012, Rogers and InfoCision had broken with the ACU and created a new federal PAC, the Conservative Majority Fund. It began raising money using the New Conservative Coalition donor list and aggressive fundraising tactics, which painted Obama as a shady figure whose real name was “Barry Soetoro” and who “had long-term relationships with terrorists,” according to scripts for calls circulated among people working on the fundraising campaign. Neither claim is accurate. The PAC said it was hiring investigators to press the case that Obama was ineligible to be president.

That message struck gold: $2.8 million poured in from more than 30,000 donors during the five months between July and December of that year alone. To kick off its campaign, the PAC paid $371,000 in August 2012 for a television ad that briefly aired on cable television and urged viewers to call the PAC, where they would be solicited for donations. After August, it ran no television ads and made no expenditures for anything other than fundraising.

FEC records show almost all the money went for calls to donors like Mike Miller, a jeweler in Barrington, Illinois, who gave $500.

“At the time they called, it seemed like such an important thing,” Miller said in a phone interview. “I was assuming they were legitimate.” When told about the group’s lack of spending on disqualifying Obama from the ballot, he said, “If they did this, and didn’t use it for intended purposes, I want my money back.”

On the day after Obama won reelection, the PAC changed its call scripts, telling donors that Obama’s “immediate plans are to pardon the terrorists at Guantanamo, give full amnesty to illegal aliens and give the United Nations the authority to tax Americans,” according to a fundraising script in the emails. There is no evidence that any of those plans were under consideration by the Obama administration. Donors were told that the PAC had hired a team of investigators and lawyers to press for impeachment. There is no evidence in FEC records that it ever did.

The fundraising scripts included suggested responses if the prospective donors said they were unemployed, on a fixed income or had significant medical bills to pay, encouraging them to give a smaller amount. When recipients asked not to be called again, the script instructed the telemarketers to offer to place them on a “restricted list” so that they would not get more than one call every 30 days. If recipients insisted, they would be added to a no-call list.

Rogers has previously come under harsh scrutiny for raising large amounts of money but spending little on the promised advocacy. Former Virginia gubernatorial candidateKen Cuccinelli sued Rogers for his involvement in a PAC that raised money purportedly to support Cuccinelli’s bid to be governor in 2013 but did not spend any to help Cuccinelli win. The case was settled in 2015. In 2017, Rogers’ Maryland office was raided by the FBI, but no charges were brought.

Election integrity experts have warned that alleged scam PACs are siphoning tens of millions of dollars in political donations into the coffers of fundraisers each year, while misleading donors.

Lynne Archer, 72, gave the Conservative Majority Fund $3,800 between 2012 and 2018. Archer said she tries to be wary of potential scams, but the Conservative Majority Fund had always sounded “like a legitimate group” when it solicited money.

“Damn, I gave a lot to them,” said Archer, who lives in Sugar Land, Texas, and works for her husband at an automobile dealership. “I don’t like that at all.”

Noti, who used to work at the FEC, called the proliferation of scam PACs “incredibly corrosive to American democracy” because of the impact on donors like Archer — many of them elderly — who give money in good faith to political causes.

“It’s going to chase people out of the system once those donors realize their money’s been stolen,” Noti said. “They’re going to be disillusioned and disenchanted, and rightfully so.”

Both Rogers’ Annapolis, Maryland-based Strategic Campaign Group and the Akron, Ohio-based InfoCision, a direct marketing firm, were once staples of GOP fundraising. Rogers’ clients included Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran and National Security Adviser John Bolton, while InfoCision helped raise money for the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Rifle Association.

When the ACU sought to expand its roster of donors, it contracted with Rogers and InfoCision to make calls to a large number of potential contributors — a time-consuming, and therefore expensive, process known as “prospecting.”[EXTRACTION?]

During the spring and summer of 2012, several employees who worked in the political division at InfoCision, along with Rogers and other consultants, began using increasingly aggressive fundraising tactics for ACU — though the organization was never supposed to be named in fundraising materials or scripts.

The scripts tapped into voter concerns about illegal immigration. One, in the midst of the 2012 presidential campaign, declared that there was a “huge scandal” that the group had “recently uncovered,” in which Obama was “now planning to deliberately target 20-million poor Latino immigrants — a desperate effort to win re-election,” according to the emails.

Those pitches led to a flurry of emails discussing the nature of the appeals — and whether they might alienate Cardenas. Rogers was the main conduit for complaints, often relaying concerns from ACU leaders to the fundraisers crafting the various appeals.

Several months later Rogers proposed something else entirely: He and InfoCision would take the lists of donors they had harvested while working with ACU, split off their own fundraising operation, then open it as a PAC and raise money without ACU as a client.

“It’s becoming very apparent to me for many reasons that we are going to have to de-affiliate” the fundraising with ACU, Rogers wrote. “I am still trying to resolve issues with them but I can tell we are headed for trouble.”

Tensions between the ACU and the people operating the donor recruitment operation continued, emails among InfoCision employees indicate, because the PAC’s early fundraising pleas sometimes included references to ACU despite ACU’s wishes that they didn’t.

“We now have to eliminate ALL ACU references” in the materials for the group, wrote Erik Byers, an account executive who helped oversee the work done on behalf of ACU, to his colleagues on June 29, 2012. “Kelley got blasted by ACU.”

Soon after, in early July, Rogers and a handful of other individuals established the Conservative Majority Fund and began raising money.

Because InfoCision telemarketers (called “Communicators”) might recognize that they were reusing fundraising appeals, a company manager stressed the importance of a separate identity.

“We’re starting a new, independent PAC, with an established donor base,” Matthew Birkbeck, then a marketing executive at InfoCision, wrote. “It’s exciting, so sell it! We can’t have the Communicators talking about ACU. There are threats of lawsuits surrounding this!!!”

Calls and emails to Birkbeck were not returned.

By mid-August, Rogers wrote to the ACU that the fundraising operation with them “is completely shut down in all fronts.”

In the months that followed, the InfoCision managers created increasingly provocative call scripts focused on voter fraud, Obama’s (false) country of birth and — after his reelection — launching an impeachment drive to remove him from office.

In addition to Rogers, the InfoCision account manager Byers, a consultant and two other InfoCision employees, including Birkbeck, were involved with the Conservative Majority Fund, according to the emails. All of those people had also been involved with the previous work with the ACU, and the group worked quickly to close accounts and reassign paperwork to the new organization.

Scott B. Mackenzie, a Republican bookkeeper who serves as the treasurer for dozens of political committees, was treasurer of the group, responsible for filing its reports with the FEC.

Mackenzie did not respond to a request for comment. Byers, of InfoCision, did not respond to requests for comment.

The PAC’s executive director was Dennis Whitfield, a former deputy labor secretary during the Reagan administration. Whitfield worked as a consultant for ACU in 2012, according to the group’s website. He also worked with Rogers at Strategic Campaign Group. Whitfield’s name was used to help promote the Conservative Majority Fund, for example on an October 2012 letter about voter fraud that cautioned: “I mean, imagine how you’ll feel if Obama wins because of all this? We’re scared to death!”

Phone calls to Whitfield were not returned.

The InfoCision staff and Rogers got their first look at a fundraising script and a television ad for the new Conservative Majority Fund on July 5, just two weeks after Rogers floated the idea for opening the PAC. They described an effort to remove Obama from the ballot and raised questions about his eligibility to be president.

