News Clips

"The Senate Intelligence Committee has subpoenaed Donald Trump Jr. to testify as part of its ongoing probe of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Those proceedings warrant close scrutiny in light of Chairman Richard Burr’s close ties to the Trump administration and the deliberately misleading public statements he made during and after the presidential campaign to downplay Russian interference in support of Donald Trump's candidacy. As a member of the congressional Gang of Eight, Burr was fully briefed by U.S. intelligence officials on the Russian hacks of Democratic email servers and other attacks, but his camp downplayed them publicly." - Paul Seamus Ryan vice president of policy and litigation for Common Cause

“It pains me to say it, but I don’t think [the statement itself] is a legal problem,” Common Cause’s Paul Ryan told Score (Ryan repeatedly argued that he believed the creation of America First Policies and America First Action was illegal because of their ties to Trump’s orbit while he was a federal candidate). “Pointing to a super PAC and saying, ‘That’s the one I approve of’ doesn’t break the law.”

“In a perfect world, members of Congress who serve on committees that oversee or regulate specific industries wouldn’t be able to fundraise or accept campaign contributions from those industries,” said Aaron Scherb, the director of legislative affairs at Common Cause.Scherb added that participating in the imperfect system doesn’t mean that Nadler or other lawmakers are being bought off, but there’s a “perceived conflict of interest that’s created.”“For many Americans, our corrosive fund-raising system calls into question whether members of Congress are acting in the public interest, or for some private financial interest,” Scherb said.

“The Special Counsel concluded that the promised ‘documents and information that would incriminate Hillary’ constituted a ‘thing of value,’” the complaint supplement from Common Cause, Campaign Legal Center, and Democracy 21 states. “And that Trump Jr.—and potentially Manafort and Kushner—solicited such a contribution from a person known to be a foreign national.”The supplement concludes: “In other words, the Special Counsel concluded that, at a minimum, Trump Jr. violated the ban on soliciting contributions from foreign nationals.”

Mueller made some other questionable choices. While Trump Jr. could have been charged with illegally coordinating with the Russians to make an illegal foreign expenditure, Mueller describes the law defining coordination as too uncertain. In fact, as Common Cause’s Paul S. Ryan explains in this thread, there is both a federal statute and case law defining the term, and Trump Jr.’s conduct seems to fall within it.

This spring, Enterprise supported a late amendment to Ohio’s transportation budget, leading to a similar scramble in that state. Side-door tactics like these are common but “less than savory,” said Aaron Scherb, legislative director of Common Cause, a nonprofit advocacy group focused on government accountability and transparency. Such moves are usually used to push legislation expected to be unpopular. As in Illinois, the car-sharing companies declared victory.