WASHINGTON, D.C. — Campaign Legal Center (CLC) has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) against “Save Our Home Planet Action, Inc.” (“SOHPA”) and anyone who provided it with funds to make over $1.4 million in political contributions in “SOHPA”’s name, a blatant violation of federal campaign finance laws. 

The complaint alleges that SOHPA, established on August 6, 2024, was not the true source of contributions made to five different super and hybrid PACs. By using SOHPA as a shell company in their “straw donor” scheme, the individuals behind these contributions violated laws intended to promote transparency, depriving voters of essential information. 

“Voters have a right to know who is spending money to influence their votes, elect their preferred candidates, and sway public policy,” says Saurav Ghosh, director of federal campaign finance reform at CLC. “This is just the latest example of how wealthy corporate special interests are using straw donor schemes to secretly spend enormous amounts of money on our elections. The FEC must investigate who really contributed over $1.4 million through this scheme, and hold any violators accountable for depriving the public of this vital information.” 

SOHPA has no online footprint or record of other activities that could explain how it was able to make millions in political contributions, beginning just 10 days after being formed, absent an infusion of funds provided for that purpose. Notably, SOHPA appears to share an address with the corporate headquarters of Patagonia, Inc., according to the financial disclosures of the political committees it contributed to. Even the name of the purported donor entity, “Save Our Home Planet Action,” quotes verbatim Patagonia’s corporate motto “to save our home planet,” a phrase that the company also uses on its merchandise. These connections, CLC alleges, strongly suggest that Patagonia or its executives may be the true source of the contributions made in SOHPA’s name. 

The FEC has previously issued civil fines over straw donor schemes. To protect voters’ rights, CLC has asked it to investigate who is really behind the over $1.4 million in contributions by SOHPA to political action committees.

Washington, D.C. — In response to the apparent lack of ethics reviews of Cabinet nominees, Kedric Payne, Vice President, General Counsel and Senior Director for Ethics at Campaign Legal Center and former Deputy Chief Counsel of the Office of Congressional Ethics, issued the following statement: 

“Those nominated by the president-elect to help lead this next administration will hold immensely privileged positions of power if confirmed. That is why the Office of Government Ethics is tasked with meticulously reviewing the nominee’s financial holdings and any potential conflicts of interest they pose before they can be considered for Senate confirmation. 

"Without this crucial review — which is mandated by law — nominees may enter office with conflicts of interest (obvious or hidden) that they are not ordered to remedy. If this occurs, not only are Americans deprived of critical information about those poised to hold immense power, but those powerholders could manipulate the government for their own personal benefit while facing little to no consequence. 

"We are less than six weeks away from Inauguration Day, and it is incredibly alarming that the incoming administration has not begun what is typically a month's long transition process. Trump may be attempting to have confirmation hearings happen before ethics investigations are completed. 

"When Trump’s first term nominations approached confirmation hearings without a completed ethics investigation, we relied on Senators pushing back and postponing confirmation until the rule of law was followed. But we do not seem to have the same resistance to his power this time around — Trump may very well try to usher his appointments through without any sort of ethics review process at all.

"This is not just a break from precedent — Trump is breaking the law and setting a dangerous tone for the role that accountability and ethics will play in this next administration if the nominees are not reviewed for conflicts of interest. If we do not bother to hold some of the most politically powerful members of our government to ethical guidelines before they even enter office, there is little hope that these leaders will bother with ethics guidelines throughout their public service.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. — This week, Campaign Legal Center (CLC) filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), over reports that the ‘Friends of Matt Gaetz’ campaign committee misreported over $1.2 million in payments to Stripe, a payment processing vendor. This is concerning because the magnitude of these payments appears to indicate that the recipients or purposes for these expenditures were possibly misreported, denying voters accurate information about how the campaign was spending its money. 

All federal campaigns and committees are required by law to file accurate and complete reports on how much money they spend, the purpose of these expenses, and the recipients of these expenditures. 

Based on Stripe’s fee structures for processing online contributions, the Gaetz campaign should not have paid more than $97,000 for Stripe to process its itemized contributions during the 2024 election cycle — yet it paid Stripe twelve times that amount, a substantial difference that strongly suggests an error in the campaign’s reporting. 

If the Gaetz campaign’s reports are accurate, one out of every six dollars it spent would have gone towards these “e-merchant fees” — which would be extraordinary. The campaign’s $1.2 million in payments to Stripe also far exceeds the amount paid to Stripe by any other political committee this election cycle. In fact, major national fundraising operations like the Harris Victory Fund and the Republican National Committee, each of which raised hundreds of millions of dollars from donors across the country, reported paying far less to Stripe than Gaetz’s campaign—which raised a little over $6 million this cycle. 

“Voters have a right to know how campaigns are spending their money,” said Saurav Ghosh, director of federal campaign finance reform at Campaign Legal Center (CLC). “It appears that this spending by former Rep. Matt Gaetz’s campaign was not reported accurately, which would be a clear violation of the law. The FEC should immediately investigate the true nature of the $1.2 million in payments that ‘Friends of Matt Gaetz’ reported making to the vendor Stripe.” 

When candidates or committees fail to provide complete and accurate reporting on their expenditures, voters are deprived of critical information they need on how candidates are spending their campaign funds, undermining transparency and accountability. 

The FEC has previously issued major financial penalties to political committees that have failed to provide the agency with accurate and complete information on their expenditures. The FEC must investigate the true nature of the Gaetz campaign’s expenditures during the 2024 cycle and hold this campaign committee accountable for any wrongdoing.