News Clips

“This is a slush fund. That’s the bottom line,” said Paul S. Ryan, a longtime campaign finance attorney with the good government group Common Cause. “Trump may just continue to string out this meritless litigation in order to fleece his own supporters of their money and use it in the coming years to pad his own lifestyle while teasing a 2024 candidacy.”

“This looks like the latest example of Trump administration officials bending and breaking ethics laws and norms,” said Paul Seamus Ryan, the vice president of litigation for the group Common Cause. “This is unfortunately par for the course for this administration.”

Paul Seamus Ryan, of the nonprofit group Common Cause, said it was legal for candidates to rent things from their own business — as long as they appeared to be paying market rates and not overcharging. But, Ryan said, he had never seen anyone do it at the scale Trump has. “It’s extremely unusual. Unprecedented, in my experience — 20 years or so, watchdogging money in elections,” said Ryan, an election-law expert.

Under the Hatch Act, government officials are prohibited from using government resources to engage in partisan political activity, and from commanding other government employees to do so. Paul Seamus Ryan, a vice president at the government watchdog group Common Cause, said that if explicit communications surfaced linking the discount cards to the president’s re-election, health officials could face punishment. “It is likely these are people who could face criminal and civil legal liability if they go through with this scheme and it is for a political purpose,” he said.

“We have seen already that the President’s rhetoric is affecting the confidence that voters have in vote-by-mail, particularly, and also in elections in general,” Sylvia Albert, director of voting and elections at Common Cause, testified to Congress on Aug. 4.

As the COVID-19 death toll has continued to mount, Americans have waited for a sign that President Trump understands what we are enduring. Many have lost loved ones, jobs, health insurance and retirement savings, but those who are suffering have barely drawn a mention in the Rose Garden or as the president leaves the White House in a helicopter to play golf. Since the founding of the Republic, when tragedy has struck our nation, presidents have mourned with us, and they have vowed revenge on those days that will live in infamy. Never before has a president bemoaned the impact a national tragedy has had on his approval ratings or poll numbers.