CLC filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on May 21, 2019 citing evidence that Barry Zekelman, Wheatland Tube, LLC and Zekelman Industries violated the prohibition on foreign nationals making contributions in connection with a federal election.

On May 21, 2019, the en banc D.C. Circuit rejected all three of the Libertarian Party’s constitutional challenges to the federal contribution limits, finding that the First Amendment does not require “as applied” exceptions from facially valid contribution limits for supposedly non-corruptive bequests, and upholding the higher special-purpose “cromnibus” limits as a valid “tweak in Congress’s decades-long project to fine-tune” our campaign finance laws. The decision reaffirms that contribution limits are permissible preventative anti-corruption measures and that courts should defer to Congress’s empirical judgments about where precisely to set the dollar amounts of such limits.

In response to CLC’s FOIA Request, the Civil Rights Division (CRD) of the Department of Justice filed a Declaration detailing CRD’s efforts to comply with CLC’s FOIA Request. The Declaration included a Vaughn Index, which listed a description of documents withheld or redacted by CRD, along with the applicable legal exemptions that they claimed as justification for withholding or redacting the documents.

In response to CLC’s FOIA Request, the Office of Information Policy (OIP) of the Department of Justice filed a Declaration detailing OIP’s efforts to comply with CLC’s FOIA Request. The Declaration included a Vaughn Index, which listed a description of documents withheld or redacted by OIP, along with the applicable legal exemptions that they claimed as justification for withholding or redacting the documents.

In response to CLC’s FOIA Request, the Justice Management Division of the Department of Justice filed a Declaration detailing JMD’s efforts to comply with CLC’s FOIA Request. The Declaration included a Vaughn Index, which listed a description of documents withheld or redacted by JMD, along with the applicable legal exemptions that they claimed as justification for withholding or redacting the documents.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) moved for summary judgment with respect to CLC’s case challenging the adequacy of DOJ’s response to CLC’s FOIA Request to the Justice Management Division (JMD), Civil Rights Division (CRD) and Office of Information Policy (OIP).

This issue brief explains the benefits of the Honest Ads Act, a bipartisan bill re-introduced in May 2019 that would increase transparency requirements for digital ads, in an effort to prevent foreign interference in U.S. elections.

CLC submitted a letter to the FEC urging the agency to proceed with a rulemaking to define the permissible and impermissible uses of the national parties’ so-called “Cromnibus” accounts.

On May 16, 2019, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) filed its Answer to CLC’s Complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.