US Politics Mega-thread - Page 3702

Brad Deutsch, the attorney who authored the letter last week charging the Hillary Clinton campaign’s joint fundraising committee with dubious dealings that appear to violate Federal election law, isn’t just any ole lawyer. Prior to joining the law firm Garvey Schubert Barer in July 2014, Deutsch worked for more than a decade at the government’s top watchdog over Federal campaign financing – the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

Deutsch, now lead counsel to Senator Bernie Sanders’ campaign for President, would seem to be well qualified in defining what is and is not legal under Federal election law. From 2006 to 2014, Deutsch was Chief of Staff and Senior Legal Advisor to Commissioner Steven T. Walther at the FEC. Prior to that, he served as Assistant General Counsel at the FEC from 2004 to 2006 where he supervised a team of Federal election law attorneys.

The joint fundraising committee set up by the Clinton campaign is called the Hillary Victory Fund. Its Treasurer, Elizabeth Jones, doubles as the Chief Operating Officer for Hillary Clinton’s main campaign fund, Hillary for America. The joint committee was supposed to financially benefit the Hillary campaign, the DNC, and 32 state committees that agreed to come on board. The concept, in theory, is to raise joint funds to benefit the broader Democratic party and congressional candidates running for office. But by ramping up the joint fundraising committee before the primary races have concluded, before Hillary is even the party’s nominee, and with her own people in charge of the joint committee, it has created the growing perception that this so-called joint effort is really just a ham-fisted appendage of a political machine that wants to skip the quaintness of primary voting and let big donors install the Democratic party’s candidate.

The arrogance of this attitude has outraged Bernie Sanders’ supporters and piqued curiosity about what’s really going on inside the Hillary Victory Fund. The picture hasn’t been pretty to date and, unfortunately, it is adding to the negative public perception that Hillary Clinton can’t be trusted.

Under Federal election law, all that the Hillary for America primary campaign committee can accept from an individual donor is a maximum of $2700 for the primary election and an additional $2700 for the general election. But by setting up the Hillary Victory Fund as a joint committee between the DNC, 32 state party committees and the Hillary Clinton campaign, the super wealthy are able to contribute a whopping $712,200, with much of that finding its way into Hillary’s main campaign fund, Hillary for America.

Here’s the specific math. In addition to the $2700 an individual can contribute to a Federal candidate’s primary campaign, a donor can also contribute up to $33,400 to the DNC and $10,000 to each of the state parties. With 32 state parties signing on to the Hillary Victory Fund, that’s $320,000 plus $33,400 for the DNC for a total of $353,400. If that individual has not previously given to Hillary Clinton, you can add another $2700 for a total of $356,100. A single check can be written to the joint fundraising committee for that stunning amount.

But it gets a lot worse in terms of the 99 percent having a voice in politics in America. Because the first $356,100 is counted toward the primary phase of the election, the same amount can be donated again by the same individual for the general election once the calendar turned to 2016, the year of the general election, allowing Wall Street billionaires and hedge fund moguls the ability to pony up a total of $712,200 by writing a mere two checks to the Hillary Victory Fund. (The same billionaires and hedge fund moguls are writing out checks for millions more to Priorities USA, a Super PAC that is supporting Hillary.)

So if all of this stinks to high heaven but is legal, why is Brad Deutsch, the campaign finance legal eagle crying foul. According to Deutsch, the Hillary campaign is double-dipping. Deutsch writes in the letter:

“…these extremely large-dollar individual contributions have been used by the Hillary Victory Fund to pay for more than $7.8 million in direct mail efforts and over $8.6 million in online advertising, both of which appear to benefit only HFA by generating low-dollar contributions that flow only to HFA, rather than to the DNC or any of the participating state party committees…at best, the joint fundraising committee’s spending on direct mail and online advertising appears to represent an impermissible in-kind contribution from the DNC and the participating state party committees to HFA. At worst, using funds received from large-dollar donors who have already contributed the $2,700 maximum to HFA may represent an excessive contribution to HFA from these individuals.”

On April 29 2016 05:18 Plansix wrote:


The purpose of those protests is to annoy and irritate. Just like the ones during the civil rights movement, which also blocked traffic and disrupted events.

And as someone who grew up near the gay pride center of my state, those parades were annoying to work around. But I can’t really fault people for holding them since they are pushing for rights I got by default.