“We need to gather 10,000 signatures from each congressional district to have him removed from the ballot,” one script read, before callers asked people for donations. The procedure for removing candidates from the ballot varies by state, but does not require the specific goal claimed by the script. If the donor gave money using a credit card, the caller was instructed to try to upsell them: “I want to let you know that we’re developing some new TV ads about Obama’s past that are going to shock people. We need to get the ads on the air quickly, so can we count on you for an additional gift[?]”

Rogers approved both pitches, according to the emails.

Using the ACU donors and lists of conservative donors pulled from InfoCision’s collection or purchased from other vendors, [SOCIAL MEDIA HOOVER UP INFO/ADDY BIG DATABASE?] the new group raked in large amounts of money: Between 2012 and 2018, the Conservative Majority Fund disclosed raising more than $9.6 million, almost entirely from small-dollar donors. At least $9 million of that has been paid to InfoCision for expenses reported as fundraising costs. Strategic Campaign Group, where Rogers works, received an additional $229,000, while Mackenzie was paid $172,000 as the PAC’s treasurer.

In its reporting to the FEC, the Conservative Majority Fund disclosed spending $5.3 million on what it described as expressly political expenditures, but nearly all of it was on fundraising calls — placed by InfoCision — that criticized Democratic politicians, particularly Obama and Hillary Clinton. The Conservative Majority Fund produced two TV ads, but it appears to have spent little money airing them. Most of its recent activity has been phone calls and social media posts supportive of Trump, whose image figures prominently on the PAC’s website.

There’s no further evidence in records that the Conservative Majority Fund was active in the 2012 elections. Nonetheless, the group bragged in various solicitations to donors that it was taking on a range of anti-Obama organizing, which included: employing a “Truth Squad” to lobby states to remove Obama from the ballot; “hiring undercover researchers” to expose attempts by the Obama campaign to commit voter fraud; and putting “media specialists” on television and radio shows, as well as authoring newspaper and magazine articles and social media posts, “giving regular updates on Obama’s dirty tricks.”

ProPublica and Politico did not find any record of experts from the Conservative Majority Fund appearing on television or radio to discuss the election and could find no evidence from the states cited by the group — Alabama, Tennessee, Arizona and Illinois — indicating it lobbied to remove Obama from the ballot. And the Conservative Majority Fund could not have worked in states to stop “phony [voter] registrations,” which an October 2012 letter to donors said it would do. By then, the voter rolls were closed in many states and could not be changed by anyone.

Starting the day after Obama was reelected, employees at InfoCision began circulating plans for a new message for callers: a case for impeaching the president.

“Impeachment is our only option,” said a recording that InfoCision planned to play to potential donors, according to emails circulated among the operatives on Nov. 7, 2012. “And Republicans are already considering Obama investigations. As the nation’s most effective conservative group … We are launching the official ‘IMPEACH OBAMA’ campaign.”

At least from a fundraising perspective, the campaign was a success: In the first six months of 2013, FEC records show, the PAC raised an additional $1.7 million.

At least since 2015, federal regulators have been aware of complaints about the tactics used by the Conservative Majority Fund, as well as other PACs linked to Rogers and Mackenzie, the PAC’s treasurer. But the Conservative Majority Fund continued to operate with relatively little attention from authorities, a reflection of how federal laws do little to protect the public from potential scam PACs, according to watchdogs.

The FEC has twice probed the Conservative Majority Fund’s activities — but the commission, despite being the main federal regulator, is limited in what it can do. In July 2016, the FEC found the Conservative Majority Fund had misreported items on its federal disclosures during the 2013-14 election cycle. It paid a $3,500 fine.In October 2017, the FEC approved an audit covering the last six months of 2012 that found the Conservative Majority Fund had misstated its financial activity.

Both inquiries only skimmed the surface, looking at financial forms submitted to the commission.

The commission rarely chooses to launch full investigations — which allow it to ask questions, interview employees and demand documents from a group — without first having evidence of wrongdoing.

There are also holes in federal law that make it difficult for the commission to exercise meaningful oversight of groups like the Conservative Majority Fund. While the law prohibits raising campaign money while fraudulently “acting for or on behalf of any candidate or political party,” it does little to address a PAC like the Conservative Majority Fund that didn’t do this. The bar for federal law enforcement in proving a broader criminal statute like wire fraud is far higher. Last year, prosecutors in the Southern District of New York for the first time indicted two men for wire fraud who ran PACs that raised money in the name of causes such as autism awareness and helping police.

In a 2016 memo on the issue, two FEC commissioners implored their colleagues to take action against scam PACs but acknowledged that federal law gives political committees “great leeway on how they use the funds” they raise.

“The power of the Commission to directly and comprehensively protect political contributors is limited,” the two commissioners concluded.

In late 2018, the FEC formally asked Congress to take action against “fraudulent PAC practices” by some PACs.“These committees solicit contributions with promises of supporting candidates, but then disclose minimal or no candidate support activities while engaging in significant and continuous fundraising, which predominantly funds personal compensation for the committees’ organizers,” the commission wrote.

When Cuccinelli, the former Virginia attorney general and gubernatorial candidate, sued Rogers and a PAC called Conservative StrikeForce, he said they’d used Cuccinelli’s name to raise more than $2 million, but donated just $10,000 to Cuccinelli’s campaign.

Cuccinelli settled with Rogers and Conservative StrikeForce in May 2015 for $85,000. Cuccinelli’s spokesperson did not respond to an interview request.

In 2017, the FBI raided the Annapolis office of Rogers’ consulting firm. At the time, Rogers said the FBI appeared interested in work his firm did in the 2013 Virginia gubernatorial race, but the FBI did not shed any light on its actions. The pre-dawn raid was a near-unheard of occurence in the political sphere, but it didn’t result in charges being brought against Rogers or the PAC. Rogers’ firm shut down its website and closed the office in Annapolis.

InfoCision, meanwhile, paid a $250,000 settlement in 2018 for “deceptive charitable solicitation calls” in an unrelated case. InfoCision callers initially told potential donors they were not calling to solicit donations when that was not the case, according to the Federal Trade Commission. But the FTC does not have similar jurisdiction over political fundraising, highlighting that business solicitations are more highly regulated than political fundraising.

Election law experts have proposed changes that would discourage scam PACs by broadening anti-fraud provisions in federal election law or enacting an anti-self-dealing provision that prohibits PAC operators from turning an excessive profit. Smaller changes, such as expanding the requirements for PACs to disclose more information to donors who visit their websites, could also help curb the number of scam PACs operating in the political space.

“It seems that it would not be that hard and it should be something that is bipartisan, you would hope,” said Ann Ravel, former chair of the FEC.

The argument for enacting more regulation on scam PACs is “similar to why there’s oversight over nonprofits who take money from individuals in the name of good causes, and then use it to enrich themselves,” Ravel said. “It’s stealing.”

Filed under:

Politics

https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/think-dishonest-politics-and-dark-money-elections-are-bad-now-court-ruling-opens-floodgates-for-scam-pacs/

ct fail?

A federal judge on Thursday struck down FEC regulations barring unauthorized political action committees from using a candidate’s name to mislead voters and attract donations, a ruling critics warned could lead to the proliferation of “scam PACs.”

