Supplemental complaint addresses Don Jr.’s solicitation of campaign contribution from Russia

WASHINGTON – Today, Campaign Legal Center (CLC), Common Cause, and Democracy 21 filed a supplement to a complaint filed in July 2017 against President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign committee for soliciting contributions from foreign nationals in the form of opposition research offered by Russians. Although Special Counsel Robert Mueller declined to bring criminal charges against Donald Trump Jr., Mueller provided a roadmap by which the Federal Election Commission (FEC) could pursue civil penalties.

Mueller concluded that Donald Trump Jr. setting up a meeting to accept “high level and sensitive” opposition research from a foreign government could violate federal law’s prohibition on soliciting a contribution from a person he knew was a foreign national. Mueller declined to bring criminal charges because he believed he could not meet the high prosecutorial standard for proving Trump Jr. acted “willfully,” and because of challenges in calculating the value of the promised documents - but this has no bearing on the FEC’s pursuit of civil penalties.

“There is no ‘willful’ requirement for civil enforcement by the FEC, which need only find reason to believe that Trump Jr. solicited a contribution from a person he knew was a foreign national,” said Brendan Fischer, director, federal reform at CLC. “The Special Counsel’s investigation confirmed the facts outlined in our FEC complaint, and confirmed that soliciting opposition research from a foreign government can violate the law. By enforcing the law, the FEC can show that foreign interference in our elections won’t go unpunished.”

“The Mueller Report backs up our original complaint and makes very clear both that Don Jr. solicited the opposition research dangled by Russian intermediaries and that his solicitation was a violation of campaign finance law,” said Paul S. Ryan, Common Cause vice president for policy and litigation. “Only the high bar for a criminal indictment of a knowing and willful violation spared Don Jr. from criminal prosecution. The FEC faces no such bar in levelling civil penalties against the president’s son. Ignorance of the law is no excuse in a civil proceeding.” 

“The Special Counsel’s office has done all the investigation that is necessary for the FEC to find that the Trump campaign and its senior officials, including Donald Trump Jr., violated the ban on soliciting campaign assistance from a foreign national, much less from the agents of a hostile foreign government,” said Donald J. Simon, general counsel to Democracy 21.  “Given the facts laid out by the Special Counsel, a failure by the FEC to enforce the law here would be an abdication of its statutory responsibility and would also set a terrible precedent.  It would send the message that meeting with foreign agents to see how much secret help they can provide to a candidate is perfectly fine.  If it does that, the FEC would once again make itself part of the problem, not part of the solution.”

Citing FEC guidance, Mueller concluded that opposition research should be treated as a “thing of value” subject to the foreign national contribution ban. He also concluded that, “a foreign entity that engaged in [opposition] research and providing resulting information to a campaign could exert a greater effect on an election, and a greater tendency to ingratiate the donor to the candidate, than a gift of money or tangible things of value.”

AUSTIN, TX – Today, Campaign Legal Center (CLC) reached a final settlement agreement with the state of Texas on behalf of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and Julie Hilberg, ending Secretary of State David Whitley’s flawed voter purge program, which targeted naturalized citizens and threatened the voting rights of tens of thousands of Texans. The Secretary of State has agreed to abandon his election advisory that led to false allegations – echoed by Attorney General Ken Paxton, Governor Greg Abbott, and others – of widespread noncitizen voter fraud. The list generated by Secretary Whitley was largely comprised of Texans like Julie Hilberg, a naturalized citizen that registered to vote after becoming a citizen in 2015.

“Naturalized American citizens in Texas should not have to worry about their state threatening to purge them from the voting rolls,” said Paul Smith, vice president of litigation and strategy at CLC. “Today’s legally binding agreement means Texas can no longer target naturalized U.S. citizens for potential criminal investigation and removal from the voting lists based on stale data.”

“This is a great day for Texas voters,” said Julie Hilberg, plaintiff in Texas LULAC v. Whitley from Poteet, Texas. “This settlement means we can now feel reassured that we will not be subject to discrimination as a result of voter roll purges. I’d like to thank everyone who worked so tirelessly to make this happen.”

