Tag Archives: campaign finance laws

Is This Legal?

Posted on by

Campaign finance laws require the candidates to list the names of their donors. Generally that works, although not all candidates follow the law. On Wednesday, The Daily Caller reported the following:

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, who is overseeing the case against former President Donald Trump, made a small donation of $150 to Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ campaign prior to his appointment.

McAfee, who was sworn in on Feb. 1, 2023 after being appointed by Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, made his donation in June 2020 while still working as an assistant U.S. Attorney for the Department of Justice (DOJ), according to financial disclosures. He will soon have to decide whether Willis should be disqualified over allegations that she financially benefited from appointing her romantic partner, Nathan Wade, to work on the Trump case.

McAfee also formerly worked under Fani Willis when she led the complex trial division in the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office, according to the New York Times.

Atlanta-based criminal defense attorney and legal analyst Philip Holloway told the Daily Caller News Foundation McAfee’s donation was “nominal,” but said it should still have been disclosed to the defendants so they could determine “whether they believed that amounted to a conflict of interest on the part of the judge.”

I agree that the judge should be able to donate whatever amount is legal to whatever candidate he chooses. However, I also agree that the defendants in this case should have been informed of his donations. Logically, they could have asked for a different judge.

From what I have seen of the legal cases against President Trump, I am not convinced of the honesty, integrity or intelligence of those bringing the cases. All of them are fraught with problems on the part of those pursuing them. In Georgia, Fani Willis is going to have her hands full with her own legal issues. In New York, the law was changed to allow Jean Carroll to bring her suit against President Trump. That seems questionable. And also in New York, major business leaders are pulling out of the State, and truckers are refusing to make deliveries there. I don’t think any of these lawsuits are going to have the desired impact and there may be some serious unintended consequences along the way.

Allowing Ordinary Citizens To Run For Office

Posted on by

On Monday, The Patriot Journal posted an article about a recent Supreme Court decision that will make it easier for the average American to run for political office.

The article reports:

All of America is waiting for the Supreme Court to release a number of ground-breaking rulings. Last week, the court revealed it was set to release “one or more” rulings today.

It seems they are holding off that one ruling and addressing other important cases. One of them came from Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, who was challenging a campaign finance law.

Cruz claimed the law was wrongfully punishing him. And the court, in a 6-3 ruling, backed the senator.

The ruling involved how much money a candidate could raise to pay off their personal debts after an election. In other words, if a candidate funded his own campaign, he could only pay himself back $250,000. Like it or not, in today’s elections, that is chump change. The Supreme Court agreed with Senator Cruz that the cap on how much a candidate could pay himself back was a limitation on free speech. The ruling was 6-3. The Supreme Court’s three liberal judges voted against removing the limit. A vote against removing the limit is a vote to keep the incumbents in power in Washington by making it more difficult for political outsiders to run for office.

The article concludes:

Although this might not seem relevant to us peons who don’t have nearly $250,000 to our names, this benefits anyone who wants to run for public office.

This ruling means someone can donate their own money to their campaign, without fear that they’ll go bankrupt. Because, after an election, they can use campaign funds to pay themselves back.

This ruling can help folks who want to run for public office but had previously avoided out of concerns for their livelihood.

What Does This Say About The Candidate?

Posted on by

Kamala Harris is currently considered the up-and-coming Democrat candidate for President in 2020. She achieved that status after an attack on Joe Biden that stretched the truth more than a little. Well, Ms. Harris is serious about her campaign. The Washington Examiner is reporting today that the Harris campaign hired Marc Elias, who heads Perkins Coie’s political law group.

The article reports:

…Elias, who held the same position in Clinton’s campaign, is named in two pending Federal Election Commission complaints and in a recent federal lawsuit alleging that the Clinton campaign broke campaign finance laws when it used Perkins Coie to hire Fusion GPS.

Fusion GPS went on to hire British ex-spy Christopher Steele, who compiled an unverified dossier allegedly based on sources close to the Kremlin which was disseminated to the media and used by the FBI to obtain Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants targeting former Trump campaign associate Carter Page. Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz is reviewing alleged FISA abuse related to the dossier and Attorney General William Barr launched his “investigation of the investigators” earlier this year.

Clinton’s former presidential campaign manager Robby Mook said in 2017 that he authorized Elias to hire an outside firm to dig up dirt on Trump’s connections with Russia. “I asked our lawyer and I gave him a budget allocation to investigate this, particularly the international aspect,” he said.

Mook said Elias was receiving information from Fusion GPS or directly from Steele himself about the research into Trump and Russia in 2016, and that Elias then periodically briefed the Clinton campaign about the findings.

The article concludes:

Elias is a fixture in Democratic politics. Aside from working for Harris, Clinton, and the DNC, Elias has said that he and his colleagues at Perkins Coie have represented the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic Governors Association, various Democratic PACs, the pro-abortion EMILY’s List, dozens of Democratic senators, and more than a hundred Democratic members of the House.

Neither the Harris campaign nor Elias responded to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.

I wonder if Mr. Elias’ name is going to come up during the release of the Inspector General’s Report or the questioning of Robert Mueller. Stay tuned.

People In Glass Houses…

Posted on by

Yesterday The Washington Free Beacon reported that the Federal Election Commission has sent a letter to Bernie Sanders‘ campaign committee about illegal donations to the campaign.

The article reports:

The campaign’s January financial disclosure filing listed contributions from foreign nationals and unregistered political committees, the FEC said. Other contributions came from donors who exceeded the $2,700 per-election limit.

“Although the Commission may take further legal action concerning the acceptance of [excessive or prohibited] contributions, your prompt action to refund the prohibited amount will be taken into consideration,” the FEC told the campaign.

Sanders’ campaign has relied on small-dollar individual contributions to a far greater extent than any other presidential campaign, including the Super PAC- and dark money-fueled efforts of Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

The Vermont Senator and self-described socialist is running on a platform of transparency and campaign finance reform, contrasting his grassroots support with Clinton’s high-dollar donors and use of loopholes in federal election laws that allow her campaign to coordinate with outside groups that can accept unlimited contributions.

However, Sanders’ donors have also run afoul of federal campaign finance laws, and his financial disclosure reports have been riddled with errors.

Many of the foreign donations come from people in countries that support socialism and want to help the Sanders’ campaign. However, the campaign needs to follow the law and practice the transparency that it preaches.