News Clips

This week Forbes broke the story that Jared Kushner, “de facto chief” of President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign, has been speaking “regularly,” “almost daily,” with Kanye West since West’s July 4 tweet declaring that he is running for president. “Regular” conversations between the head of one presidential campaign and an opposing candidate looks like coordination and is highly irregular. Depending on what they’re talking about, they may be breaking campaign finance laws.

The first potential issue, according to Paul S. Ryan of the watchdog group Common Cause, is if Kushner encouraged West to do something proactive that could benefit Trump’s campaign, such as running for office. If Kushner solicited from West what could be valued at more than the legal limit of $2,800, it could be considered an in-kind contribution to the Trump campaign. And, given the expense of running campaigns, it seems likely if not guaranteed that West running for office — and expending much more than $2,800 — would violate that law. The second issue is if they coordinated about the campaign — i.e., if Kushner encouraged West to do something specific when it comes to launching or running a campaign. “Any expenditure made by Kanye West in cooperation, consultation or concert with — or at the request or suggestion of — Kushner, an agent of the Trump campaign, would be considered an in-kind contribution from the Kanye West campaign to the Trump campaign,” Ryan said.

“States are already strapped for cash,” Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections at Common Cause, said Tuesday. “At a time when the Congress has not appropriated sufficient funds to help election officials run these elections this November, it’s ridiculous to contemplate adding more to their budgets.”

Government watchdog groups have called Trump’s move an act of executive overreach that usurps Congress’ constitutional power to allocate federal funds. “Americans expect and deserve more from their President in the midst of a pandemic and an economic crisis,” Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause, said in a statement. “Unwilling and unable to negotiate with Congress to deliver a relief package to a nation reeling from COVID-19, President Trump resorted to unconstitutional half measures that will do little to address the serious issues facing the nation.”

Decisions over how the general election will be conducted need to be sorted out now, said Sylvia Albert, the director of Voting and Elections at Common Cause, a voting rights group. “The key is not waiting for November,” Ms. Albert said. “The point of those lawsuits is to establish the policies and procedures that are going to be used in November so there isn’t going to be confusion on the day of the election.”

“In an emergency, the president is able to do a lot of things he normally could not do, but only because he has been designated these powers by Congress in laws such as the National Emergencies Act,” said Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections at Common Cause, a nonprofit group that advocates for eased ballot access. “But in this case, the Constitution empowers Congress, not the president, to select Election Day. No laws passed by Congress have delegated these powers to the president, even in an emergency, so Congress is the only entity that has the power to change the date of the election.”