The settlement agreement outlines a list of procedures that Secretary Whitley must follow before his office initiates any program to cancel the voter registration of any individual based on citizenship data provided by the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS). As part of the agreement, the state will no longer be permitted to use stale DPS data to question the citizenship of new Americans. Instead, it may only rely upon DPS data that identifies individuals who registered to vote and then only later presented evidence of non-U.S. citizenship to DPS. 

Despite today’s victory, there is a bill moving through the state legislature that threatens to undermine the agreement reached today. SB 903 opens the door for Whitley to reinstate his flawed purge program under the auspices of complying with state law. As this lawsuit demonstrates, however, any retrenchment from the procedures outlined in today’s agreement are likely to have the same constitutional deficiencies as the original flawed program, and would only open Texas up to further liability.

Coordinated spending involves NRA’s support for seven federal candidates, including up to $25 million in illegal contributions to the Trump campaign in 2016

WASHINGTON – Today, Campaign Legal Center Action (CLC Action) filed suit on behalf of Giffords against the Federal Election Commission (FEC) for failing to announce any action against the National Rifle Association (NRA) for using shell corporations to coordinate campaign spending with seven federal candidates spanning three election cycles from 2014-2018. The lawsuit was filed two days before President Trump addresses the NRA’s annual convention for the third year in a row – the only time in American history a president has done so.

The NRA’s complicated scheme had the effect of evading campaign contribution limits and shielding millions of dollars of political spending – including up to $25 million coordinated with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign – from public scrutiny. The Trace first reported on the NRA's scheme.

Campaign Legal Center (CLC) and Giffords filed four complaints with the FEC to address these violations. The FEC is the independent regulatory agency tasked with enforcing campaign finance laws in federal elections, the agency routinely deadlocks and fails to reach the required four votes necessary to open an investigation. Today, Giffords is asserting its right of action in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after the 120-day period expired in which the FEC was legally required to respond.

“Our elections are awash in secret cash, and the federal agency charged with enforcing our nation’s election laws is asleep on the job,” said Trevor Potter, president of CLC, and a former Republican Chairman of the FEC. “Campaign finance laws are supposed to limit the influence of money in our politics. For our system to function properly, the FEC needs to enforce the laws that preserve the independence of campaigns and limit the influence of well-funded special interests.”

“When the FEC doesn’t do its job, groups like the NRA are able to get around the rules designed to limit the influence of money on our democracy,” said Brendan Fischer, director, federal reform at CLC. “The FEC’s failure to enforce the law sends a message to wealthy special interests that they can push the legal envelope and get away with it.”

“The FEC is supposed to be the nation’s election watchdog, but in this case it didn’t bite, bark, or even whimper,” said Adam Skaggs, Chief Counsel, Giffords Law Center. “Instead, it turned a blind eye while the NRA’s leadership made clear it’s more interested in handing bags of cash to candidates who will carry its water than following American laws or looking out for the interests of gun owners. In a desperate attempt to hold onto power and influence, NRA executives have flagrantly ignored our campaign finance laws and undermined the integrity of our election system. The FEC must bring illegal campaign conduct into the light of day and we are proud to join with CLC in calling on it to uphold the laws that protect the legitimacy of our democracy.”   

Watch our video, which explains the underlying story behind the NRA's scheme.

Campaign finance law allows outside groups like the NRA to make unlimited expenditures supporting candidates only if the expenditures are completely independent of those candidates. To protect this independence, the FEC has rules prohibiting coordination between outside groups and campaigns, which include restrictions on how a vendor may work for both a candidate and an outside group supporting that candidate. Otherwise, the common vendor can act as a conduit to funnel strategic information to the outside group, and then that group’s expenditures are no longer independent.

The lawsuit implicates the NRA’s spending in support of the following seven candidates:

1. Matt Rosendale (2018 campaign for U.S. Senate in Montana)
2. Josh Hawley (2018 campaign for U.S. Senate in Missouri)
3. Donald Trump (2016 campaign for President of the United States)
4. Ron Johnson (2016 campaign for U.S. Senate in Wisconsin)
5. Thom Tillis (2014 campaign for U.S. Senate in North Carolina)
6. Cory Gardner (2014 campaign for U.S. Senate in Colorado)
7. Tom Cotton (2014 campaign for U.S. Senate in Arkansas)