Paul S. Ryan, vice president for policy and litigation with Common Cause, said the ruling “will embolden scam PACs to trade on the names of candidates to raise money for their own ends from unknowing citizens.”

“The Federal Election Commission (FEC) can and should still be enforcing the ban—and opening a rulemaking to establish new disclaimer requirements for non-candidate websites that use a candidate’s name in the URL,” Ryan added.

In a series of tweets, FEC chair Ellen Weintraub explained that political action committees are still barred from using candidates’ names in their formal titles.

But, Weintraub continued, the judge’s ruling will allow PACs to use candidates’ names in their “solicitations, other communications, and special projects.”

“This can be grossly misleading, and this is the hole scam PACs are going to drive a truck through,” Weintraub warned.

As NPR‘s Jessica Taylor reported, there have already been cases of PACs using candidates’ names to trick unwitting citizens out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations.

“Earlier this week, federal prosecutors charged a California man with setting up political action committees purporting to support prominent Democrats, including Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, bilking donors out of more than $250,000,” Taylor wrote.

Taylor continued:

Another example, pointed out by the Center for Public Integrity’s Dave Levinthal, roped in “James Bond” actor Daniel Craig, who thought he was donating to a super PAC supporting Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Democratic presidential bid in 2016.

The group was initially named “Ready for Bernie Sanders 2016” and “Bet on Bernie 2016,” even though they had no affiliation with Sanders, who had renounced any super PAC support. Thus, the confusion from Craig and others.

After the judge’s ruling on Thursday, said Weintraub, such scams are likely to become far more common.

“This is unfortunate,” she tweeted. “It will lead to confusion in the political marketplace. It provides a wide opening for scam PACs to exploit.”

pro pub

The Federal Election Commission has strict rules about political ads broadcast on television and radio, but those rules haven’t kept up with the new power of online targeting. They tried recently — and failed.

E&E

Ex-chief worries Trump 'embedding' staff at FERC

Hannah Northey, E&E News reporter

Published: Friday, August 24, 2018

Jon Wellinghoff, the longest-serving head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, worries politics are seeping into the agency he once led.

https://www.publicintegrity.org/2018/04/30/21715/fec-expired-terms

apr 2108

Anniversaries are often festive.

Not today at the Federal Election Commission.

As of April 30, the FEC's current four commissioners have been on the commission for a total of 32 years longer than they should have been.

Vice Chairwoman Ellen Weintraub’s six-year term expired 11 years ago, when George W. Bush occupied the White House, the “Great Recession” had yet to occur and the most momentous campaign finance decision of the century, Citizens United v. FEC, was still two-and-a-half years hence.

Commissioner Steve Walther (nine years), Commissioner Matthew Petersen (seven years) and Chairwoman Caroline Hunter (five years) have also stayed aboard long after they should have been out of a job. Beyond the holdovers, there are two vacant spots on the commission.

In separate interviews Thursday with the Center for Public Integrity, each of the four “holdover” commissioners — who may continue to serve until President Donald Trump and the U.S. Senate replace them — confirmed that they have no immediate plans to step down.

They all know the FEC, in the midst of a critical midterm election campaign, is teetering on the brink of a de facto shutdown: If one commissioner retires, resigns or otherwise isn’t present, the agency that regulates and enforces campaign money laws loses its four-commissioner quorum and can’t conduct high-level business. No passing rules. No penalizing scofflaws. No providing official advice to political committees seeking it.

“If the commission loses a quorum ... it obviously affects the public,” Hunter said.

New hope, new problem: Will the Federal Election Commission shut down?

By Dave Levinthal

December 20, 2017

Not that the FEC’s commissioners work together seamlessly when the agency is fully operational.

A report this month by the Library of Congress’ Congressional Research Service notes that “achieving at least four agreeing votes is sometimes difficult, even with six members present. Vacancies make the task harder by reducing opportunities for a coalition of at least four votes.”

Republicans frequently accuse Democrats of overreach — attempting to enforce federal election laws that Congress hasn’t passed, and therefore, don’t exist. Democrats accuse Republicans of rank failure to enforce laws that they argue should be obvious to any liberal or conservative.

Thursday’s commission meeting — the first in the bipartisan agency’s sparkling new headquarters near Washington, D.C.’s Union Station — provided a clear indication that some commissioners’ patience with one another, like their terms, has also expired.

When Weintraub suggested that Hunter could have adjusted the commission’s April 12 public meeting to accommodate her trip to Lithuania for an elections conference, Hunter would have none of it.

“Absolutely outrageous!” Hunter shot back, noting that the four commissioners, including Weintraub, voted to simply cancel the agency’s meeting for lack of a quorum. Hunter later questioned the point of Weintraub’s sojourn, which Weintraub defended as an opportunity to “advance democracy.”

Republicans Hunter and Petersen on Thursday also issued a scathing rebuttal to Weintraub’s decision this month to “break glass in case of emergency” and not vote to further defend the FEC in federal court — a highly unusual occurrence — in the lawsuit CREW v. FEC.

They lambasted Weintraub, a Democrat, for seeking “to remove the commission from its enforcement role” and “attempting to obstruct routine commission operations.” Weintraub’s actions “raise questions of bias and/or prejudgment, which, in turn, implicate serious questions of due process.”

Weintraub argued she had no choice but to take such action and effectively invite government reform advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington — in 2012, it filed an FEC complaint accusing the conservative “dark money” group American Action Network of operating as a political committee and illegally withholding the identities of its funders — to sue the American Action Network directly. Weintraub said she didn’t trust her Republican colleagues to enforce campaign disclosure laws.

“Over a difficult and frustrating decade at the commission, I have seen colleagues with a deep ideological commitment to impeding this country’s campaign-finance laws erode the public’s right to free, fair, and transparent elections,” Weintraub wrote.

The situation could send a bad message to other political actors, CREW litigation counsel Stuart McPhail said.

“People may feel that there’s no cop on the beat and that they don’t have to follow the law,” he said.

Several former FEC commissioners interviewed last week agreed that the FEC, in general, benefits from experienced agency leaders who understand the nation’s election laws and their application and are versed in managing a federal agency of roughly 330 employees.

But “at some point in the future the commission could benefit from new perspectives, new energy and a new rhythm,” said Republican Lee Goodman, who served on the FEC from 2013 until February, when he resigned to become a partner at law firm Wiley Rein.

“Commissioners who make a career out of the position are much less likely to cooperate or even attempt to reach consensus across the aisle as they are so certain of the rightness of their approach to issues given the other matters they have decided in their long careers,” said Democrat Ann Ravel, who served on the FEC from 2013 to 2017.

Early last decade, Congress limited FEC commissioners to one six-year term precisely to keep commissioners from serving indefinitely — Democratic Commissioner Danny McDonald, for example, served a quarter-century, from 1981 to 2006.

Now, “the term limits have become meaningless,” said Karl Sandstrom, a Democratic FEC commissioner who served from 1998 to 2003.

Blame President Barack Obama, Trump and Congress alike for this state of affairs.

Standard, if informal operating procedure is thus: U.S. Senate majority and minority leaders recommend prospective FEC commissioners to the president. The president, in turn, nominates the Senate’s FEC designees. The Senate then confirms the nominees.

