News Clips

“Denials and tweets in all caps do not make campaign finance violations go away,” said Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause.

“I just think it again affirms what we filed in our complaint; that it sounds like Donald Trump knew about the hush money payment to McDougal before the election,” said Common Cause Chief of Strategy and External Affairs Stephen Spaulding. “I just think this is more of another log on the fire that these are campaign finance violations and that the thread continues to unravel.”

Put differently, as Common Cause’s Paul S. Ryan told me via email, “If the earlier reporting that AMI consulted with Cohen (an ‘agent’ of candidate Trump) before making the payment to McDougal is correct, then AMI’s payment to McDougal was a political expenditure ‘coordinated’ with Trump.” He continued, “Coordinated expenditures are treated as in-kind contributions under campaign finance law and corporations are prohibited from contributing to federal candidates, so AMI’s payment to McDougal [would be] an illegal corporate contribution to Trump.” Indeed, this was the basis for complaints that Common Cause filed earlier this year with the Justice Department and the Federal Election Commission.

"What did Donald Trump know and when did he know it?” said Paul S. Ryan, a campaign finance expert at Common Cause, which has filed complaints with the Justice Department and Federal Election Commission. “Did Donald Trump knowingly violate campaign finance law, and did he commit a crime?"

“This is part of a pattern with this president of really doing everything he can to disgrace the office of the presidency by promoting his own private business interests,” said Stephen Spaulding, a lawyer with the public interest group Common Cause.

“There remains no record of the operations and fundraising of your legal defense fund,” the letter said. “If a legal defense fund is not carefully set up and administered, there are many ways the Fund may run afoul of executive branch ethics rules. Given the large number of ethics scandals now under investigation at the EPA, further scandals should be avoided by you and the agency.”