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“He pleaded to a single felony but not one that is specifically included in the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act,” said Beth A. Rotman, an attorney who is the money in politics and ethics program director for the good government group Common Cause. Rotman noted that while the law includes many more crimes than it did 20 years ago, “It’s not everything. In cases like this, the desire to keep the pension could be one of the reasons someone accepts a plea that is only a portion of the charges.”

Paul S. Ryan, vice president of policy and litigation at Common Cause, a good government group that supports a contribution match system, said limits on contributions exist to prevent corruption. “A candidate cannot be corrupted by her own spending, so it can’t be limited. By contrast, there can be corruption of a candidate by a donor giving a big check,” he said.

City leaders should move ahead with the developer donation limits “whether or not they can 100% enforce it,” Rey López-Calderón, executive director of the watchdog group California Common Cause. “It will be great when they update their systems and get a database” to track developers with pending projects, López-Calderón said. “But what they need to do right now is show the public that they’re serious about changing the culture of Los Angeles City Hall.”

In recent weeks, President Trump ran an ad on Facebook with discredited allegations about former Vice President Joe Biden's relationship with Ukraine. Despite requests from Biden's campaign to take down the ad, Facebook refused, stating the ad didn't violate its policies on political advertising. Facebook's new policy exempts politicians' political ads from third-party fact-checkers. The exemption effectively allows any politician to run ads on the platform that contain deceptive, false or misleading information. Given the president's propensity to lie, it's easy to understand why many are calling this the "Trump exemption."

Last year, Common Cause, the political reform group, asked the FEC to determine whether the Trump campaign had illegally coordinated with America First and America First Policies, a related group that can raise money without disclosing its donors. The complaint alleged that the president and his campaign were improperly soliciting contributions for the two entities.

"The charges of conspiracy to funnel foreign dollars into U.S. elections against Florida businessmen Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman paint a troubling picture of the free flow of foreign money into our elections due to insufficient safeguards and lax enforcement," Paul S. Ryan, vice president for policy and litigation for Common Cause, another watchdog group, said in a statement. "[Thursday's] indictments, though, likely represent only the tip of the iceberg in terms of foreign meddling. Both men were also heavily involved in the efforts by the White House and President Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate unsubstantiated allegations against Trump's political rival, Joe Biden."