Campaign Finance

“There’s an optics issue here,” said Paul S. Ryan, an attorney with the good-government group Common Cause. “You have a candidate who has sworn off big unlimited money but is closely allied with an organization that is using big unlimited money.”

First in a series of articles looking at the past, present, and future of campaign finance reform, originally posted at The Well News.

Donald Trump’s official endorsement of the super PAC America First Action as the sole “approved” outside group of the President fully validates Common Cause’s 2018 Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Election Commission (FEC) complaints that the President and the groups are violating federal campaign finance laws. Donald Trump’s official endorsement of the super PAC America First Action as the sole “approved” outside group of the President fully validates Common Cause’s 2018 Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Election Commission (FEC) complaints that the President and the groups are violating federal campaign finance laws. Today, Common Cause supplemented its original complaints to include President Trump’s illegal solicitation of funds for the super PAC.

"The Senate Intelligence Committee has subpoenaed Donald Trump Jr. to testify as part of its ongoing probe of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Those proceedings warrant close scrutiny in light of Chairman Richard Burr’s close ties to the Trump administration and the deliberately misleading public statements he made during and after the presidential campaign to downplay Russian interference in support of Donald Trump's candidacy. As a member of the congressional Gang of Eight, Burr was fully briefed by U.S. intelligence officials on the Russian hacks of Democratic email servers and other attacks, but his camp downplayed them publicly." - Paul Seamus Ryan vice president of policy and litigation for Common Cause

“It pains me to say it, but I don’t think [the statement itself] is a legal problem,” Common Cause’s Paul Ryan told Score (Ryan repeatedly argued that he believed the creation of America First Policies and America First Action was illegal because of their ties to Trump’s orbit while he was a federal candidate). “Pointing to a super PAC and saying, ‘That’s the one I approve of’ doesn’t break the law.”

“In a perfect world, members of Congress who serve on committees that oversee or regulate specific industries wouldn’t be able to fundraise or accept campaign contributions from those industries,” said Aaron Scherb, the director of legislative affairs at Common Cause.Scherb added that participating in the imperfect system doesn’t mean that Nadler or other lawmakers are being bought off, but there’s a “perceived conflict of interest that’s created.”“For many Americans, our corrosive fund-raising system calls into question whether members of Congress are acting in the public interest, or for some private financial interest,” Scherb said.