Trump Administration/Executive Ethics

Paul S. Ryan, vice president of policy and litigation at Common Cause, has written to the DOJ, Federal Elections Commission and the Southern District of New York asking for investigations into campaign finance violations pertaining to Trump’s hush money payments to two women and over the president’s request that Ukraine investigate Biden for corruption. Ryan said federal officials should feel duty-bound to investigate even when Trump is out of office, but said he fears the political pressure to look the other way will be too great. “I don’t think politics should play a role, but it probably will,” Ryan said. “I suspect, against my own wishes, that a Biden DOJ will probably not pursue crimes against his predecessor. We have a history in this country of presidents looking the other way and letting bygones be bygones. That’s not good for democracy in terms of election law and future precedent. But Biden may find it necessary for democracy writ large to try and move the country forward.”

“It’ll be a slush fund,” said Paul S. Ryan, a campaign finance lawyer with Common Cause. “Trump could decide to pay himself $1 million a year out of this fund. That’s legal. He could pay [his children] Don Jr. and Ivanka, if he wanted to. It’s pretty clear that this is a classic bait-and-switch scheme.”

Our democracy has endured wars, pandemics, natural disasters and now a lawless president. And despite that, next year will likely bring more unexpected challenges that we’ll confront as a nation. We nonetheless must be thankful for what we have, as imperfect as our system is. Change has often been cyclical, and following the scandals of the Trump administration, we may soon have a once-in-a-generation opportunity. If one thing is clear, it’s that we’re on the doorstep of passing a comprehensive reform package to put “we the people” back in charge of our democracy.

And some delays could still happen given the crushing workload election officials faced this year during the pandemic, according to Suzanne Almeida with Common Cause Pennsylvania, a good government group that helps with voter education and monitors election work in the state. “A delay in certification doesn’t necessarily mean there are shenanigans; sometimes it just takes longer to go through all the mechanics to get to certification,” Almeida said.

Wisconsin has already done its own canvas, which was completed Tuesday and added 181 votes to Biden's haul, Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause Wisconsin, told reporters in a conference call. It's very rare that a recount changes the outcome of an election, and Biden's 20,608-vote margin of victory in Wisconsin makes it extremely unlikely the state would be awarded to Trump, he said. The Wisconsin recount demand is among a series of efforts the losing Trump campaign has made to challenge the results of the Nov. 3 election, a race Biden won by more than 5.8 million votes nationwide and by a 306-232 Electoral College vote margin. Dozens of lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign and supporters – ranging from the use of Sharpies to fill out Arizona ballots to unproven claims that Republican observers were not allowed to monitor vote counters – have been rejected by the courts or withdrawn. "There's no merit to the lawsuits being brought by Team Trump," Paul S. Ryan, vice president of policy and litigation for Common Cause, told reporters in the conference call. "I think we're seeing a good old-fashioned fundraising bait-and-switch scheme."

Campaign finance experts recoiled at Trainor’s apparent embrace of the dubious allegations. “My biggest concern with Commissioner Trainor is his partisanship, and to the extent that overlaps with the conspiracy theorizing about election fraud, that’s a concern,” said Paul Seamus Ryan, the vice president of litigation with the group Common Cause, in an interview on Tuesday. “The focus should be on the business of the FEC and the suitability of these nominees to do that important work, not on crazy conspiracy theories about nonexistent election fraud,” said Common Cause’s Ryan. But, he added, “nothing would surprise me.”