Newsworks: Is paying your opponent to get out of the race legal?
Just how much trouble could U. S. Rep. Bob Brady be in if he ushered his opponent out of a race five years ago? Plenty, say experts in election law, because of the way it allegedly happened.
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Two national election law experts I spoke to said pretty much the same thing. Adav Noti, Senior Director of the Campaign Legal Center and a former senior attorney for the Federal Election Commission and Noah Bookbinder, executive director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
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Both said there's evidence of campaign finance law violations here. The amount Brady is alleged to have committed to this, $90,000 is way over the limit one candidate committee can donate to another, which is $4,000.
Besides that, there's evidence the contributions were routed through other parties, which is a big no-no, and they weren't reported as required on campaign finance reports.