Obama nominated three people to the FEC: Democrat John J. Sullivan, who was slated to replace Weintraub, withdrew from consideration, while Goodman and Ravel won appointments to vacant seats. But Obama never formally floated replacements for Hunter, Walther or Petersen, and he largely fell short of realizing the lofty campaign finance reform rhetoric of his early days as a presidential candidate.

Trump could upend tradition with a tweet and nominate new FEC commissioners next hour. He could even scramble partisan orthodoxy and appoint independents or Libertarians to the commission — federal law only mandates that the commission feature no more than three members from any one political party.

But Trump has so far been decidedly Obamaesque in his indifference toward the FEC.

In this Jan. 11, 2017 photo, Trey Trainor, an Austin attorney specializing in election law who played a critical role for the Trump campaign at the Republican convention, poses with a Trump campaign sticker at the Akerman Law Firm in Austin, Texas.

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Ralph Barrera/Austin American-Statesman via AP

While Trump routinely rails against Democratic obstruction of his various executive branch nominees — “disgraceful!” — the lack of new FEC commissioners is a function of Trump failing to nominate anyone to the agency save for Texas attorney Trey Trainor. Trump first nominated Trainor, a Republican who supported Trump’s presidential campaign, more than seven months ago to replace Petersen, Trump’s failed pick for a U.S. District Court judgeship.

The White House did not respond to several requests for comment last week and has for months refused to answer questions about the FEC.

Trump, though, is no stranger to the agency: he’s frequently opined about campaign money issues and his White House counsel is former FEC Chairman Don McGahn, an outspoken critic of campaign regulations.

Trump has also been subject to several FEC complaints, most recently involving hush money payments facilitated by Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, to porn actress Stormy Daniels.

“It’s hard to say what’s going on at the White House, and I have no idea if [inaction] is purposefully directed at the FEC, or if it’s no one’s priority,” Weintraub said.

“No administration has done well nominating, but this administration is just doing it worse — there’s really no excuse,” said Max Stier, president and CEO of the nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service, which with the Washington Post tracks presidential nominations and rates government agencies on their workplace quality.

The FEC ranked 27 out of 28 small federal government agencies in the Partnership for Public Service’s most recent survey.

The U.S. Senate, too, has largely ignored the FEC.

Although it oversees FEC functions, it hasn’t conducted an FEC oversight hearing in years. The Senate Rules and Administration Committee, which vets FEC nominees, has yet to even schedule a confirmation hearing for Trainor.

Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., chairman of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., the committee’s ranking member, did not respond to several requests for comment.

Also non-responsive: Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who as Senate minority leader typically offers Democratic FEC nomination recommendations to the president. Two government officials familiar with the FEC nomination process, however, say Schumer’s office has this year forwarded at least one FEC recommendation to Trump.

The FEC needs six commissioners willing to “faithfully” enforce the law, said Trevor Potter, a Republican FEC commissioner from 1991 to 1995 who now works as president for the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan reform organization.

“With the 2018 midterms approaching in earnest, our elections are not protected,” Potter said.

The potential for foreign money in elections and enforcing disclosure rules are among critical issues squarely in the shorthanded FEC’s purview this year, Potter added.

Say the FEC, like it did in 2008, lost a quorum and couldn’t make key decisions at all. Would that be worse than the FEC in its current state?

“Yes, it would be worse,” said Weintraub, who was one of two commissioners still serving during the agency’s 2008 mothballing.

“Despite all our disagreements, we still get some things done even with the current cast of characters,” she added, noting the commission unanimously approved a draft audit report of the congressional campaign of Rep. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., and agreed to scrutinize the operations of “zombie” political committees that are no longer operational but in some cases still maintain large cash balances.

Petersen, who’s served on the FEC since 2008, says he’ll “just continue to carry out my responsibilities as long as I’m here,” a sentiment echoed by Hunter, whose chairmanship runs through 2018.

Walther, an independent who often leans left, says having two commission vacancies during an election year is “on his mind,” particularly since it means the commissioners must vote unanimously in order to take action on most matters before them.

“But we serve at the pleasure of the president,” Walther said, “and we’re here for now.”

Versions of this article were co-published by TIME, NBC News, Public Radio International and the Buffalo News.

Stormy Daniels' payoff an illegal contribution? FEC ruling could take years

New hope, new problem: Will the Federal Election Commission shut down?

Michigan lawmakers voted on bills even after admitting conflicts of interest

FEC rejects proposal to consider new rules on foreign spending in US elections

May 25, 2018 | The FEC has considered similar proposals before, but none have passed. Vice Chair Ellen Weintraub, who proposed the motion, expressed concern about the possibility of foreign groups using dark money to influence the 2018 midterms....

it's job (along wit doj? irs?) to police social welfare 501c4 coordination === ...with a new set of politically active nonprofits promising to pour millions into ads supporting President Donald Trump’s agenda and cabinet nominees, an FEC decision last month provides a telling reminder of how these groups push the legal limits on their activity — and how difficult it is for regulators to do anything about it.

For the second time in as many months, the Federal Election Commission deadlocked along party lines on whether or not to pursue a politically active nonprofit for its political spending in a single 2016 race.

Conservative Solutions Project, a501(c)(4) social welfare organization, was founded in 2014, about a year before Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla) announced his failed bid to become the Republican party’s nominee for president. In its filings with the IRS and other agencies, the group listed the same address as another similarly named group, Conservative Solutions PAC, a super PAC formed by Rubio allies to support his candidacy.

Though (c)(4) groups like CSP — funded mostly by wealthy donors whose identities are kept secret — aren’t supposed to have politics as their primary purpose, the rules on how much is too much are about as clear as the view through a pair of kaleidoscope binoculars. The IRS has never defined the limits that define “primary purpose,” nor has it ever laid out how to measure it — as a share of overall expenditures, for example, or employee time devoted to a cause. That leaves interpretation up the groups themselves and their most creative, top-dollar lawyers.

Of the more than 6,500 ads that ran in support of Rubio by the end of 2015, nearly 75 percent were paid for by this nominally apolitical nonprofit group, according to a December 2015 Wesleyan Media Project report produced in partnership with the Center for Responsive Politics. Yet, none of that ad spending was reported to the FEC because these ads — all of which targeted viewers in early primary states with positive messages about Rubio’s record and policies — were framed as educational “issue” ads, ostensibly aimed at influencing policy positions rather than the election. Such ads only have to be reported to the FEC if they run within 30 days of a primary election, or 60 days of a general election.

Between July and October of 2015, CSP spent at least $8 million on such ads.

The initial investigation by the FEC’s Office of General Counsel stemmed from a complaint filed by American Democracy Legal Fund, a liberal nonprofit headed by Democratic operative Brad Woodhouse, focusing on two of those ads. According to the complaint, the spots, which ran in September and October in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, amounted to “express advocacy” and, therefore, should have been reported to the FEC as independent expenditures within days of being aired.

The OGC disagreed with Woodhouse and the ADLF. The ads did indeed have the “look and feel of campaign speech,” the OGC said. And the campaign nature of the ad, “with Rubio orating about the greatness of America and the future leadership the country needs” lent itself to the perception that the ads were aimed at furthering Rubio’s campaign, a perception that was “bolstered by the fact that the ads aired in September and October 2015 in the early primary states.”

