CREW Cits Resp Ethic W

wow no notes 7/16

neglected but links to nodes

scalp --> ctr attack?

amicus get rid of trump judge b/c jack smith cannot? knows will nOt win? 9 24 aileen cannon

trump

https://www.alternet.org/2022/11/watchdog-group-14th-amendment-challenge/

an 10 22

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has arguably become the second most prominent figure in the far-right MAGA movement — second only to former President Donald Trump. If Trump doesn’t run for president in the 2024 election, countless pundits have observed, DeSantis would have a very good shot at winning the Republican nomination. And DeSantis has become so prominent in his party that according tonewly obtained e-mails, he had lunch with a U.S. Supreme Court Justice in 2021: Clarence Thomas.

The e-mails were obtained by American Oversight under Florida’s open-records law and show DeSantis’ assistant coordinating thelunch, which was held at the U.S. Supreme Court on June 23, 2021. Four of Thomas’ clerks, according to the e-mails, attended.

In a May 20, 2021 e-mail, Thomas assistant Shean Kelly Makel wrote, “Justice Thomas will attend the June 23rd luncheon with Governor DeSantis and the Justice's four law clerks. Do you think that the Governor would mind coming to the Supreme Court for lunch? Technically we are still closed to the public but the clerks can order lunch from a local restaurant. Or they can dine at Capital Grille. Please let me know."

READ MORE: Ron DeSantis’ lack of 'bipartisan success' is the key to his popularity with MAGA voters: columnist

In a separate e-mail, dated June 1, 2021, Makel wrote, “The Justice and his law clerks will dine in the Natalie Rehnquist Dining Room from 12:00 -2:00 p.m. Would the Governor arrive with his security detail? If so, I would need his contact info for the security team here at the Court. I will let them handle the logistics on arriving to the Court, parking and, etc. Does the Governor have any food allergies? Or a restricted diet?"

Thomas is now the longest-serving justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. The Republican justice was nominated by the late President George H.W. Bush in 1991 after Justice Thurgood Marshall announced his retirement. Marshall, nominated by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1967, was the first Black justice on the High Court — and Bush 41 nominated an African-American justice to replace an African-American justice. But while Marshall, who died in 1993, was a liberal, Thomas is a far-right social conservative known for embracing an ultra-strict version of Catholicism and for his staunch opposition to abortion and gay rights.

DeSantis, also known for being a far-right social conservative, served in the U.S. House of Representatives before narrowly defeating Democrat Andrew Gillum, a former Tallahassee mayor, in Florida’s 2018 gubernatorial race. While that race was quite close, the 2022 reelection is, according to polls, shaping up to be a much larger win for DeSantis. Some polls released in late October have shown DeSantis with double-digit leads over his Democratic challenger, Charlie Crist.

READ MORE: :{CREW:(style="background-color:#ff9900;"):}::{ demands 'immediate investigation' of Clarence and Ginni Thomas for possible 'conflicts of interest’:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:

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an 10 26

Trump faces new court battle after GOP judge quotes Orwell in rebuke

Trump faces another major court battle as a federal appeals court considers his administration's attempt to overturn a decades-old law, which requires presidents to preserve White House records. A Republican-appointed judge rebuked him with a pointed reference to George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984.

Trump’s lawyers will argue before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on October 16 over whether official documents from the White House belong personally to the president or to the American public.

The dispute follows a ruling by U.S. District Judge John Bates, appointed by President George W. Bush, who previously rejected the administration's position in May.

The judge ruled against the White House, using a famous Orwell quote to explain his reasoning: "Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past."

Ultimately, the judge found the Presidential Records Act likely constitutional and directed White House officials to follow its terms for the duration of the litigation.

Following the Watergate scandal, the 1978 law was put in place to ensure that official records are the property of the government rather than the person in the Oval Office.

Trump’s DOJ argued in April that the act is unconstitutional because Congress interfered with executive authority.

Lauren Bis, a White House spokeswoman, backed the department’s view, arguing it interferes with the separation of powers. Lawyers for the administration add that the recordkeeping demands are a burden and may discourage advisers from speaking honestly with the President.

Historians and watchdogs have taken the matter to court, arguing that if the statute is set aside, it would give Trump the power to decide what people could learn about his administration in the future.

Nikhel Sus, chief counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told NPR that a victory for Trump could effectively end the public's right to access presidential papers.

John Bellinger, a former legal adviser to Bush's National Security Council, points out the national security element to the case. "Access to the records on national security issues of former presidents is really vital for the continuity of our government,

He further explained that officials rely on records from previous administrations to understand conversations with foreign leaders, adding that it will leave them at a “terrible disadvantage.”

After leaving office in 2021, he kept sensitive records at his Mar-a-Lago estate, which led ot a criminal prosecution.

The court dismissed the case in 2024 over the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith, and prosecutors later dropped the charges after Trump's election victory.

Conservative attorney Michael Edney, a Bush administration official, suggested the dispute could end up in the Supreme Court.

Friday's arguments are the beginning of a case that will test how much control a president can have over the historical record.

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https://yyy.theguardian.com/law/2022/jan/28/clarence-thomas-supreme-court-affirmative-action-case-ginni-thomas

GUK

Who has more influence on supreme court: Clarence Thomas or his activist wife?

Justice’s wife, Ginni Thomas, sits on the board of conservative group that backs lawsuit seeking to end affirmative action, raising concerns it could present potential conflict of interest

Ed Pilkington

@edpilkington

Fri28 Jan 2022

Clarence Thomas, the hardline conservative supreme court justice, is facing calls for his recusal in the case over race-based affirmative action in college admissions that the court agreed to hear this week.

