“A pro-Trump political group has agreed to pay $25,000 to settle allegations it illegally solicited $2 million from reporters posing as intermediaries for a Chinese national,” Axios reports.
“A key player in the scheme, a veteran Republican operative, is facing criminal charges over allegedly funneling tens of thousands of dollars in foreign cash to Trump’s re-election effort, making news of the fine the latest in an emerging pattern of conduct.”
Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) — who scratched out a 109-vote recount win earlier this year in one of the tightest House races in the nation — has spent tens of thousands of campaign dollars on businesses where she held an ownership stake or an executive job, and from which she reported $130,120 in income in 2020, the Daily Beast reports.
“The Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to hear a lawsuit brought by Sen. Ted Cruz challenging federal campaign finance rules that restrict a campaign’s ability to raise money after an election to repay a candidate’s personal loan,” USA Today reports.
“The rise of celebrity politicians is fueling record ad spending that will likely continue to flood American airwaves through next year’s midterms,“ Axios reports.
“Firebrand congressional freshmen and sophomores are raking in grassroots donations — and starring in ads from both allies and opponents alike. It’s part of an explosion in small-dollar fundraising that’s translating into a huge spike in paid political advertising.”
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) paid rent and utility bills with campaign funds in violation of federal campaign finance laws, the Denver Post reports.
Jesse Benton, a former senior aide to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Rand Paul, was indicted this month for allegedly funneling $25,000 from a wealthy, unnamed Russian to former President Trump’s reelection efforts, Axios reports.
“The indictment, unsealed on Monday, outlines allegations of a convoluted money trail from the unnamed Russian national through a consulting firm run by Benton and to a Trump joint fundraising committee.”
WinRed, the GOP’s small-dollar fundraising operation, is planning to lower the fees it charges candidates and committees for each contribution they receive, a change that could significantly boost incoming money to Republican campaigns ahead of the midterms, Politico reports.
“The wealthy family led by conservative megadonors Robert and Rebekah Mercer, whose money helped propel Donald Trump to victory in 2016, invested nearly $20 million last year into a GOP-friendly dark money fund that allows donors to keep secret the ultimate destination of their contributions,” CNBC reports.
“The Mercers’ donation, delivered through their family foundation, went to the Donors Trust, according to a new 990 disclosure form. The hefty contribution reveals that the Mercers played a much bigger role in financing groups during the 2020 election than previously known.”
Geoffrey Skelley: “Among non-incumbent candidates running for the House in 2022, the top fundraiser is a Democrat with no political experience running in a deep-red seat: Democrat Marcus Flowers has raised over $2 million in his bid to unseat controversial Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, which is a whopping 55 percentage points more Republican than the country as a whole.”
“Flowers’s windfall might seem strange given the long odds he — or any Democrat — faces in defeating Greene, but it also reflects a growing trend wherein candidates with little hope of winning still achieve eye-popping fundraising hauls. Based on political science research and an analysis of congressional fundraising, it’s clear that these candidates are the beneficiaries of two larger trends in American politics: a strong antipathy for the opposing party and the ease with which someone can now donate to a campaign on the internet.”
Federal officials are pressing Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) for answers on the apparent personal use of thousands of dollars in campaign funds, CNBC reports.
New York Times: “His huge stock of campaign funds — the most money retained by a departing New York politician in recent memory — affords him a range of possibilities, including the chance to attempt an eventual comeback or to play a role in the state’s political life by donating to other candidates.”
Daily Beast: “According to the 13 campaign finance experts interviewed for this article, WinRed has not disclosed possibly tens of millions of dollars in PAC expenses. In doing so, WinRed, which Republican leaders forced on campaigns in the 2020 election, has kept secret the identities of the people and firms who work for it and provide its services.”
“According to these experts, based on WinRed’s disclosures, the PAC appears to have potentially crossed the blurry lines of federal campaign finance laws.”
“When Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg donated $400 million to help fund election offices as they scrambled to deal with the coronavirus pandemic late last summer, he said he hoped he would never have to do it again,” the AP reports.
“Republican legislatures are granting him that wish.”
“At least eight GOP-controlled states have passed bans on donations to election offices this year as Republicans try to block outside funding of voting operations. The legislation often comes as part of Republican packages that also put new limits on how voters can cast ballots and impose new requirements on county or city-based election officials.”
“High-profile Trump backers in Congress who tried to block President Biden’s election win have raked in cash this year. Many of their lesser-known rank-and-file colleagues have not,” Axios reports.
“New campaign finance data underscore a disparity among election objectors. Some have used the infamy to catapult themselves into MAGA stardom. Those who haven’t — including some facing competitive 2022 reelection fights — are stuck with all the baggage and little financial benefit.”
“The aggressive fund-raising tactics that former President Donald Trump deployed late in last year’s presidential campaign have continued to spur an avalanche of refunds into 2021, with Mr. Trump, the Republican Party and their shared accounts returning $12.8 million to donors in the first six months of the year,” the New York Times reports.
“Trailing in the polls and facing a cash crunch last September, Mr. Trump’s political operation began opting online donors into automatic recurring contributions by prechecking a box on its digital donation forms to take a withdrawal every week. Donors would have to notice the box and uncheck it to opt out of the donation. A second prechecked box took out another donation, known as a ‘money bomb.’”
Jane Meyer: “Arizona is hardly the only place where attacks on the electoral process are under way: a well-funded national movement has been exploiting Trump’s claims of fraud in order to promote alterations to the way that ballots are cast and counted in forty-nine states, eighteen of which have passed new voting laws in the past six months. Republican-dominated legislatures have also stripped secretaries of state and other independent election officials of their power.”
Said election law expert Rick Hasen: “I’m scared shitless. It’s not just about voter suppression. What I’m really worried about is election subversion. Election officials are being put in place who will mess with the count.”
The Bulwark: “Some 35 major corporations have honored their January promises to cut off financial support to the 147 Republican certification objectors.”
“But not every company has behaved so honorably… Six of the household names are General Motors, Ford, UPS, Aflac, and Abbott and Merck, the mega-pharmaceutical companies. Each of the six said in January that they would suspend their political giving to Republican officials who voted not to certify the 2020 presidential election.”
Daily Beast: “One hundred and fifty-five Democratic candidates for Congress took the pledge in 2020, vowing that they would not accept any corporate PAC money. But there’s a reason so many were willing to take that stand: because it’s largely meaningless.”
“Take Rep. Cindy Axne (D-IA), for example. You may think pledging to not accept corporate PAC money means Axne hasn’t taken a dime from businesses or special interests, but that would be far from correct. For Axne, who sits on the Financial Services Committee and the Agriculture panel, the money still found a way into her campaign coffers. The second-term lawmaker has actually received tens of thousands of dollars from corporate executives—and hundreds of thousands of dollars from donors in the financial world.”
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Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
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