Earlier this year, a joint investigation by Campaign Legal Center (CLC) and Axios documented how the Presidential Coalition capitalized on its founder’s ties to President Trump to raise millions of dollars but devoted less than 3% of its spending to political activities. The investigation prompted a stinging rebuke from President Trump’s campaign...

Campaign Legal Center (CLC) has asked the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate whether former U.S. Representative Jeff Miller violated federal law’s revolving door ban by registering as a foreign agent of Qatar just months after leaving Congress.

It is bad enough when former politicians leverage their public service for foreign lobbying...

On August 14, 2018, Campaign Legal Center (CLC) launched RestoreYourVote.org – an online resource to help people with convictions in all fifty states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico understand their voting rights. Since the launch, the site has had nearly 70,000 visitors seeking to learn more about voting rights restoration in their state...

Mayor Bill de Blasio, a 2020 candidate for President of the United States, accepted tens of thousands of dollars in excessive contributions, and failed to report the identity of those contributors. 

CLC is asking the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to investigate de Blasio’s campaign for this scheme, which left voters in the dark about the...

CLC filed a lawsuit against the Federal Election Commission (FEC), the agency charged with enforcing campaign finance law, after it let Hillary Clinton’s campaign off the hook for coordinating millions in spending with a super PAC.

The FEC’s dismissal of CLC’s 2016 complaint against Clinton’s campaign and super PAC threatens to give megadonors an...

Donors who gave to support a candidate’s run for office probably didn’t expect that their money would be used years later to advance Saudi Arabia’s interests and the politician’s post-congressional lobbying career.

A new report released today by CLC, in collaboration with the Daily Beast, reveals how multiple former Members of Congress who...

DC Council Member Jack Evans has been at the center of a corruption scandal for the past few months. Almost a month ago, the FBI raided Evans’ home and he has been under federal grand jury investigation ever since.  

Things are only continuing to heat up for the longest serving elected official in the city.  Just this week, Reps. Jim Jordan (R...

In the United States nearly six million individuals are denied the right to vote due to a past conviction, and, for many of those individuals, the ability to vote is contingent upon their ability to pay an increasing number of fines, fees, court costs and restitution.

These policies impose a modern-day poll tax on individuals with past convictions...

Campaign Legal Center (CLC) and Georgetown Law’s Civil Rights Clinic released a new report, ‘Can’t Pay, Can’t Vote: A National Survey on the Modern-Day Poll Tax’, one of the first comprehensive studies of how voting rights restoration schemes deny the right to vote to those who cannot afford to pay legal debt.

Nationwide, as many as 23 million...

It is with great sadness that we at Campaign Legal Center hear of Justice John Paul Stevens' passing and reflect on his important legacy on democracy preservation.

Justice Stevens authored the dissent in Citizens United (2010), the infamous case overturning longstanding precedent preventing corporate spending on elections. Justice Stevens rightly...

In advance of the 2016 presidential elections, a super PAC called Ready for Hillary used six-figure and corporate contributions to create a valuable list of an estimated 4 million potential Clinton supporters. Then, the super PAC passed this list to another super PAC, which in turn passed the list directly to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.  

Clinton...

On Tuesday, July 2, 2019, a federal court announced a telephonic hearing on Campaign Legal Center’s (CLC) challenge to the constitutionality of Florida law SB 7066 on Friday, July 5.

Danielle Lang, co-director, voting rights & redistricting will participate in the hearing. 

The expedited hearing is a sign that the court understands the urgency of...

In 2018, Florida voters overwhelmingly supported Amendment 4, restoring the right to vote to over a million residents with past felony convictions.

On June 28, 2019, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis cut that momentous democratic act off at the knees by signing into law SB 7066, requiring payment of all associated outstanding fines, fees, and...

On June 27, 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a January 15 opinion by U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman finding that Secretary Ross lied about his reasons for adding the citizenship question to the 2020 Census. 

The Court held that there was a “strong showing of bad faith or improper behavior” by the Administration, justifying a closer look at...

Elections should be determined by voters, not politicians who draw maps that determine their voters. 

On June 27, 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that federal courts may not intervene to block partisan election maps, no matter how unfair they may be. While the U.S. Supreme Court failed to put an end to partisan gerrymandering, something a...

A majority of voters across the political spectrum support limiting the influence of big donors, and for years, politicians have publicly declared their support for reducing the influence of money on our political system. But privately, those same politicians have run campaigns that exploited loopholes in the law—and, in some cases, created new...

Voters need information about who pays for political ads in order to make informed decisions at the ballot box. Unfortunately, to this day, inaction on the part of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) has made it easy for online political ads buyers to hide their identity from voters. This is a big problem in a 21st-century political environment...

On June 12, 2019, Paul Smith, CLC’s Vice President, Litigation & Strategy was recognized by Lambda Legal with the Courage in Action Award. This award acknowledges Paul for his work as an "unrivaled champion for equality, fighting for and defending justice and opportunity for all." In a video honoring Paul, Kevin Cathcart, the former Executive...

After nearly two years of trying to hide the names of individuals involved in an inflammatory email to Attorney General Sessions regarding the Pence-Kobach Commission, the Department of Justice has relented and released the email without the redacted names. The newly released document reveals the involvement of Charles J. Cooper, J. Christian Adams...

In response to a Hatch Act complaint filed by CLC, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) sent a letter to President Donald Trump recommending that Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway be removed from office. 

The letter calls Conway’s repeated Hatch Act violations “egregious, notorious, and ongoing,” and says that “her actions erode the...

President Donald Trump was asked by ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos yesterday whether his campaign would accept damaging information against his 2020 rivals from foreigners – such as China or Russia – or report such an offer to the FBI.

Trump said, “I think you might want to listen, there isn’t anything wrong with listening. If somebody...