US supreme court will hear challenge to affirmative action in college admission

Read more

The case, which is being brought against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, is the latest potential conflict of interest involving Thomas and his wife Virginia Thomas. Ginni, as she is known, is a prominent rightwing activist who speaks out on a raft of issues that frequently come before the nation’s highest court.

A one-person conservative powerhouse, she set up her own lobbying company Liberty Consulting in 2010. By her own description, she has “battled for conservative principles in Washington” for over 35 years.

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The challenge to the two universities’ race-conscious admissions policies is being brought by Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA). Its leader Edward Blum has been a relentless opponent of affirmative action and voting rights laws.

His argument that race-based affirmative action is a quota system that discriminates against Asian students is framed with the supreme court’s newly emboldened rightwing majority in mind. A central player in that new six-justice conservative supermajority is Clarence Thomas, who is the longest-serving of the justices and at 73 will be the oldest once Stephen Breyer retires.

Justice Thomas’s influence has soared in recent months with the rightward shift of the court following Donald Trump’s three nominations, to the extent that some pundits now dub him the unofficial chief justice of the court.

SFFA’s lawsuit seeking to strike down affirmative action has received the enthusiastic backing of the conservative National Association of Scholars. It filed an amicus brief in support of the suit, accusing Harvard admissions officials of being prejudiced against Asian students and stereotyping them as “uninteresting, uncreative and one-dimensional”.

Ginni Thomas sits on the advisory board of the National Association of Scholars. Observers are concerned that her position with a group that has intervened in the affirmative action case could present appearances of conflict of interest.

Virginia ‘Ginni’ Thomas, wife of the supreme court Justice Clarence Thomas, watches Amy Coney Barrett take the constitutional oath in the White House on 26 October 2020. Photograph: Patrick Semansky/AP

Noah Bookbinder, president of the government ethics watchdog Crew,told the Guardian that while supreme court regulations may not legally require Thomas to recuse himself, there were serious questions to answer.

“Ginni Thomas is an advisory board member of an organization that has taken a very specific position on a case in front of her husband. That will make it hard for the public to be confident that he’s going to be totally unbiased.”

Bookbinder said that in the circumstances “the better course of action would be for him to recuse or for her to cease her involvement in that organization.”

The potential appearance of a conflict of interest over the Harvard case was noted in a recent investigation by the New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer that takes a deep dive into the overlapping interests of the couple. The article chronicles in devastating detail the many instances where Ginni’s political activism appears to present problems for the image and integrity of the court.

“Ginni Thomas has held so many leadership or advisory positions at conservative pressure groups that it’s hard to keep track of them,” Mayer concluded. “Many, if not all, of these groups have been involved in cases that have come before her husband.”

In the most troubling recent instance, Ginni Thomas lent her voice to Trump’s big lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. She was vocal on the subject in the buildup to the violent insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6 last year that led to the deaths of five people and left more than 100 police officers injured.

On the morning of the January 6 itself, Mark Joseph Stern of Slate reported, Thomas posted on her Facebook page words of encouragement for the “Stop the Steal” marchers in Washington. “LOVE MAGA people!!!!”, she said., “GOD BLESS EACH OF YOU STANDING UP or PRAYING!”

Soon after the insurrection, Thomas was forced to apologise to her husband’s former supreme court law clerks for comments she made privately to them that appeared to lament Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election. The remarks were sent to a private email list called “Thomas Clerk World”.

In the emails, disclosed by the Washington Post, she wrote: “Many of us are hurting, after leaving it all on the field, to preserve the best of this country. I feel I have failed my parents who did their best and taught me to work to preserve liberties.”

An even more direct intervention in the politics surrounding Trump and the big lie was made last December when Thomas joined 62 other influential conservatives in signing an open letter to the leader of the Republicans in the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy. It urged him to expel the Congress members Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger from the Republican party.

Their sin, the letter writers opined, was to serve on the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection. They described the committee as an “overtly partisan political persecution that brings disrespect to our country’s rule of law [and] legal harassment to private citizens who have done nothing wrong”.

Since the Capitol insurrection, the Department of Justice has arrested more than 725 defendants in relation to the storming of the building. Federal prosecutors have charged 225 with assaulting, resisting or impeding police officers, including over 75 charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily harm to an officer.

Last week the supreme court rejected attempts by Trump to block the January 6 committee from acquiring his White House records from the time of the attack. There was only one dissent from the bench to that 8-to-1 decision: it came from Clarence Thomas.

“Ginni Thomas’s activities are unprecedented in supreme court history in terms of a spouse engaging in issues that are constantly before the court,” said Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, a non-partisan group which advocates supreme court reform. “The appearance of impropriety is in itself impropriety – all the supreme court has is the trust of the public, and once you chip away at that you are in trouble.”

Roth added that Thomas’s comments in the days before January 6 were clearly problematic given her husband’s vote on the Trump documents. “It’s possible that the January 6 committee has emails between Ginni Thomas and administration officials from that day or the days leading up to it given how vocal she was. That’s definitely a place where Justice Thomas should have recused himself.”

Should the rightwing majority around Thomas use its newfound muscle to ban affirmative action, as is widely predicted, it would mark the negation of more than 30 years of settled constitutional law on the matter. What lies ahead bears strong resemblance to Roe v Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that made abortion legal which the court is probably poised to weaken or even overturn outright.

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Mayer points out in the New Yorker that an amicus brief was filed in the supreme court case challenging Roe by Robert George who also sits on the advisory board of the National Association of Scholars alongside Ginni Thomas.

Roth told the Guardian that a simpler solution to the full recusal of Clarence Thomas from the affirmative action case might exist. That would be to remove the National Association of Scholars’ amicus brief.

“There is an easy way to deal with this perceived conflict of interest – strike the amicus brief,” he said.