But the ads did not ultimately reach the threshold of express advocacy, in the OGC’s view. For one, they make no reference to Rubio’s candidacy — though viewers in those early primary states, where the candidates were racing from Elk’s Club to rec center to diner making stump speeches, would have known Rubio was running.

And if the ads didn’t make a reference to Rubio’s candidacy, they certainly didn’t call on viewers to support him in the primaries, which is express advocacy in its purest form.

The agency’s three Republican commissioners accepted the OGC’s recommendation to find no reason to believe CSP was in violation of the rules, while the two Democrats and one independent on the Commission voted to pursue an investigation.

And mirroring the FEC’s November deadlock in the Carolina Rising case, Democratic commissioners Ann Ravel and Ellen Weintraub provided a statement criticizing their agency’s failure “to enforce clear law on the registration of political committees.”

Theycontended that “no reasonable person could conclude that the ads were intended as anything other than advocacy on behalf of Rubio’s election.” And just as they did in November, they argued that factors beyond a narrow analysis of the ads’ content further support the idea that CSP was acting as a political committee.

“The Commission has affirmed that the major purpose inquiry is a fact-intensive analysis that may consider a number of elements,” they say, citing a report by the Center for Responsive Politics showing the significant overlap of Rubio staff and consultants working with his campaign, his allied super PAC and CSP itself.

Since Rubio’s presidential aspirations were put on hold, CSP has done little aside from posting links to news articles on its website and social media accounts. It hasn’t run millions of dollars educating viewers around the country about Rubio’s, or anyone else’s, policies.

With the FEC’s investigation at an end, focus now shifts to the IRS, which also has regulatory oversight of politically active nonprofits. The watchdog group CREW filed a complaint against CSP with the IRS, but we may never know what comes of it, because decisions like that are private under IRS rules that protect taxpayer confidentiality.

Now as the Trump movement transitions from campaign to policy platform, at least two nondisclosing nonprofits have been formed to promote the administration’s agenda. America First Policies was founded this week by top campaign aids Brad Parscale, Rick Gates and Nick Ayers. The “grassroots group” will soon “go out there and help with the agenda, help the White House be successful,” Parscale told the AP.

Another group, Great America Alliance, was started by former House Speaker New Gingrich and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, both prominent campaign surrogates for Donald Trump and previous presidential candidates themselves. Two other Republican strategists, Ed Rollins and Eric Beach, will help run that new group. In 2016, Rollins and Breach ran a pro-Trump super PAC called Great America PAC that spent $23 million to boosting Trump.

Opting to transform a campaign apparatus into a nonprofit supporting the president’s agenda is not new. The Obama administration also turned its campaign into a (c)(4) called Organizing for Action. One big difference: OFA reluctantly disclosed its donors, allowing watchdogs like the Center for Responsive Politics and the Sunlight Foundation to report on the individuals and interests fueling the organization.

Neither of the two new pro-Trump groups have made any such commitment to transparency, which will encourage the arrival of big checks from those who may want to curry favor with the president but remain out of public view. Contributions from foreign governments are also possible, should the group’s leaders choose to allow it.

Meanwhile, Conservative Solutions Project will slip back into the darkness. It could fade away entirely or lay dormant until Rubio’s next potential foray in the presidential arena.

Tags: 501(c)(4), 501c, 501c4, conservative solutions pac, conservative solutions project, dark money, fec, Robert Maguire, Shadow Money Trail

FEC challenged again to find coordination in current campaigns

New allegations that a pro-Hillary Clinton outside spending group and two that are backing Donald Trump have illegally coordinated with the candidates’ campaigns are refocusing attention on a concept that regulators have never quite nailed down ... read more.

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2016/09/gaping-holes-confusion-mar-fccs-data-on-political-ad-buys/

Four years after it began requiring TV stations to upload their records of political ad sales to a central government website, the Federal Communications Commission maintains a recordkeeping system that makes finding out who an ad’s sponsor is feel like a treasure hunt.

In 2012, the FCC approved a rule requiring broadcast stations in the largest markets to upload the files showing who bought time for political ads, how much they paid and other details, saving journalists and others from having to visit individual TV stations to get the info. The directive was gradually expanded and now includes most broadcast, cable, satellite and radio outlets.

But the victory for open government turned out to be a website that is searchable only by station call letters, channel number, facility ID number and similar data — not by sponsoring group, candidate mentioned and other terms that would make it easier to track who is running ads in particular federal races, and how much they’re spending.

The current filing system is “pretty useless” for the public, said Meredith McGehee, policy director at the Campaign Legal Center, which put out a report on the system’s shortcomings this week.

The political ad purchase records, also known as political files, were basically an unorganized pile of mostly non-machine readable documents with no uniform filing system.

Earlier this month, the Center for Responsive Politics launched an ad data tracking tool searchable by state and zip code (and soon, by other terms) to continue efforts started by watchdog groups and news outlets such as Sunlight Foundation andProPublica when the data first came out.

But the federal agency responsible for the data still maintains only a vague “due diligence” standard when it comes to stations’ responsibility for ensuring the forms contain complete and accurate information.

How it shouldn’t work

Here’s an example: This particular ad-buy record of the National Rifle Association of America – Institute for Legislative Action — a 501(c)(4) that does not disclose its donors — from a Pennsylvania CBS affiliate, WHP-TV, is a short, casual thread of emails titled “NETWORK BUY.”

...

As similar as they sound, there’s an important difference between the two. One Nation is a tax-exempt 501(c)(4) nonprofit that has a legal privilege to keep its donors secret. One Nation PAC, on the other hand, is a Carey Committee, a hybrid that can contribute to candidates as well as make independent expenditures. But the PAC must disclose its donors.

Vermont’s WCAX consistently lists One Nation as the advertiser in all its documents; but it uploaded all its One Nation filings under a folder named One Nation PAC on the FCC website.

WCAX General Sales Manager Nick Hasenecz, who files the reports for the station, told OpenSecrets Blog he wasn’t aware that the political action committee and the nonprofit group were separate entities. The station changed the folder’s name to One Nation after the conversation with OpenSecrets Blog.

But WMUR and WCAX aren’t alone in mixing up the two groups.

Because the database isn’t sortable, it’s difficult to check the whole archive, but an analysis shows that at least 10 different stations have listed One Nation and One Nation PAC interchangeably on their NAB forms, records of requests and contracts.

“The reason for this [missing and inaccurate information] is that the stations feel absolutely no pressure to fill in all the required information accurately,” McGehee said.

Under current rules, broadcast licensees have the sole burden of “due diligence” to report complete and accurate information. But because of the lack of precise definition for “due diligence,” stations can simply say they “asked” sponsors or ad-buying agencies for missing information but failed to get an answer.

An FCC spokesman said the agency conducts periodic audits to ensure compliance with its rules and also reviews complaints filed with the FCC.

The agency usually issues warnings to stations that have failed to comply with the rules. Last month, a Florida radio station WQBQ (AM) was fined $15,000 by the FCC for failing to include required information in a public file.

However, McGeehee says fines and warnings don’t happen often enough and aren’t sufficient.

When the Campaign Legal Center and Sunlight Foundation filed complaints against TV stations in 2014, the FCC responded immediately with letters of inquiry to each of the stations and issued a statement claiming to take the matters seriously. However, the complaints still have not been resolved.

