“During his final two years in office and for several months afterward, former Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL) paid a Miami dentist and childhood friend with no political experience nearly $400,000 for political consulting,” the Miami Herald reports.

“And since losing his seat last November, he’s spent thousands of dollars from his leadership PAC — called ‘What a Country!’ — on wine and high-end restaurants.”

“Now, Curbelo’s friend, JP Chavez, is his business partner in a communications and public affairs startup venture called Vocero LLC.”

“A federal investigation into whether Trump Organization executives violated campaign-finance laws appears to be wrapping up without charges being filed,” CNN reports.

“In January, one month after Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison, prosecutors requested interviews with executives at the company… But prosecutors never followed up on their initial request, people familiar with the matter said, and the interviews never took place.”

“Federal prosecutors have stepped up a criminal investigation into possible efforts by longtime Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy to profit from his connections to the Trump administration,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Investigators are examining whether Mr. Broidy, a top fundraiser for Mr. Trump in 2016 who was later tapped as deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee, was paid by his intelligence-contracting firm’s foreign and prospective clients to give them special access to attend the 2017 inauguration, some of the people said. Such activity could violate campaign-finance, lobbying or money-laundering laws.”

“Although Elton Gallegly (R) hasn’t been a congressman for years, he has more than $120,000 in campaign funds left, and federal regulators want to know if some of the money has been spent for personal use,” the Ventura County Star reports.

“At issue is money paid to his wife for managing the leftover funds and money spent on printing.”

ProPublica: “Since 2015, thousands of complaints have streamed in — from citizens, public interest groups, IRS agents, government officials and more — that C4s are abusing the rules. But the agency has not stripped a single organization of its tax-exempt status for breaking spending rules during that period. (A handful of groups have had their status revoked for failing to file financial statements for three consecutive years.) Most cases do not even reach the IRS committee created to examine them.”

Charlie Cook: “While there will always be a place in politics for big donors, in this campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination large donors may well play less of a role than any time in modern history. The truth is, they weren’t that important in influencing the Republican nomination in 2016, either.”

“Technological growth has brought new ways for information to flow, and yet reaching voters is harder than in the old days, when TV ads alone could work. These changes mean that major donors are not sufficient, and in some cases not even necessary, to mount a competitive campaign. It’s about scale.”

Mother Jones: “From the time the tax bill was first introduced on Nov. 2, 2017, until the end of the year, a 60-day period, dozens of billionaires and millionaires dramatically boosted their political contributions unlike they had in past years, giving a total of $31.1 million in that two months, a Center for Public Integrity analysis of data from the Center for Responsive Politics found.”

“The Center’s analysis found that 144 wealthy donors, some household names and some behind-the-scenes, contributed at least $50,000 to Republicans and conservative groups in that time frame. For 87 of those, three out of five, the surge of giving at year’s end reflected a marked change in their giving behavior.”

“Most telling, say campaign finance experts, is that 25 wealthy donors gave all their 2017 money in the final two months of the year, the first time they did so during the previous four off-election years—2009, 2011, 2013, 2015.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) “exposed some of the biggest flaws and loopholes in campaign finance laws this week,” the HuffPost reports.

“During a hearing, the freshman lawmaker created a game in which she pretended to be ‘a really, really bad guy’ who wants to abuse the system as much as possible. Then, in a series of questions, she exposed the world of payoffs, dark money, PACs and more. She even revealed how it was perfectly legal for a lawmaker to invest in an industry, then write laws to benefit that industry and increase the value of the investment.”

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