It is established practice in all federal appeals courts, though not in the supreme court, that amicus briefs brought by anybody with a connection to a judge hearing a case are routinely thrown out.

The president of the National Association of Scholars, Peter Wood, told the Guardian that he knew of no conflict of interest relating to Thomas’s position on the advisory board. “Ms Thomas’s role is to provide advice to NAS in response to questions I put to her about NAS policy and initiatives. I have never discussed with her any NAS matter that was likely to come before the supreme court,” he said.

https://www.mediamatters.org/january-6-insurrection/right-wing-media-continues-defend-january-6-insurrectionist-couy-griffin

After New Mexico county commissioner and January 6 insurrectionist Couy Griffin was officially barred for life from holding public office, right-wing media responded by defending the Cowboys for Trump founder – downplaying his actions at the Capitol riot, claiming that it was not really an insurrection, and suggesting that his removal violates the will of the people who elected him.

On September 6, a New Mexico district court judge ruled that Griffin’s participation in the January 6 insurrection disqualifies him from holding public office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, also known as the Disqualification Clause. This marks the first case where the provision has been used since 1869, as it was enacted as a measure against former Confederates in Congress after the Civil War.

The case was brought by New Mexico citizens represented by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), an anti-corruption legal group, which notedthat “an eyewitness to Griffin’s behavior testified that Griffin also took on a leadership position within the mob at the Capitol on January 6th. For his involvement in the Capitol riot, Griffin was ultimately convicted of misdemeanor trespassing, for which he spent 14 days in jail. Griffin also withstood a recall effort in 2021 over his participation in the riot, and he recently refused to certify Otero County’s 2022 primary election results based on debunked conspiracy theories about Dominion voting machines.

In a statement to Vice News following the ruling disqualifying him from holding public office, Griffin defended himself and his election denial: “For them to say that I was there on that day to stop the transition of power, it’s all slanderous. It’s all built on lies. I was concerned election laws had been broken.” Griffin said that “I’m disappointed in the tyranny of one judge can remove the will of the people,” which “makes [me] mistrust the government even more.”

Right-wing writers alleged that the ruling puts democracy in danger and defended January 6 overall

On September 7, Griffin appeared on Newsmax’s Greg Kelly Reports to discuss his removal, which he argued spells the end of democracy: “That will mean that the radical progressive Democrat that is governor of New Mexico will now hand-select who to replace me and who to represent the people. So we always hear all this [about] our democracy is under attack? Absolutely. The case in point, right here today.”

Host Greg Kelly told Griffin, “You are not an insurrectionist. Going there exercising your First Amendment right and you didn’t break anything, you didn’t hurt anybody, you didn’t threaten anybody. That’s not an insurrection."

September 7, 2022, edition of Newsmax's Greg Kelly Reports

Griffin defended himself to Fox News Digital as well, claiming that he had “‘no intention’ of ‘insurrection nor rebellion’ when he went to the Capitol.” He called his removal a “disgrace,” as he claims the judge “fails to have jurisdiction to do so but also because there was a recall waged against me after Jan 6 that failed miserably.”

Conservative outlets lit up with similar editorializing.

• Conservative news site RedState called CREW “leftwing nutters” and argued, “A state judge can’t declare a national insurrection existed nearly two years ago when the federal government itself never made such a declaration.”  
• The Gateway Punditwrote that “Griffin did not commit any violent acts on January 6, however the judge ruled that the January 6 Capitol protest was an insurrection.”
• Breitbart called CREW a “Soros-backed group” in their coverage of the story, and made sure to include that “Griffin, like many participants in the Capitol riot, apparently believed he was defending the Constitution, not rebelling against it.” 
• The Wall Street Journal questioned the ruling for treating January 6 insurrectionists like “Confederates after the Civil War,” and said, “The breadth of this precedent is troubling.”
• The Daily Caller defended Griffinwith the headline “Walking Around Outside The Capitol Is Now Officially ‘Insurrection,’ Says Judge.”
• Right-wing YouTuber Tim Pool**h**osted Florida Republican congressional nominee Cory Mills, who denied that January 6 was an insurrection and claimed that Griffin’s removal proves “what President Trump told us a long time ago, which is that they're not after me. They're after you. I'm just in the way.”
• On Twitter, American Greatness writer and January 6 conspiracy theorist Julie Kelly claimed that the judge “lied throughout his 49-page (!) ruling” and that she hopes Griffin “defies the order” to leave office.
• Right-wing radio host and Daily Caller editor Vince Coglianese criticized the ruling, saying, “Walking around outside the Capitol building with a bullhorn or unilaterally overturning the will of the voters — which one is more insurrectiony?”

https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/corporate-seditionists-are-no-better-than-the-seditionists-who-attacked-the-capitol/

Capitalism and democracy are compatible only if democracy is in the driver’s seat.

That’s why I took some comfort just after the attack on the Capitol when many big corporations solemnly pledged they’d no longer finance the campaigns of the147 lawmakers who voted to overturn election results.

**

Btw, if you’d like my daily analyses, commentary, and drawings, please subscribe to my free letter: robertreich.substack.com

**

Well, those days are over. Turns out they were over the moment the public stopped paying attention.

A report published last week by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington shows that over the past year, 717 companies and industry groups have donated more than $18m to 143 of those seditious lawmakers. Businesses that pledged to stop or pause their donations have given nearly $2.4m directly to their campaigns or political action committees.

But there’s a deeper issue here. The whole question of whether corporations do or don’t bankroll the seditionist caucus is a distraction from a more basic problem.

The tsunami of money now flowing from corporations into the swamp of American politics is larger than ever. And this money – bankrolling almost all politicians and financing attacks on their opponents – is undermining American democracy as much as did the 147 seditionist members of Congress. Maybe more.