“It seems reasonable to assume that FCC is not making reasonable effort to provide the important information to the public,” McGehee said.

The devil’s in the details

McGehee said easy access to accurate political ad buy information is especially critical since the Citizens United decision in 2010 because sometimes that’s the only way to track huge amounts of dark money spending in elections.

Federal Election Commission rules allow 501(c) groups to spend millions without disclosing their activities to the agency as long as the ads run more than 30 days before a primary or 60 days before a general election. Political nonprofits havedeliberately avoided spending within the window to avoid filing reports with the FEC.

One Nation’s ad buy records compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics show that the dark money group has spent tens of millions of dollars already this election — a fact that can be partially gleaned from its website.

One Nation has already spent at least $25 million in 2016, but the FEC’s database shows its outlays as a little over $200,000, because it only began reporting its spending to that agency two weeks ago.

The Campaign Legal Center, along with Common Cause, the Sunlight Foundation and the Benton Foundation, filed more complaints this week against several broadcasters across the nation that have failed to comply with the rules by leaving out important information or reporting false information on their political ad records.

In its new report, CLC called for building a machine-readable standardized filing system, updating the “due diligence” definition to clarify the responsibilities of broadcasters and requiring ad sponsors, under penalty of perjury to provide media outlets with accurate information.

Response Dynamics also appears in a 1996 complaint filed with theFederal Election Commission by the Democratic National Committee. The Democrats were pursuing charges involving improper corporate contributions and faulty accounting against a group of respondents including Response Dynamics but led by the National Security Political Action Committee and Floyd Brown.

action v koch: 7/16

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2016/07/fec-dark-money-fine-shows-limits-of-disclosure-again/

This week, the Federal Election Commission did the unthinkable. The agency most frequently characterized by its constant, crippling deadlock levied a substantial fine against three large politically active nonprofit groups.

The decision also required the groups to amend past FEC filings to disclose who provided their funding. But because the source was, itself, another nondisclosing group, the public has learned very little.

The fine — first made public by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which originally brought the complaint in 2014 — totaled $233,000 split among three groups:Americans for Job Security, American Future Fund, and the 60 Plus Association.

The penalty now ranks among the top 25 highest total fines ever brought by the FEC, and the largest ever brought for activity in a post-Citizens United election, according to thislist of cases maintained by the FEC.

The violations at the heart of the enforcement action stretch all the way back to the 2010 midterms and the Tea Party wave that flipped the House into GOP control. The complaint centers on a group called the Center to Protect Patient Rights (CPPR), a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization, now called American Encore, which at the time was the hub of the Koch donor network.

CPPR didn’t report any political spending to the FEC in 2010, but it did send $25.5 million to the three other groups, who together reported spending tens of millions of dollars supporting Republican House candidates.

Normally, AJS and the other organizations wouldn’t have to report that CPPR was the source of funds for the ads; disclosure would only be required if the grants were “earmarked” for specific expenditures in specific races. Such earmarking is rare, which is why 501(c) groups almost never disclose their donors — and, hence, are referred to as “dark money” groups.

The FEC found, however, that the operative running CPPR, Sean Noble, was engaged in the selection of which races should be targeted, and his firm, Noble Associates, was sub-contracted to “produce and develop” some of the ads. Noble’s substantial involvement in content selection for the ads and race targeting was sufficient grounds for the FEC to find that the contributions should have been disclosed as if they were earmarked.

The involvement of Noble Associates also highlights the close ties between Noble’s firms and the groups he runs, an intertwining that in the past has led to allegations that he has profited handsomely from the political activities of his nonprofits.

The CREW complaint itself only materialized in 2014 because Noble described the set-up in detail for the National Review. By then, Noble’s propensity to chat about his activities and get his groups into very public disputes with regulators had already led the Kochs to cut him loose.

While the three recipient groups will have to pay fines — $50,000 for 60 Plus Association, $140,000 for American Future Fund, and $43,000 for Americans for Job Security — they are getting what amounts to a pass on their disclosure. The conditions of their conciliation state that they must amend their FEC filings to identify CPPR as a donor in 2010, but that has long been public. When *OpenSecrets Blog*first discovered CPPR in 2012, we reported its contributions to these and other groups.

The FEC’s donor reporting enforcement in this instance amounts to little more than a nondisclosure disclosure, because while the groups that ran the ads must reveal CPPR as their donor, CPPR doesn’t have to reveal the sources of its own funds. The individuals or organizations that kept it in business as a major distributor of cash in the Koch network are still not known beyond what *OpenSecrets Blog* has been able to ferret out.

While Noble’s ties to the Koch network at the time are clear, it is impossible to specify to what extent the Kochs themselves funded the group or who else in their orbit may have provided the money.

The lack of information becomes all the more stark when one considers that the FEC’s decision has no bearing on the 2012 election, by which point CPPR was part of a network that raised more than $400 million and was responsible for at least 1 in 4 dark money dollars spent.

CPPR and its grantees aren’t the first to manage to keep their donors secret despite forced disclosure, and they won’t be the last. The dark money churn — basically, the transfer of assets among connected groups to provide multiple layers of anonymity — is what keeps a lot of these groups in business. The FEC’s action this week, while important, proves the strategy works.

Tags: 60 Plus Association, American Future Fund, Americans for Job Security, center to protect patient rights,cppr, dark money, fec, Robert Maguire, Sean Noble, Shadow Money Trail

Ann M. Ravel	Commissioner	Democratic	Barack Obama	October 25, 2013	April 30, 2017
Matthew S. Petersen	Chairman	Republican	George W. Bush	June 24, 2008	April 30, 2011 Expired—serving until replaced
Lee E. Goodman	Commissioner	Republican	Barack Obama	October 22, 2013	April 30, 2015 Expired—serving until replaced
Caroline C. Hunter	Commissioner	Republican	George W. Bush	June 24, 2008	April 30, 2013 Expired—serving until replaced
Steven T. Walther	Vice Chairman	Independent	George W. Bush	June 27, 2008	April 30, 2009 Expired—serving until replaced
Ellen L. Weintraub	Commissioner	Democratic	George W. Bush	George W. Bush	George W. Bush

Mark S. Fowler (born October 6, 1941) served as Chairman of the Federal Communications Commissionfrom May 18, 1981 to April 17, 1987. Appointed by Ronald Reagan,^[2] he led repeal of the Fairness Doctrine and spearheaded the deregulatory trend in telecommunications policy, and was a proponent of deregulation of television stations, and radio ownership laws.^[3]

Fowler was born in Toronto, Canada. He received both his Bachelor's degree and Juris Doctor from the University of Florida.^[4]

Career after the FCC[edit]

Fowler was a communications counsel at the law firm ofLatham & Watkins LLP from 1987 until 2000 FCC. He was a VP at Bell South while forming his own international phone company Power Fon, which was bought out by a large phone carrier. From 1990 to 1993 Mr. Fowler also served on the board of directors for Eon Corporation, then doing business as TV Answer. TV Answer was one of the first companies to work with the FCC to explore the use of narrow band radio-wave frequencies for interactive television—where programmers and their viewers could communicate back and forth through a small device attached to a television set.^[5] He has been a director of Beasley Broadcast Group, Inc. since February 2000. From 2006-8, his compensation as director was close to $50,000 annually; in 2009 it fell to about $20,000. He served as a director of TalkAmerica, Inc., a publicly held company until the company was sold in December 2006. Mr. Fowler also served as chairman of AssureSat, Inc., a satellite services provider that he co-founded in 1997 until the company was dissolved in December 2004.^[6]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help_America_Vote_Act

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_S._Petersen

He was nominated to the FEC by President George W. Bush on June 12, 2008, and unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate on June 24, 2008. He was unanimously elected to serve as the Chairman of the FEC starting in 2010 by his fellow members of the FEC in December 2009.

