Daily Beast: How the Hell Is Trump 43-0 vs. Campaign Finance Watchdogs?

03.2.2022 / By Roger Sollenberger
Daily Beast: How the Hell Is Trump 43-0 vs. Campaign Finance Watchdogs?

Paul S. Ryan, vice president of litigation at good government group Common Cause, was on the receiving end of a number of those decisions, and did not mince words. “Trump is a walking playbook for how to violate campaign finance laws and get away with it,” Ryan told The Daily Beast, noting that several cases hit close to home, including the Daniels payment, “complaints related to his soft money group America First Policies, his involvement with now-disgraced Cambridge Analytica, his solicitation of foreign campaign assistance and more.” Because his organization filed those complaints, he said, seeing Trump walk “really stings.” Ryan added that Common Cause wasn’t alone, noting that the Trump campaign skated on complaints from the Campaign Legal Center, End Citizens United, Democracy 21 and other watchdogs.

Donald Trump may have been impeached twice, and he’s taken some lumps in court, but in one legal arena he is hands-down the undefeated reigning champ: campaign finance law.

It’s not even close.

According to a review of filings with the Federal Election Commission, the agency with jurisdiction over campaign finance law, Trump has over the last six years posted a 43-0 record in cases referred for possible violations.

And the single reason that the FEC has never acted is because none of the agency’s three Republican commissioners have ever voted against Trump. …

Paul S. Ryan, vice president of litigation at good government group Common Cause, was on the receiving end of a number of those decisions, and did not mince words.

“Trump is a walking playbook for how to violate campaign finance laws and get away with it,” Ryan told The Daily Beast, noting that several cases hit close to home, including the Daniels payment, “complaints related to his soft money group America First Policies, his involvement with now-disgraced Cambridge Analytica, his solicitation of foreign campaign assistance and more.”

Because his organization filed those complaints, he said, seeing Trump walk “really stings.”

Ryan added that Common Cause wasn’t alone, noting that the Trump campaign skated on complaints from the Campaign Legal Center, End Citizens United, Democracy 21 and other watchdogs.

 

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