The Democratic senator KyrstenSinema – whose vocal opposition to any change in the filibuster is on the verge of dooming voting rights – received almost $2m in campaign donations in 2021 even though she is not up for re-election until 2024. Most of it came from corporate donors outside Arizona, some of which have a history of donating largely to Republicans.

Has the money influenced Sinema? You decide.Besides sandbagging voting rights, she voted down the $15 minimum wage increase, opposed tax increases on corporations and the wealthy and stalled on drug price reform– policies supported by a majority of Democratic senators as well as a majority of Arizonans.

Over the last four decades, corporate PAC spending on congressional elections has more than quadrupled, even adjusting for inflation.

Labor unions no longer provide a counterweight. Forty years ago, union PACs contributed about as much as corporate PACs. Now, corporations are outspending labor by more than three to one.

According to a landmark study published in 2014 by the Princeton professor Martin Gilens and Northwestern professor Benjamin Page, the preferences of the typical American have no influence at all on legislation emerging from Congress.

Gilens and Page analyzed 1,799 policy issues in detail, determining the relative influence of economic elites, business groups, mass-based interest groups and average citizens. Their conclusion: “The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.” Lawmakers mainly listen to the policy demands of big business and wealthy individuals – those with the most lobbying prowess and deepest pockets to bankroll campaigns and promote their views.

It’s probably far worse now. Gilens and Page’s data came from the period 1981 to 2002: before the supreme court opened the floodgates to big money in the Citizens United case, before Super Pacs, before “dark money” and before the Wall Street bailout.

The corporate return on this mountain of money has been significant. Over the last 40 years, corporate tax rates have plunged. Regulatory protections for consumers, workers and the environment have been defanged. Antitrust has become so ineffectual that many big corporations face little or no competition.

Corporations have fought off safety nets and public investments that are common in other advanced nations (most recently, Build Back Better). They’ve attacked labor laws, reducing the portion of private-sector workers belonging to a union from a third 40 years ago to just over 6% now.

They’ve collected hundreds of billions in federal subsidies, bailouts, loan guarantees and sole-source contracts. Corporate welfare for big pharma, big oil, big tech, big ag, the largest military contractors and biggest banks now dwarfs the amount of welfare for people.

The profits of big corporations just reached a 70-year high, even during a pandemic. The ratio of CEO pay in large companies to average workers has ballooned from 20-to-1 in the 1960s, to 320-to-1 now.

Meanwhile, most Americans are going nowhere. The typical worker’s wage is only a bit higher today than it was 40 years ago, when adjusted for inflation.

But the biggest casualty is public trust in democracy.

In 1964, just 29% of voters believed government was “run by a few big interests looking out for themselves”. By 2013, 79% of Americans believed it.

Corporate donations to seditious lawmakers are nothing compared with this 40-year record of corporate sedition.

A large portion of the American public has become so frustrated and cynical about democracy they are willing to believe blatant lies of a self-described strongman, and willing to support a political party that no longer believes in democracy.

As I said at the outset, capitalism is compatible with democracy only if democracy is in the driver’s seat. But the absence of democracy doesn’t strengthen capitalism. It fuels despotism.

Despotism is bad for capitalism. Despots don’t respect property rights. They don’t honor the rule of law. They are arbitrary and unpredictable. All of this harms the owners of capital. Despotism also invites civil strife and conflict, which destabilize a society and an economy.

My message to every CEO in America: you need democracy, but you’re actively undermining it.

It’s time for you to join the pro-democracy movement. Get solidly behind voting rights. Actively lobby for the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

Use your lopsidedly large power in American democracy to protect American democracy – and do it soon. Otherwise, we may lose what’s left of it.

***

Btw, if you’d like my daily analyses, commentary, and drawings, please subscribe to my free letter: robertreich.substack.com

Robert B. Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies, and writes at robertreich.substack.com. Reich served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, for which Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. He has written fifteen books, including the best sellers "Aftershock", "The Work of Nations," and "Beyond Outrage," and, his most recent, "The Common Good," which is available in bookstores now. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, chairman of Common Cause, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the award-winning documentary, "Inequality For All." He's co-creator of the Netflix original documentary "Saving Capitalism," which is streaming now.

an 121

President Donald Trump is still facing backlash for his incriminating "Save America" rally speech delivered shortly before his angry supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. And now a non-partisan watchdog organization is also going after the embattled president. ]

Now, according to Law & Crime, the nonpartisan watchdog organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has joined the calls for Trump to be held accountable for his actions. In an open letter addressed to Acting U.S. Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray, the group developed what they have described as a "criminal sedition complaint."

CREW argues that Trump's words spoken at the "Save America" rally should be viewed as a blatant effort to hinder Congress' efforts to finalize the electoral college certification of President-elect Joe Biden's victory. The group alleges that Trump's actions were "part-and-parcel of a plan to violently overthrow the U.S. government by preventing the peaceful transition of power."

Pointing to 18 U.S.C. § 2384, CREW notes that the law states:

"If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both."

In a press release, CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder offered a full account of Trump's actions and the violence that ensued almost immediately after he made his remarks....

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/florida-voter-registration/

broken promises 501c4

https://www.citizensforethics.org/legal-action/legal-complaints/crew-florida-dark-money-group-violated-federal-law/

no lnx

Washington—The Internal Revenue Service should investigate a dark money group that appears to have violated its tax-exempt status by spending 99.6% of its funds on political expenses, mostly to support a suspected spoiler candidate running for state office, despite being registered as a social welfare organization, according to a complaint sent today by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington to the IRS. It is apparent from its tax documents that the appropriately named Broken Promises failed to properly disclose its political contributions and served to primarily influence political campaigns.