From 2005 until his appointment to the Commission, Mr. Petersen served as Republican chief counsel to the United States Senate Committee on Rules and Administration. In this capacity, Mr. Petersen provided counsel on issues relating to federal campaign finance and election administration laws as well as the Standing Rules of the Senate.

Prior to this, Mr. Petersen served as counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on House Administration. During his tenure, Mr. Petersen was extensively involved in the crafting of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) and the House-Senate negotiations that culminated in HAVA's passage. From 1999 to 2002, Mr. Petersen specialized in election and campaign finance law at the law firm of Wiley Rein LLP in Washington, D.C.

Mr. Petersen received his J.D. in 1999 from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he was a member of theVirginia Law Review. He graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in philosophy from Brigham Young University in 1996. He also received an Associate of Science with high honors from Utah Valley State College.^[2]

Lee E. Goodman (born March 29, 1964) is a member and former chair of the Federal Election Commission (FEC), an independent regulatory agency created by Congress to administer and enforce campaign finance law.

Biography[edit]

Goodman was born on March 29, 1964, in Danville, Virginia. His father was a lawyer and his mother was a teacher. He received his B.A. with highest distinction in 1986 from the University of Virginia, where he double majored in American Government and Rhetoric & Communication Studies. He received his JD in 1990 from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he served as Articles Editor for the U.Va. Journal of Law & Politics.^[1]

Goodman practiced election law in private practice for the better part of two decades and served in a number of governmental and political posts. In private practice, he represented candidates, public officials, political parties, political action committees, non-profit organizations, and media companies in addressing a wide range of laws regulating their political activities and speech. He advised four presidential campaigns from 2007 to 2012. He served as general counsel of the Republican Party of Virginia (2009-2013). He also represented non-political clients in addressing other regulatory and public policy issues. Goodman has authored several articles on election law, including a chapter on regulation of political speech on the Internet in the book Law and Election Politics - The Rules of the Game (Routledge 2013), and he has lectured frequently on election law topics. He has served on the boards of several political, educational and cultural non-profit organizations. He is recognized as a national expert in close elections, recounts and election administration. Goodman was the 2014 Lefever Fellow at Elizabethtown College.^[1]

His prior government service includes four years as legal counsel and policy advisor to the Governor of Virginia (1998-2002) and three years as counsel and special assistant to the Attorney General of Virginia (1995-1997). He served as chief adviser to the Chairman of the Congressional Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce (1999-2000).^[1]

Former[edit]

Joan D. Aikens – April 1975 – September 1998 (reappointed May 1976, December 1981, August 1983 and October 1989).
Thomas B. Curtis – April 1975 – May 1976.
Thomas E. Harris – April 1975 – October 1986 (reappointed May 1976 and June 1979).
Neil O. Staebler – April 1975 – October 1978 (reappointed May 1976).
Vernon W. Thomson – April 1975 – June 1979; January 1981 – December 1981 (reappointed May 1976).
Robert Tiernan – April 1975 – December 1981 (reappointed May 1976).
William L. Springer – May 1976 – February 1979.
John Warren McGarry – October 1978 – August 1998 (reappointed July 1983 and October 1989).
Max L. Friedersdorf – March 1979 – December 1980.
Frank P. Reiche – July 1979 – August 1985.
Lee Ann Elliott – December 1981 – June 2000 (reappointed July 1987 and July 1994).
Danny L. McDonald – December 1981 – January 2006 (reappointed in July 1987, July 1994 and July 2000).
Thomas J. Josefiak – August 1985 – December 1991.
Scott E. Thomas – October 1986 – January 2006 (reappointed in November 1991 and July 1998).
Trevor Potter – November 1991 – October 1995.
Darryl R. Wold – July 1998 – April 2002.
Karl J. Sandstrom – July 1998 – December 2002.
David M. Mason – July 1998 – July 2008.
Bradley A. Smith – May 2000 – August 2005.
Michael E. Toner – March 2002 – March 2007. (by recess appointment on March 29, 2002, confirmed to full term 2003)
Robert D. Lenhard – January 2006 – December 31, 2007. (by recess appointment on January 4, 2006)
Hans A. **von Spakovsky– January 2006 – December 31, 2007. (by recess appointment on January 4, 2006)
Cynthia L. Bauerly – June 2008 – confirmed June 24, 2008^[7] for a term expiring on April 30, 2011^[8] Resigned effective February 1, 2013
Donald F. McGahn II – June 2008 – September 2013.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Election_Commission

he Federal Election Commission (FEC) is an independent regulatory agency that was founded in 1975 by the United States Congress to regulate the campaign finance legislation in the United States. It was created in a provision of the 1974 amendment to the Federal Election Campaign Act. It describes its duties as "to disclose campaign finance information, to enforce the provisions of the law such as the limits and prohibitions on contributions, and to oversee the public funding of Presidential elections."^[1]

[hide]

Membership[edit]

The Commission is made up of six members, who are appointed by the President of the United States and confirmed by the United States Senate. Each member serves a six-year term, and two seats are subject to appointment every two years.^[1] By law, no more than three Commissioners can be members of the same political party, and at least four votes are required for any official Commission action.

The Chairmanship of the Commission rotates among the members each year, with no member serving as Chairman more than once during his or her term.

Official duties[edit]

Although the Commission's name implies broad authority over U.S. elections, in fact its role is limited to the administration of federal campaign finance laws. It enforces limitations and prohibitions on contributions and expenditures, administers the reporting system for campaign finance disclosure, investigates and prosecutes violations (investigations are typically initiated by complaints from other candidates, parties, "watchdog groups," and the public), audits a limited number of campaigns and organizations for compliance, administers the presidential public funding programs for presidential candidates and, until recently, nominating conventions, and defends the statute in challenges to federal election laws and regulations.

The FEC also publishes reports filed by Senate, House of Representatives and Presidential campaigns that list how much each campaign has raised and spent, and a list of all donors over $200, along with each donor's home address, employer and job title. This database also goes back to 1980. Private organizations are legally prohibited from using these data to solicit new individual donors (and the FEC authorizes campaigns to include a limited number of "dummy" names as a measure to prevent this), but may use this information to solicit Political Action Committees. The FEC also maintains an active program of public education, directed primarily to explaining the law to the candidates, their campaigns, political parties and other political committees that it regulates.

