ABC News: Warren campaign official accuses Buttigieg campaign of skirting finance laws by tweeting ad strategy

Another feud over campaign finance is brewing between Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg — this time as the Warren campaign accuses a Buttigieg campaign official of skirting rules that prohibit coordination between candidate campaigns and outside groups. …

Wednesday afternoon, Roger Lau, the campaign manager for Warren, called out Buttigieg adviser Michael Halle for a tweet that seemed aimed at pro-veteran super PAC VoteVets, which endorsed Buttigieg in December.

“Pete’s military experience and closing message from Iowa work everywhere especially in Nevada where it’s critical they see this on the air through the caucus,” Halle tweeted, signaling that the Indiana Democrat’s military service in Afghanistan and his closing argument in Iowa should be part of television advertisements in Nevada. …

Paul Ryan, vice president of policy and litigation at Washington-based watchdog group Common Cause, said if Halle’s tweet was instead a private message to an outside group, and the outside group made an ad buy based on the information in the private message, then the Buttigieg campaign and the outside spender’s activities would “arguably meet” the “material involvement” standard under the FEC’s multi-part test.

This would violate federal laws.

But in this case, because Halle had tweeted the message publicly instead of sending it as a private message to a super PAC, it’s not necessarily covered by the FEC rules.

“In other words, if a candidate does all of their coordinating with outside groups in public view, there’s no illegal coordination under this FEC regulation,” Ryan said. “It’s a pretty big hole in the law.”