Documents show that in 2018, Broken Promises made seven political contributions to political committees in Florida. According to its 2018 tax year documents, the dark money group spent a total of $161,010, though it failed to disclose that $160,470 of it went towards political activity. Most of the money was in-kind contributions of advertising or direct mail provided to the political committee Friends of Charles Goston, which supported an independent candidate whose state Senate race candidacy was directly backed by donations from Republican lobbyists, raising suspicions that it was part of a spoiler effort “to split the Democratic vote to help Republicans.” 

Rather than disclosing this spending, Broken Promises told the IRS that it did not engage in any “direct or indirect political campaign activities on behalf of or in opposition to candidates for public office” and failed to file relevant documents related to its political expenditures and grants. With more than 99 percent of the group’s total spending going toward political activity, Broken Promises is in clear violation of its tax-exempt status.

“Broken Promises blatantly misled the IRS about its primary activities and exploited our federal tax laws to get the benefits nonprofits are entitled to while secretly acting as a political organization,” said CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder. “The law is clear that tax-exempt organizations that receive tax benefits and do not disclose donors cannot spend the majority of their money on politics, but that is exactly what Broken Promises did.”

Nonprofits like Broken Promises are allowed to spend money on elections, though it cannot be their primary activity, which is commonly understood to be more than 50 percent of its total spending. Tax-exempt organizations like Broken Promises also must report information about their political campaign activity for or against candidates to the IRS. Contributions to political action committees, like the ones Broken Promises made in 2018, clearly meet the IRS’ definition of political expenditures, which includes “[a]ll activities that support or oppose candidates for elective federal, state, or local public office.”

CREW has previously filed complaints against other 501(c)(4) organizations for failing to report political activity and providing misleading information about their operations to the IRS. In 2019, dark money group Freedom Vote, Inc. paid a penalty to the IRS following a complaint CREW filed in June 2018 alleging that the group was primarily operating in violation of its tax-exempt status to influence political campaigns.

“For far too long, dark money groups have secretly wielded their influence to overshadow the voices and interests of the American public, and it is past time for the IRS to ensure that nonprofit groups do not abuse their tax status to improperly influence politics,” said Bookbinder. “The IRS should open an investigation into Broken Promises’ behavior and should they be found in violation of the law, act swiftly to reconsider their tax status.”

Read the complaint here.

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https://www.motherjones.com/coronavirus-updates/2020/04/jared-kushner-surveillance/

as Jared Kushner has set himself a prominent role in the administration’s coronavirus response, there’s been a growing chorus of questions about what, exactly, he’s up to and how much the public will ever find out about it. Today, a trio of lawmakers are demanding answers from Jared Kushner about work his public-private taskforce has reportedly been doing with a “range of technology firms” to “establish a far-reaching public health surveillance system” in response to the pandemic.

Democratic senators Mark Warner of Virginia and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, along with Rep. Anna Eshoo of California, wrote a letter to Kushneron Friday asking about the issue three days after *Politico*reported that Kushner’s shadow task force had “reached out to a range of health technology companies about creating a national coronavirus surveillance system” that would give government “a near real-time view” of patients seeking treatment. Even though Politicocited interviews with “seven tech executives, government officials and other people familiar with its contours,” a White House spokesperson denied to the news outlet that Kushner had any knowledge of such plans.

“Your office’s denial of the existence of this effort, despite ample corroborating reporting, only compounds concerns we have with lack of transparency,” the lawmakers wrote in the April 10 letter, which expressed fears that such a system “could undermine the confidentiality and security of our health information and become the new status quo.”

The lawmakers’ concerns about transparency echo previous worries that Kushner’s taskforce is operating outside of normal government procedure, perhaps to the point of breaking the law. (Kushner has said that President Trump instructed him to “knock down every barrier needed” and “make sure that the government is doing things that the government doesn’t normally do, where we’re stretching, where [we] are acting very quickly.”)

On March 27, Noah Bookbinder, the executive director of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, wrote a letter to White House Counsel Pat Cipolloneasking him to ensure that Kushner’s working group “fully comply with all laws,” specifically citing provisions of the Presidential Records Act and and Federal Advisory Committee Act that bar or limit the use of private email accounts for government business.

On Friday, Anne Weismann, CREW’s chief FOIA counsel, told Mother Jones that the organization was still working to get its arms around the full scope of Kushner’s activities and had yet to receive a response to its letter. But with the federal government spending trillions in response to the coronavirus , she says Kushner’s secret work with a range of often unnamed private officials was especially troubling, especially if they are conducting business in a way that evades oversight.

“Given the amount of money at stake, there is significant possibility that these people are also trying to leverage their position for their own personal profit, or profit for their companies,” she said. “We should have assurances that people who are given such enormous power and responsibility are acting in the interest of the nation.”

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sues on emoluments

...Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which is suing Trump for violating the Constitution by accepting money from foreign governments through his hotels, said the invitations to donors by a campaign committee he controls will also generate cash for himself.

“Look for the big donors to make appearances alongside major Trump administration figures at the Trump Hotel,” Libowitz said. “It’s already sold out for the 3rd and 4th despite charging double what the other luxury hotels are charging around the holiday.”

Trump continues to own and profit from a hotel blocks from the White House, despite his promise during the campaign to separate himself from his family business. The hotel has taken in millions from the RNC, Trump’s reelection campaign, foreign governments and U.S. taxpayers in the last two year

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http://www.bermanexposed.org/

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https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/dark-money-republican-party-americans-for-job-security-peter-thiel-devos-904900/

washTON — Anonymous campaign cash is as much a fixture of American politics nowadays as yard signs and :{awkward photos:(style="box-sizing:border-box;-webkit-font-smoothing:antialiased;font-weight:400"):}: of presidential contenders eating corn dogs. Dark money may have existed well before Citizens United, but that 2010 Supreme Court decision opened the floodgates for untraceable money to soak our elections. It also left voters clueless about who was putting up the hundreds of millions of dollars spent by groups with anodyne names like Priorities USA and Americans for Prosperity.