Criticism[edit]

Critics of the FEC, including campaign finance reform supporters such as Common Cause and Democracy 21, have complained that it is a classic example of regulatory capture where it serves the interests of the ones it was intended to regulate. The FEC's bipartisan structure, which was established by Congress, renders the agency "toothless." Critics also claim that most FEC penalties for violating election law come well after the actual election in which they were committed. Additionally, some critics claim that the commissioners tend to act as an arm of the "regulated community" of parties, interest groups, and politicians when issuing rulings and writing regulations. Others point out, however, that the Commissioners rarely divide evenly along partisan lines, and that the response time problem may be endemic to the enforcement procedures established by Congress. To complete steps necessary to resolve a complaint – including time for defendants to respond to the complaint, time to investigate and engage in legal analysis, and finally, where warranted, prosecution – necessarily takes far longer than the comparatively brief period of a political campaign.

At the same time, however, other critics, such as former FEC Chairman Bradley A. Smith and Stephen M. Hoersting, Executive Director of the Center for Competitive Politics, criticize the FEC for pursuing overly aggressive enforcement theories, and for infringing on First Amendment rights of free speech.^[2]

Critics of the Commission also argue that this structure regularly causes deadlocks on 3-3 votes,^[3] but others argue that deadlocks are actually quite rare,^[4] and typically based on principle rather than partisanship.^[5] Since 2008, 3-3 votes have become more common at the FEC. From 2008 to August 2014, the FEC has had over 200 tie votes, accounting for approximately 14 percent of all votes in enforcement matters.^[6]

http://www.fec.gov/

random ad: help for superpacs 4/16

======

No issue too small to create a standoff at the FEC

For the constantly sniping trios of Republicans and Democrats on Federal Election Commission, any molehill can be made a mountain — even a question of whether to use the word “a” or “the” in regulations. What was supposed to be a routine clean-up of language in campaign finance regulations turned political this week as FEC Commissioner Lee Goodman objected to suggested edits regarding ... read more.

An FEC warning on LLC gifts to super PACs?

Documents newly released by the Federal Election Commission in cases involving 2012 election-cycle contributions to super PACs may foreshadow enforcement action against limited liability companies in the future. In four cases dating back to the last presidential election cycle, the FEC commissioners deadlocked 3-3 on whether to go forward with investigations of whether several LLCs were used to try to mask the ... read more.

Deadlock by Design Hobbles Election Agency, The Boston Globe, July 2013

It's almost a cliché that the Federal Election Commission is broken. The commission, created after Watergate to investigate potential campaign finance abuses, has been deadlocked in recent years by disagreements between its three Democratic and three Republican commissioners. The Boston Globe's Christopher Rowland dug into what causes the paralysis. A Democratic commissioner told him one of her Republican counterparts — whose office is next door to hers — never returned her calls. The number of enforcement actions taken by the agency has plummeted. In one case, the commission's staff found that a wealthy friend of Mitt Romney's had made a $150,000 in-kind contribution to his campaign, far above the $2,600 limit for such gifts. "But the three Republican commissioners disagreed," Rowland reported, "saying Romney's friend merely acted 'in behalf of' Romney's 2008 campaign — not the illegal 'on behalf of' — and thus the flight was allowed."===Paul Blumenthal

paulblumenthal@huffingtonpost.com

'Dark Money' Group In Arizona Discloses Donors As Other 'Dark Money' Groups

Posted: 11/05/2012 1:48 pm EST Updated: 11/05/2012 3:04 pm EST

WASHINGTON -- A "dark money" non-profit that funneled $11 million into two ballot initiative fights in California revealed to the state's campaign finance oversight board that it had received the money after the funds passed through the hands of two other "dark money" groups.

California's Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) revealed that the Arizona-based Americans for Responsible Leadership received the $11 million from the Center to Protect Patients' Rights, which originally received the money from the non-profit Americans for Job Security.

A press release from the FPPC called the scheme, "the largest contribution ever disclosed as campaign money laundering in California history."

"In California, money laundering is a crime," FPPC chair Ann Ravel told The Huffington Post. "It's a misdemeanor and so it can be charged this way."

"Dark money" groups are organized as either social welfare nonprofits under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code. Since these groups qualify for tax-exempt status, they are also exempt from disclosing their donors, which political committees are required to do.

Ravel explained that the attorney general's office would be responsible for bringing criminal charges, or that civil charges could be brought, resulting in a fine of equal value or in excess of the amount laundered, in this case $11 million.

"We're definitely going to pierce through [these non-profits] and find out what we can and take appropriate actions," Ravel said.

California Attorney General Kamala Harris, who would be responsible for starting any criminal inquiry, said previously, "This case is simply about protecting the transparency and integrity of elections in California."

The Center to Protect Patients' Rights is a well-known pass-through for "dark money" in elections with connections to the billionaire Koch brothers. Areport by the Center for Responsive Politics found that the group, "gave more than $44 million in 2010 to other tax-exempt groups, many of which spent millions on TV ads attacking Democrats running for the House and Senate and have begun spending for the same purpose this year."

Americans for Job Security is a corporate-backed "issues advocacy" group that has been running political advertisements since it was founded in 1997. The group reportedly was founded by a $1 million contribution from the American Insurance Association. In 2007, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) found that AJS had violated campaign finance laws by not registering as a political committee, which would require it to disclose its donors, but Republican commissioners forced a deadlock vote on enforcement of the violation.

AJS has ties to Karl Rove and was founded by Republican power players Mike Dubke and Dave Carney. The pair now run Crossroads Media, which handles the advertising operations for Rove’s American Crossroads, the biggest gun in the massive campaign arsenal that Rove assembled in 2010. Americans for Job Security, meanwhile, is currently led by a young operative named Stephen DeMaura, who physically works out of Crossroads Media's Alexandria office.

In a lawsuit against the FEC, Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland names AJS as a major recipient of undisclosed corporate cash.

But that’s about as much as anyone knows about AJS. “We don’t have clients. We have members,” said AJS head DeMaura. “Like all organizations of our type, we’re not required to disclose or discuss our members.”

The contributions into California were intended to influence two top priorities of conservative activists both inside and outside the state. Americans for Responsible Leadership passed the contributions it received to a campaign to defeat Proposition 30, which would raise taxes, and to support Proposition 32, which would ban unions from making payroll deductions for political contributions.

California's Supreme Court took the unprecedented step of forcing Americans for Responsible Leadership to disclose its donor list in a 7-0 vote on Sunday.

Aside from sending $11 million to California for the ballot initiatives campaigns, Americans for Responsible Leadership has also spent $2.5 million on federal election races. Almost all of that was spent on phone calls targeting President Barack Obama.

Another "dark money" group, Western Tradition Partnership, was forced to disclose its donors by a court in Montana. That disclosure was forced after a joint ProPublica/Frontline report showed that the group may have lied to both Montana courts and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in its application for tax-exempt status.

Fec Bak

Opening The Floodgates To Big Money In Our Elections

knowingly and willfully': Another Trump ally gets caught by the law in the hush-money case

Alabama[

Ex-chief worries Trump 'embedding' staff at FERC

New hope, new problem: Will the Federal Election Commission shut down?

By Dave Levinthal

December 20, 2017

More stories about

FEC rejects proposal to consider new rules on foreign spending in US elections

FEC challenged again to find coordination in current campaigns

Career after the FCC[edit]

Biography[edit]

Former[edit]

Contents

Membership[edit]

Official duties[edit]

Criticism[edit]

No issue too small to create a standoff at the FEC

An FEC warning on LLC gifts to super PACs?

'Dark Money' Group In Arizona Discloses Donors As Other 'Dark Money' Groups