Disclosure & Transparency

"Any expense that would not exist if this person wasn’t running for office is a permissible use of campaign funds," said Paul S. Ryan, vice president for policy and litigation at Common Cause, a government watchdog group. "It’s kind of a good thing that Hawley’s using campaign funds that are subject to limits and disclosure to pay for these political expenses," Ryan said. Some politicians, including President Donald Trump, have used funds not subject to disclosure or contribution limits to raise money for legal bills, he said.

“There remains no record of the operations and fundraising of your legal defense fund,” the letter said. “If a legal defense fund is not carefully set up and administered, there are many ways the Fund may run afoul of executive branch ethics rules. Given the large number of ethics scandals now under investigation at the EPA, further scandals should be avoided by you and the agency.”

“It has long been the case that Democrats, while on the campaign stump, advocate for campaign finance reform while their own campaign lawyers behind the scenes are weakening or even gutting campaign finance laws,” Paul S. Ryan said.

Paul S. Ryan, the vice president of policy and litigation at the watchdog group Common Cause, told Business Insider that such coordination could be in violation of what is known as the "soft money ban," adding that the Iowa event and the distribution of the funds raised during it "were timed to create goodwill and earned media for the Trump campaign in the week leading up to the Iowa caucuses."

On May 31, 2018, Common Cause joined Public Knowledge in a letter urging the FCC to provide transparency as to why the agency’s education and outreach technology transition rules from 2016 never went into effect. The rules require telecommunications carriers to provide education and outreach to their customers when they are seeking to replace their legacy phone network with a new service. The rules are specifically tailored to ensure the most vulnerable communities including low-income, the elderly, and people with disabilities have the information they need to understand what to expect when their legacy voice service is discontinued. The FCC now seeks to eliminate these rules with the rationale that they never went into effect and are burdensome. Common Cause strongly objects to the elimination of the education and outreach rules and urges the Commission to fully disclose why they never went into effect.