One of the most infamous players in the dark-money game was an outfit by the name of Americans for Job Security.Founded by a Republican political operative close to Rick Perry, Americans for Job Security acted :{like a laundromat:(style="box-sizing:border-box;-webkit-font-smoothing:antialiased;font-weight:400"):}: for wealthy donors. Instead of giving directly to a candidate or campaign and having their names disclosed, they donated to Americans for Job Security, which scrubbed their identity and spent their millions to elect Republicans across the country and push right-wing policy proposals. The group :{dropped:(style="box-sizing:border-box;-webkit-font-smoothing:antialiased;font-weight:400"):}: $5 million in 2010 to elect dozens of new House Republicans and another $15 million in 2012 to try to defeat President Obama. It also funneled tens of millions more to state-level campaigns, including to fund the opposition to two 2012 California ballot measures to raise taxes on the very rich and weaken labor unions. 

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On Friday, the mystery of who bankrolled Americans for Job Security was finally solved. After losing a seven-year legal battle, the now-defunct group revealed where its money had came from — a rare victory for clean-government groupsand an even more rare glimpse at the internal workings of a dark-money juggernaut. According to :{documents turned over to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington:(style="box-sizing:border-box;-webkit-font-smoothing:antialiased;font-weight:400"):}:, Americans for Job Security’s donor list is a who’s-who of 1-percenters. 

The biggest givers include: Investor Charles Schwab ($8.8 million); Amway co-founder and Christian conservative mega-donor Richard DeVos and wife Helen ($2 million); Peter Thiel, the libertarian investor and Trump supporter: ($500,000); casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson and wife Miriam ($500,000).

Other notable names on the donor rolls are Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, former Trump cabinet secretary Linda McMahon, and members of the Fisher of the family that co-founded the Gap. The donor list also features major corporations including oil and natural gas companies Continental Resources ($1 million) and Devon Energy ($3 million), U.S. Sugar Corp ($750,000), casino conglomerate Wynn Resorts ($500,000), and Quicken Loans ($250,000).

Still, even with the new disclosures, the actual source of much of the group’s funding still remains unclear. Americans for Job Security lists as donors other nonprofit groups like Michigan Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility, Wellspring Committee, and the Koch-aligned Center to Protect Patient Rights. Think of these groups as all part of a daisy chain of nonprofits used to funnel secret money into elections.

Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, tells Rolling Stonethat this is the first time that the courts forced a major dark-money group to open its books after running afoul of the nation’s campaign finance laws. “There has been this history of abuse post-Citizens United where a lot of these groups have been spending the vast majority of their money to influence politics, which is not something you’re allowed to do without registering as a political committee and disclosing your donors,” he says. “We’ve finally gotten to a place where the law was enforced.”

Bookbinder also notes that Hensel Phelps Construction, which has :{received billions of dollars:(style="box-sizing:border-box;-webkit-font-smoothing:antialiased;font-weight:400"):}: in government contracts over a period of decades, gave $2.9 million to Americans for Job Security in 2010. At the very least, Bookbinder says, the disclosure of Hensel Phelps’ donations shows how companies with a direct financial stake in government policy have tried to influence the lawmakers who shape that policy while leaving the public in the dark.

Dark-money groups have poured :{nearly $1 billion:(style="box-sizing:border-box;-webkit-font-smoothing:antialiased"):}:into U.S. politics since 2010, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The biggest spenders range from the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity on the right end of the political spectrum to Majority Forward and the League of Conservation Voters on the left. The data show that right-leaning dark-money groups have outspent left-leaning ones in the past four election cycles.

Neil Reiff, a campaign finance lawyer who represents candidates and nonprofit groups, says he expects CREW’s legal victory over Americans for Job Security to serve as a cautionary tale for other dark-money outfits. “If the courts are moving the goalposts, I think people running outside groups are going to take notice — absolutely,” Reiff says.

To stem the tide of dark money, Democratic lawmakers have introduced multiple bills but each one of those has languished in the U.S. Senate under Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Earlier, this year all 47 Senate Democrats threw their weight behind the For the People Act, a package of anti-corruption reforms similar to those passed by the Democratic-controlled House. McConnell :{has blocked:(style="box-sizing:border-box;-webkit-font-smoothing:antialiased;font-weight:400"):}: that legislation as well. 

Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), a freshman member, introduced the :{End Dark Money Act:(style="box-sizing:border-box;-webkit-font-smoothing:antialiased;font-weight:400"):}: as his first piece of legislation, which would reverse a Republican decision to defund the IRS’s efforts to dark-money nonprofit groups more transparent to the public. Crow says the influence of unlimited and undisclosed campaign money is an issue that comes up in town halls and constituent meetings but also among his colleagues in Congress who fear retribution from anonymous donors if they step out of line if they defy the president or the party leadership.

“Regardless of whether we’re talking about health care, gun violence, or climate change, so much of this goes back to the corrupting influence of money in politics,” Crow tells Rolling Stone. “We’ve got to clean up that system. These dark-money groups are a huge component of that.”

