Daily Beast: MAGA Shit Fight May Land Marjorie Taylor Greene in Legal Hot Water
Paul Ryan, vice president of policy and litigation at the campaign finance watchdog group Common Cause, agreed that the outstanding invoice could be considered an unreported debt. But he also offered a more pointed analysis.
“Sounds as though Marjorie Taylor Greene has received and failed to report an illegal contribution,” Ryan said.
In the campaign finance world, a “contribution” is not just money—it’s anything of value for the purpose of influencing an election. Goods and services, such as legal work, are considered “in-kind contributions,” and campaigns must either report receiving them or pay for them outright.
In this case, Ryan observed, it appears neither of those things happened.
“This could have gone a different way: A lawyer provides services, invoices the candidate for those services, and then the candidate pays for them,” Ryan said. “But it didn’t go that way here, and what we see is unpaid legal services that amount to an illegal contribution.”
Ryan added that the bottom line was that, “if a candidate pays, it’s fine; if not, it’s an in-kind contribution.”