Campaign Finance

This now-public evidence of Trump’s campaign finance crimes is likely only the tip of the iceberg. These facts were known by the DOJ before it obtained and executed search warrants on Cohen and sent him to prison via guilty plea to multiple campaign finance law violations and other crimes. Since that time, the DOJ accumulated evidence not only from the Cohen raid and Cohen’s testimony, but also from cooperating witnesses David Pecker and Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg, both of whom have received some type of immunity from the DOJ in this matter.

The evidence released today by the Department of Justice (DOJ) by order of a judge strongly suggests that Donald Trump violated campaign finance laws in the closing weeks of his presidential run in 2016. Previously we had only Michael Cohen’s word that Trump had committed felony campaign finance violations through his direct involvement in hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, but now we have extensive evidence from the DOJ to back it up. We also learned for the first time that 2016 Trump campaign press secretary Hope Hicks was also aware and involved in $130,000 payment to Daniels to keep her from revealing an affair she allegedly had with the Trump—implicating her in campaign finance crimes.

Paul Seamus Ryan, a litigator at ethics watchdog Common Cause, told CNBC that unless Kushner has been soliciting donations, he's probably not violating the Hatch Act. "Legally I think the question is whether he's soliciting contributions or if he's not. If the answer is no, he's probably not violating the Hatch Act," Ryan said. "If he's only giving strategic advice, that's different from soliciting the money."

Today, Common Cause is launching a new effort to ensure voters’ right to know where presidential candidates stand on practical solutions to the challenges facing our democracy. The Our Democracy 2020 campaign will focus getting every presidential candidate in the Democratic and Republican primaries to respond to a 17-question survey and inject the high priority conversation on the need for democracy reform in the presidential campaign. 

“If any connection with Kirkland and Ellis is a stain on (senior Justice Department officials), why isn’t a connection with the law firm for the receipt of campaign contributions a stain on her own campaign?” said Paul S. Ryan, an attorney for the good government group Common Cause.

Today, Common Cause urged Special Counsel Robert Mueller to testify publicly before Congress so that the American people can hear in his own voice of the gravity of his findings and of the ongoing threat to the integrity of our elections from hostile foreign powers. The open letter to the Special Counsel emphasizes that very few Americans have had the time to read the dense and complex 448-page report and none have seen the underlying documentation behind the “Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election.”