In This Article: Campaign Fundraising

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yay but why do the right thing?

https://www.alternet.org/stunning-supreme-court-decision-dark-money-were-about-know-lot-more-about-who-funding-our-elections

In  a win for increased transparency and those demanding an end to the so-called "dark money" eating away at U.S. democracy, the Supreme Court on Tuesday lifted a previous stay on a lower court ruling by rejecting the argument by right-wing advocacy groups who said they should not have to reveal the identity of big-dollar donors who fund their issue-based campaign ads.

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Crucially, the ruling means that groups that in the past have been able to hide the source of their funding before, during, and after campaigns will have now have to make that information available before voters go to the polls—in this case, that means before the upcoming mid-term elections. Effective immediately, any group or individual making more than $250 in express advocacy ads — ads that tell viewers who to vote for or against — must now disclose the identities of all contributors who gave more than $200 in a year.

As the Huffington Post reports:

The decision came about after Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal watchdog group, fought for the past six years to get the Federal Election Commission to enforce campaign finance laws against Crossroads GPS, a conservative nonprofit group founded by Karl Rove, a senior adviser to George W. Bush when he was president. CREW finally won its battle on Tuesday.

As of Sept. 18, any group that runs an independent expenditure ― election ads that expressly call for the election or defeat of a candidate― in excess of $250 will have to disclose all political donors above $200.

Norm Eisen, the chairperson of CREW, celebrated the decision on Twitter: "We are about to drive a lot of dark money donors into the light—it's gonna look like the climax of a Harry Potter movie where the creatures shrivel in the sun."

Writing for the Center for Public Integrity, Dave Levinthal and Sarah Kleiner report that "secret money in politics will soon be a lot less secret."

And while Levinthal and Kleiner quoted Federal Election Commission Vice Chairwoman Ellen Weintraub, who said it won't be surprising to see some groups "come up with clever ways of getting around the rules," champions of disclosure said the ruling is a major crack in the armor of the forces of those using shadowing groups and their vast fortunes to undermine democracy.

"This is a great day for transparency and democracy," said Noah Bookbinder, CREW's executive director. "Three courts, including the Supreme Court, have now rejected Crossroads' arguments for a stay, meaning we're about to know a lot more about who is funding our elections."

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https://www.alternet.org/citizens-united-just-15-groups-account-75-percent-dark-money-spent-us-elections

Just 15 groups were responsible for more than 75 percent of dark money political spending from 2010 to 2016, and together poured more than $600 million—out of a total of $800+ million—into campaigns in the wake of the landmark Citizens Unitedcase, according to a new analysis from Issue One, a nonpartisan nonprofit that advocates for stricter campaign finance rules.

"Dark money groups hold enormous sway over what issues are, and are not, debated in Congress and on the campaign trail," the report explains. "But the donors behind these groups rarely discuss their motivations for bankrolling these efforts, leaving the public in the dark about who funds these increasingly prominent and potent organizations."

In addition the new *Dark Money Illuminated* (pdf) report, which identifies about 400 donors and organizations bankrolling these 15 secretive groups, the researchers also developed profiles for each dark money group and an "extensive, first-of-its-kind database containing nearly 1,200 transactions, each supported by primary source documents."

"Right now, the dark money groups and anonymous donors behind them that endlessly bombard Americans with television ads spouting half-truths and outright lies do a disservice to voters," said Issue One CEO Nick Penniman. "In the internet age, every American should be able to know where the money is being spent and who is giving it in near real-time."

Of course, overall political spending since 2010 is in the many billions of dollars, but the Issue One report specifically focuses on groups that have been allowed to conceal their donor lists.

While the groups examined by Issue One have supported both Democrat and Republican candidates at various levels of politics, the only ones to break $100 million primarily back the GOP. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce—which gets substantial funding from big banks, pharmaceutical companies, and polluting industries—spent $130 million, and Crossroads GPS, co-founded by former White House strategist Karl Rove, spent $110 million. The third highest spender was the right-wing billionaire Koch Brothers' Americans for Prosperity.

Check out the full list:

"Whether you're a conservative Republican or a progressive Democrat, policy ideas and candidates' positions should be promoted by organizations who are proud to be engaged in our public arena, not secretive front groups designed to deceive voters, hide donors, and deploy deceptive tactics," declared Tim Roemer, a former congressman and U.S. ambassador who co-chairs Issue One's ReFormers Caucus, a coalition of former politicians.

Emphasizing that "transparency and disclosure are the building blocks necessary to empower citizens with information to fully and accurately assess the source and credibility of the groups trying to influence their votes," the report includes five recommendations for doing so:

1. Increase donor disclosure, such as including the names of a dark money group's top donors on television, radio, print, or digital advertisements;
2. Pass the Honest Ads Act, legislation before Congress that would create new disclosure standards for paid online political advertising modeled on the nationwide requirements for paid ads that appear on television or radio;
3. Develop new, national reporting rules to prevent donors from hiding their identities while bankrolling election-related advertisements;
4. Encourage or even require groups to great CREATE? special accounts that are exclusively for political expenses; and
5. Restructure and strenthen "the feckless, and deadlocked-by-design," Federal Elections Commission (FEC) "to ensure there is an effective cop on the beat to stop groups from breaking the rules that already exist.

Other critics of political spending by wealthy Americans and corporations have argued for far more radical reforms, including the reversal of the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens Unitedruling and a transition to publicly-funded elections.

On Tuesday, a federal appeals court ruled that a pair of dark money groups, including the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity, must disclose top donors to California's attorney general—though, as the Los Angeles Timesnoted, state officials "are required to keep the information confidential unless ordered by a court."

Last month, in a case that ethics watchdogCitizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) brought against Crossroads GPS, a federal judge issued a ruling that invalidated an FEC regulation enabling dark money donors to avoid disclosure.As Common Dreamsreported, Center for Responsive Politics' Robert Maguire said that if the ruling stands, it "could fundamentally change the role dark money plays in elections (if it has a role at all)."

