Today, Larry Noble, senior director, regulatory reform programs and general counsel at CLC, released the following statement reacting to press reports about Ivanka Trump's new White House role:

"Ivanka Trump’s announcement that she has 'heard the concerns' about her serving  as a volunteer advisor in the White House and 'will instead serve as an unpaid employee in the White House office, subject to all of the same rules as other federal employees,' is at least a nod to the very legitimate ethics concerns that have been raised.

However, her statement does not necessarily mean she is going to seriously address those ethics concerns. Not all federal employees are subject to the same ethics rules and which rules are applicable are generally tied to an employee’s pay level. By not being paid, Ms. Trump may be attempting to limit which rules apply her, even though her position and power will be far from that of your average federal employee.

Her statement suggests she will follow the same rules she earlier said she would voluntarily follow when she claimed not to be an employee. Does this mean she will not file a public financial disclosure report?  It does seem to mean that she will still not divest her business nor put it in a blind trust. Rather, it is likely her business will remain in a trust run by family members, with her having access to information about how it is doing and her being able to ultimately reap the financial benefits when she leaves the government. While the ethics rules she is willing to subject herself to may require her to recuse herself from involvement with matters that directly involve her company, does she intend to be involved with broader government rules and policies involving such subjects as trade, corporate taxes, business policies, manufacturing, retail sale and employee rights, which will affect her business interests?  If so, she is still going to be subject to numerous conflict of interest issues.

If Ms. Trump not only heard, but also understood, the ethics concerns expressed by many, she will abide by the principles and goals of the ethics rules designed for the high-level position she will hold in the U.S. government, regardless of her not being paid."

On March 24, CLC co-authored a letter expressing deep concern about the propoed arrangement for Ms. Trump to work as an unpaid employee with no title or salary.

Federal Court Rejects FEC’s Attempt to Dismiss Lawsuit Calling for FEC Investigation into Anonymous Contributions

WASHINGTON – A federal district court today refused to throw out a lawsuit Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21 filed against the Federal Election Commission (FEC). CLC and D21 filed the suit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia after the FEC failed to act on five complaints calling on the agency to investigate donors who broke disclosure laws by hiding behind opaque corporate entities like Limited Liability Companies (LLCs) to anonymously make contributions to super PACs.

In response to the lawsuit, the FEC called on the court to dismiss the case, on the ground that CLC and D21 failed to show standing, or the right to sue. The court disagreed as to the majority of the FEC complaints and now the case will be heard on the merits. 

“The Federal Election Commission is out of control and this court has made clear that the agency will not be able to easily avoid being held accountable for failing to do its job in enforcing campaign finance laws,” said Larry Noble, senior director of regulatory reform programs and general counsel for CLC. “The U.S. Supreme Court has made it clear that disclosure laws play a vital role in providing the electorate with critical information to make informed choices. Each time the FEC fails to pursue a serious violation of the law, it weakens our democracy and the ability of Americans to know who is truly influencing our elections. It also sends a loud and clear message that those who violate campaign finance laws will face no penalties. We can’t sit idly by and let the FEC destroy the integrity of our democracy.”

“We have reached the point where the only way it seems possible to get the dysfunctional FEC to do its job is by suing them,” said Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer. “The FEC’s failure to adopt regulations that properly interpret the campaign finance laws is a major reason why so much dark money is pouring into federal elections. We are very pleased that the district court judge has refused to go along at this stage of our lawsuit with the FEC’s stonewalling opposition to our efforts to obtain campaign finance disclosures that the America people have a right to know.”

CLC and D21, over the course of several years, filed complaints with the FEC against several newly formed corporate entities and their undisclosed donors for violating the “straw donor” provision of Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA). These donors’ anonymous contributions ranged from $857,000 to over $12 million, and some of the donors openly admitted in the media that they had used or even created personal companies to hide their identities from the public. Still, the FEC dismissed all five complaints, after the three Republican commissioners voted not to investigate and sanction these donors.   

The lawsuit states that in dismissing these complaints, the FEC has “undermined FECA’s purposes, including its goal of promoting transparency in elections and providing the electorate with information about who is speaking to it during elections.” CLC and D21, along with the public, “were deprived of timely information about the sources of the contributions made to the super PACs – information to which they are legally entitled to under FECA.”

The lawsuit calls for the court to find that the FEC’s dismissal of the complaints was “arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion, and otherwise contrary to the law,” and seeks a judicial order demanding the FEC enforce the law within 30 days.

Current recusal rules lag behind most states, leading to conflicts of interest; recent history highlights importance of amending state recusal rules

WASHINGTON – Today, the Campaign Legal Center sent a letter to the Wisconsin Supreme Court supporting a petition by 54 retired state judges urging the adoption of rules requiring that judges step aside from cases involving their top campaign supporters.

“The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly emphasized that the constitution requires that judges recuse themselves from cases where there is a significant risk of bias or its appearance, even in the absence of actual bias,” said Brendan Fischer, federal and FEC reform program director at the Campaign Legal Center. “Wisconsin rules fall short of express U.S. Supreme Court guidance on recusal and puts Wisconsin behind the majority of other states in protecting the integrity of the judiciary.“

In 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Caperton v. Masey (2009) that the constitution required that a state judge step aside from a case involving a company whose CEO had spent $3 million helping elect the justice through issue advocacy communications and independent expenditures. In several cases in the years since Caperton, the Court has repeatedly reaffirmed this holding and the broader importance of preserving the reality and appearance of judicial integrity.

Additionally, the importance of clear, objective recusal rules has become more pointed in light of recent changes to Wisconsin law that allow judicial candidates to control or otherwise coordinate with third-party groups engaged in “issue advocacy communications”—electoral ads that omit terms like “vote for” or “vote against” – which are the dominant form of electoral advocacy in Wisconsin Supreme Court elections. An individual is limited in how much they may give directly to a judicial candidate, and must have their contribution disclosed, but a person may secretly donate unlimited amounts to an issue advocacy group working directly with that candidate.

“While the U.S. Supreme Court in Caperton addressed significant independent spending that benefitted the justice in that case, Wisconsin’s new law permits a judicial candidate to control similar expenditures,” said Fischer. “At a minimum, the Court must revisit its recusal rules because the current standards were drafted with the understanding that issue advocacy communications would be independent of a judicial candidate, and this is no longer the case.”

Read our letter

DURHAM, N.C. – In a unanimous ruling, a three judge panel in North Carolina in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina denied a request by defendants to dismiss League of Women Voters of North Carolina v. Rucho.  The case was initially filed in September 2016 claiming that partisan gerrymandering in North Carolina’s 2016 congressional redistricting plan violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution.

“We are inching closer to North Carolinians having their day in court,” said Ruth Greenwood, deputy director of redistricting at the Campaign Legal Center. “Voters should be able to choose their representatives, yet in North Carolina and other states across the nation, politicians are manipulating maps to choose their voters and stay in power. North Carolina’s map is an egregious partisan gerrymander that prevents voters from having their voices heard on policy decisions that directly impact their lives. Through this litigation, we hope to advance a legal theory we believe can stop this unconstitutional practice nationwide, and return democracy to the people.”

The trial in the case is set to begin on June 26, 2017, in Greensboro, N.C.

“On behalf of our clients and the voters of North Carolina, we are happy that this case will now proceed to an examination of the evidence and the merits of our claims,” said Anita Earls, executive director of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice. “Our clients want to see government returned to rule by the will of the people instead of a system plagued by partisan manipulation.”

The lawsuit as filed in September 2016 can be found here.