Secretary Price broke with HHS precedent by spending $60,000 for transportation over three days

WASHINGTON – Today, Campaign Legal Center (CLC) submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Request with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to obtain records about Secretary Tom Price’s travel. News reports indicate Price took five chartered flights between September 13 and September 15, 2017, which cost taxpayers upwards of $60,000.  CLC is requesting records on an expedited timetable in order to shed light on the approval processes behind Secretary Price’s exceptionally expensive trips.

“Taxpayers should not be expected to foot the bill for chartered flights when less expensive means of travel are easily accessible,” said Larry Noble, senior director and general counsel at CLC. “Price’s use of chartered planes is consistent with the tone set from the White House on ethics, which lead Steve Mnuchin to attempt to use military aircraft for his European honeymoon. The public deserves to know who approved Secretary Price’s private jet trips on their dime – and how those conclusions were reached.”

MONTGOMERY, AL – Campaign Legal Center (CLC) has requested an immediate investigation by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) into an organization run by the wife of Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore, which appears to have repeatedly violated the law prohibiting charities from engaging in electoral politics. The group, Foundation for Moral Law (FML), used charitable funds to promote Moore’s Senate candidacy.

CLC’s complaint outlines a series of communications by FML over the past several months promoting Moore’s candidacy, such as FML’s Facebook page posting Moore’s official campaign advertisements and its email newsletter expressly calling for Moore’s election.

Organizations do not qualify for charitable status if they engage in the ‘publication or distribution of written or printed statements on behalf of or in opposition to a candidate.’

“The Foundation for Moral Law has demonstrated a pattern of using charitable resources to promote Roy Moore’s run for Senate,” said Adav Noti, senior director, trial litigation and strategy at Campaign Legal Center (CLC) "The law is clear that charities cannot promote or oppose candidates, and it is surprising that a self-described legal organization would disregard the well-established prohibition on charitable political activity.”

“Charitable organizations are subsidized by taxpayers for their charitable, religious and educational work, not for partisan political activity,” said Brendan Fischer, director, federal and FEC reform at CLC. “Charities play an important role in civil society and their individual members have complete freedom to engage in partisan politics. It is illegal for the organizations themselves to use tax-exempt charitable resources to intervene in political elections, and it is the job of the IRS to ensure it stays that way.”

Read the complaint.

Walt Shaub, senior director, ethics at Campaign Legal Center released the following statement on reports about the decision by the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) to reverse policy related to gifts to legal defense funds:

“OGE abandoned its 1993 opinion endorsing anonymous donations just months after issuing it. For the past 23 years, OGE has viewed anonymous donations as inappropriate. It’s not entirely clear why OGE quietly removed a warning that the opinion is invalid. In response to the negative media attention this unpublicized reversal generated, the White House was forced to concede last night that anonymous donations are inappropriate.

It’s a shame that OGE’s acting Director took us down this road, and it’s an even greater shame that the White House is handling OGE’s media relations on this critical issue, given the importance of OGE remaining independent from the White House and serving as the ethics watchdog for the executive branch, not the White House Counsel’s lapdog.”

Brendan Fischer, director, federal and FEC reform at Campaign Legal Center (CLC) released the following statement about reports that Texas lawyer James E. Trainor III has been nominated to serve on the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

"The FEC is the agency tasked with regulating the super PACs that candidate Trump once called a “scam” and enforcing the law to address the “bought and paid for politicians” and big donors that Trump attacked on the campaign trail. If President Trump wants to follow through on his "drain the swamp" pledge, he should nominate FEC Commissioners who are committed to the mission of the agency. We look forward to closely reviewing nominee Trainor's record and expect that the Senate will ask tough questions to assess his commitment to limiting money's corrupting influence on politics."

WASHINGTON – Today, Campaign Legal Center (CLC) learned through a response to a FOIA Request from Feb. 15, 2017 that an employee with the Heritage Foundation pushed back on naming a single Democrat to the Presidential Commission on Election Integrity.

The employee wrote personally to Attorney General Jeff Sessions pushing back on even a single Democrat being named to the Presidential Commission on Election Integrity and discouraging the White House from naming mainstream Republican officials and/or academics to the commission.

The Heritage Foundation employee, whose name has been redacted by the Department of Justice, complained that the White House did not consult with their "experts" who "have written more on the voter fraud issue than anyone in the country on our side of the political aisle." A few months later, President Donald Trump appointed Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation to the Pence-Kobach Commission. Mr. von Spakovsky is widely considered the architect of the voter fraud myth. These emails add to the mounting evidence that the commission has no interest in true bipartisanship or an open discussion of how to solve the real problems in our elections. 

“Any commission tasked with looking at the integrity of our elections should be bipartisan and should not be trying to make voting harder,” said Trevor Potter, president of Campaign Legal Center (CLC), and a former Republican Chairman of the Federal Election Commission (FEC). “Yet Secretary Kris Kobach, the vice-chair of the commission, continues to use his position to further his quest to undermine citizens’ right to vote. His demonstrably false claims about election results in New Hampshire leading up today’s meeting impugned the dignity of that state and were clearly intended to undermine our democracy rather than strengthen it.”