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...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.

...

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 Trump’s corruption is unparalleled in the history of the presidency.

Here are the facts, according to USA Today and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington: During his first year in office, Trump and White House staff promoted the Trump brand on at least 35 different occasions. At least eleven foreign governments paid Trump-owned companies and at least six foreign government officials visited Trump Organization properties. Political groups spent more than $1.2 million at Trump properties (compared to less than $100,000 in any previous year). And Trump sold $35 million in real estate in 2017, mostly to secretive buyers.

http://www.citizensforethics.org/who-we-are/our-team/

brock?

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face so ss

 good-government group has won its case against the Federal Election Commission for negligence in enforcing campaign finance laws against two conservative political groups that have ties to billionaire industrialists and conservative juggernauts Charles and David Koch and that were active in several Southern states.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a complaint with the FEC in 2012 against Americans for Job Security and the American Action Network for failing to register as political committees while financing $27.6 million worth of political ads during the 2010 elections. AJS is an anti-union 501(c)6 nonprofit trade association based in Virginia, while AAN is a 501(c)4 "social welfare" nonprofit based in Washington, D.C.

After the FEC dismissed the suit, CREW sued the regulatory body itself.

This week a federal judge ruled that the FEC was "arbitrary and capricious" when it dismissed CREW's complaint against the groups and will need to reconsider it. The ruling could dramatically change how the FEC investigates nonprofits that spend on politics and consequently increase election-spending transparency.

"The case sees through the problematic tactic of using bogus 'issue ads' that are clearly political in an attempt to evade transparency and accountability," CREW Communications Director Jordan Libowitz told Facing South.

To avoid violating their nonprofit status, the primary purpose of trade organizations and social welfare groups must not be political activity. Unlike the 527 political committees known as super PACs that have strict political disclosure requirements, trade organizations and social welfare groups are not required to disclose their donors except when reporting political expenditures that explicitly support or oppose a candidate for office and, in some cases, expenditures on so-called "electioneering" ads that run close to an election and criticize or support candidates without asking citizens to vote for or against them.

In 2010, AJS spent $9.5 million on political ads benefiting Republican candidates including considerable amounts on U.S. House and Senate races in the South: nearly $1.7 million in North Carolina, close to $900,000 in Arkansas, over $500,000 in Virginia, and smaller sums in Florida, Georgia and Kentucky.

Of that amount, $4.6 million went toward electioneering communications. Though political ads amounted to nearly 77 percent of AJS's 2010 spending, it did not register as a political committee with the FEC.

AJS's income that year included $4.8 million from the Center to Protect Patient Rights, an Arizona-based social welfare nonprofit that served as a key funding source for the Koch political operation, and $3 million from the Wellspring Committee, which has funded Koch-backed political groups including Americans for Prosperity.

That same year, AAN spent at least $18.1 million on ads targeting 29 races, with $13.7 million of that going towards electioneering communications.Though the ad buys constituted nearly 67 percent of the group's spending from 2009 to 2010, it did not register as a political committee or reveal who funded the ads.

AAN spent millions on Southern races for U.S. House and Senate, including nearly $2.3 million in Virginia, over $500,000 in West Virginia, and close to $190,000 in Arkansas, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. AAN received over $300,000 from the Wellspring Committee in 2010 and donated $200,000 to the Center to Protect Patient Rights in 2011, according to Conservative Transparency.

In 2011 and 2012, CREW filed complaints against AJS and AAN for failing to report numerous electioneering communications to the FEC and not registering as political committees.

The FEC's own Office of General Counsel found that both groups had broken campaign finance law. But in the summer of 2014, the FEC — by law a six-member body evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats — gridlocked as it often does, with the three Republicans asserting in both cases that electioneering communications should not be considered when judging how much of an organization's work is political.

The case against the FEC

The FEC's dismissal of CREW's complaints didn't stop the watchdog from continuing its fight. In August 2014, CREW sued the FEC for failing to enforce campaign finance law against AAN and AJS.

"Due to the FEC's inaction, AAN and AJS have become a template for political groups to hide political spending," CREW's complaint stated.

AAN and AJS still have not registered as political groups. AAN has continued to spend on elections, funneling millions of dollars into politics in 2012 and 2014; so far this election cycle the group has documented over $600,000 of ad spending on U.S. House races. AJS spent nearly $16 million in 2012 but hasn't reported any federal ad buys since then.

Last December, CREW filed a motion for summary judgment against the FEC. On Sept. 19, U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper ruled that "the controlling commissioners relied on a faulty legal premise in applying the 'major purpose' test … The commissioners' decisions were thus 'contrary to law.'"

The judge ordered the FEC to reconsider the complaints within 30 days. The FEC has the option to appeal the ruling.

"We are very hopeful that all of the FEC commissioners will take the court's decision to heart, find the ads in question to clearly be political ads, and accordingly determine that AAN and AJS had a major purpose to affect elections and must disclose their donors," said CREW's Libowitz. "If somehow three commissioners again prevent meaningful enforcement, CREW will consider whether additional legal action is appropriate."

Judge Cooper's ruling is a watershed moment for campaign finance law as the definition of "political activity" will now include electioneering communications. This new definition is expected to either force numerous organizations to significantly decrease their political activity or to register as political groups, thus increasing transparency of their ads and donors.

Libowitz said the decision "sends a strong signal" that the FEC needs to enforce the law and has energized his group to ramp up its watchdog efforts.

"Now that we have seen clearly that courts will compel the FEC to do its job even over the opposition of obstructionist commissioners, we will redouble our efforts to find serious violations and ensure that they are adequately addressed," he said.

(To comment on or to share this story, click here.

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