Yosef Getachew of Common Cause, a Washington-based nonpartisan group that advocates for a more ethical and open government, called AT&T's payments "another example of the power of big money to gain access and influence in all layers of government."

"The swamp is only getting swampier," he said, referring to Trump's vows to "drain the swamp" on the campaign trail.

Getachew said that AT&T, a company in the highly regulated telecom industry, has many matters that come before government agencies or Congress. For...

Americans have a right to know who is spending money to influence our elections — whether it’s the hundreds of millions of dollars from unknown sources that has flooded into federal elections since the Citizens United Supreme Court decision or the $130,000 in hush money paid to a porn star days before the 2016 presidential election.

Rudy Giuliani has gone on a media spree recently to defend his new client, President Donald Trump, against the numerous investigations engulfing his chaotic presidency. But rather than make...

Paul S. Ryan, Common Cause vice president of policy and litigation, discusses the $130,000 hush money payment to Stormy Daniels in the days leading up to the 2016 election.

Paul Seamus Ryan, vice president for policy and litigation at Common Cause, said the latest explanation of the payment — that Mr. Trump reimbursed Mr. Cohen — does not eliminate the possibility that the payment violated campaign finance laws.

“A lot of contradictions coming out of Team Trump this morning,” Mr. Ryan said in an interview with The New York Times.

“This payment was to influence the election,” he added. And he said new details about the payment and repayment could raise additional legal...

“As someone who has worked on these issues for decades, I have never seen such a public interest,” Karen Hobert Flynn, president of nonpartisan government watchdog Common Cause, told Newsweek. She credits ethics experts like Painter for contributing to that interest.

“Having attorneys who specialize in this, that can explain what the law says and what the administration was doing, and could do it in ways that were accessible and understandable, I think people become hungry for it,” Hobert Flynn said. She added that her...

"They're on shaky legal ground," said Stephen Spaulding, chief of strategy at the nonprofit watchdog group Common Cause. "It sounds like they are really pushing the envelope … If the campaign were to say they are campaign-related payments, then maybe it's okay to use campaign funds. But he can't have it both ways."

“I have no doubt that Silver will put forward the same defense, which is that it’s business as usual in Albany and therefore not illegal,” said Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York. “That’s why it’s so important that the first jury rejected this argument, and we expect that the second jury will do the same.”

“It illustrates how long it takes to get to this point,” Paul S. Ryan, vice president of policy and litigation at Common Cause, a non-partisan good government group, told Newsweek. “You really have to exhaust all your remedies.”​

As Americans prepare for the 2020 census, there's a movement afoot that would negatively affect the count. The Trump administration wants to ask respondents about their citizenship or legal status on the census form, a query that in the context of today's supercharged immigration debates would lead millions of people – citizens and non-citizens – to ignore the form or return it blank.