“Instead of addressing the numerous serious issues facing our democracy, the commission met today for a second time to discuss the same tired anecdotes and debunked methodology that it has already decided to use to justify new restrictive voting laws. These farcical meetings continue to validate the worst suspicions about the commission: that it is designed to shrink the electorate for partisan advantage.”

“One of the stated goals of this meeting was to discuss the effect of election integrity issues on voter confidence. If the commissioners were really interested in pursuing this, they might look at a genuine, demonstrated threat to American election integrity, such as foreign interference. For example, the recent revelations about Russian nationals illegally buying political ads on Facebook during the 2016 presidential campaign raise a serious issue that could legitimately undermine public confidence. This is a true issue of election integrity.”

This commission has no meaningful bipartisan credentials and its purpose is based on false charges of voter fraud that have already been repeatedly disproven.

A five-year long search during the George W. Bush administration turned up ‘virtually no evidence of voter fraud,’ according to the New York Times.

Ads were viewed by as many as 70 million American adults; information is critical for determining the extent of Russian interference in U.S. elections

WASHINGTON – Today, Campaign Legal Center (CLC) sent a letter to Facebook Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, urging him to provide the American people and appropriate investigators with more information regarding foreign entities spending money through fake accounts on Facebook ads. The Russian nationals who created and paid for the ads appear to have violated campaign finance law by making prohibited campaign expenditures.

According to Facebook’s own accounting, as many as 70 million people viewed the ads, meaning potentially 28 percent of voting-age adults were reached by the influence campaign.

“It is a foundational element of our democracy that voters have a powerful interest in knowing who is trying to influence their vote,” said Brendan Fischer, director, federal and FEC reform program at CLC. “Facebook appears to have been used as an accomplice in a foreign government’s effort to undermine democratic self-governance in the U.S. This must be taken seriously by Facebook – and they must be fully transparent with the content of the political ads, so we may better understand the nature and extent of foreign influence in our elections.”

U.S. law prohibits a foreign national from spending any money in connection with U.S. elections. That includes any contributions directly to a candidate or his campaign, as well as any “expenditure”—meaning any money spent for the purpose of influencing an election.

Bipartisan poll shows overwhelming support from Republicans, Independents and Democrats

In the first-ever bipartisan survey on partisan gerrymandering and the Supreme Court, an overwhelming majority (71 to 15 percent) of Americans want the Supreme Court to place limits on lawmakers’ ability to manipulate voting maps. This includes 80 percent of Democrats, 68 percent of Independents and 65 percent of Republicans. 

“Americans trust the Supreme Court to rein in partisan gerrymandering and want the Court to act,” said Celinda Lake, President of Lake Research Partners. “Voters are deeply concerned about politicians manipulating voting maps to serve their own political advantage and are looking for a solution.”    

The poll shows that:

• By a margin of 62 to 10 percent, voters are less likely to support a candidate who supports partisan gerrymandering.
• ​By a margin of 73 to 14 percent, voters support removing partisan bias from redistricting, even if it means their preferred political party will win fewer seats.    

“Freely choosing their representatives is an issue of deep principle for voters of all political stripes,” said Republican pollster Ashlee Rich Stephenson of WPA Intelligence. Our poll shows that a Supreme Court decision limiting extreme partisan redistricting will be very well-received by the American electorate.”   

The U.S. Supreme Court will be hearing the landmark partisan gerrymandering case Gill v. Whitford, argued by the Campaign Legal Center (CLC) and co-counsel, on October 3. For the first time in 31 years, a lower court – after a four-day trial – struck down Wisconsin’s 2011 state assembly redistricting plan as an unconstitutional gerrymander.

“This poll underscores the notion that voters overwhelmingly expect free and fair election for choosing their representatives,” said Paul Smith, vice president of litigation and strategy at the Campaign Legal Center who will argue the case before the Supreme Court. “The Supreme Court can be confident that in reining in extreme partisan gerrymandering, it’s doing what’s required by the Constitution and acting in accordance with the vast majority of the American people.”

This national survey of 1,000 likely 2018 general election voters was conducted on behalf of the Campaign Legal Center from August 26 to 31.

Learn more about CLC’s efforts on behalf of the 12 plaintiffs in Whitford here.

Learn more about the redistricting process, how it works, and the everyday impacts of partisan gerrymandering on our democracy here.

Private counsel working with CLC in representing the appellees includes Douglas M. Poland of Rathje & Woodward, Peter G. Earle, Michele L. Odorizzi of Mayer Brown, Nicholas O. Stephanopoulos of the University of Chicago Law School and Jessica R. Amunson of Jenner & Block.

*Webcast of partisan gerrymandering rollout event at National Press Club is available upon request.