“Given how quickly Senator Collins and Senator Murkowski called on then-Senator Franken to resign after the story came out about his sexual harassment, sexual assault, I think they’ll be under that much more scrutiny,” said Aaron Scherb with Common Cause.

“There are so many unanswered questions about Professor Ford and this sexual abuse from several decades ago. We believe that needs to come out,” Scherb said.

“I don't recall ever seeing a president going so vociferously after the spouses of civil servants,” said Stephen Spaulding, with the non-partisan good government organization Common Cause. “On the Hill, disclosure rules might apply to an immediate family member. Nothing we have seen in the past is comparable to what we are seeing with Trump and especially out of the White House. And these are absolutely smear tactics. You see a pattern of behavior where he is absolutely willing to go after spouses of people.”

"Without allowing candidates to pay themselves, the only people who could afford to run for public office would be independently wealthy individuals who can afford to take a year off from making a living in order to run," Paul S. Ryan, vice president for policy and litigation at the watchdog group Common Cause said. 

Anthony Gutierrez of Common Cause Texas called the ruling a severe blow to voting rights.

"It is time for Texans to take up the fight for fair maps by establishing an independent redistricting commission," he said. "In a democracy, politicians have no business choosing their voters, it is the voters who should be choosing their politicians."

“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.”

Former FCC commissioner Michael Copps, who has loudly opposed Sinclair's $3.9 billion takeover of Tribune, says the company is "trying to look as nonthreatening as possible and make this deal look as innocuous as possible."

In early May, 21st Century Fox agreed to snap up seven TV stations from Sinclair in a $910 million deal that could help Sinclair get regulatory approval for its Tribune bid.

Publicly, Sinclair leadership has denied rumors of a Fox News challenge. But Copps is unmoved: "Watch what they do and...

Yosef Getachew of Common Cause, a Washington-based nonpartisan group that advocates for a more ethical and open government, called AT&T's payments "another example of the power of big money to gain access and influence in all layers of government."

"The swamp is only getting swampier," he said, referring to Trump's vows to "drain the swamp" on the campaign trail.

Getachew said that AT&T, a company in the highly regulated telecom industry, has many matters that come before government agencies or Congress. For...

Американцы имеют право знать, кто тратит деньги, чтобы повлиять на наши выборы — будь то сотни миллионов долларов из неизвестных источников, хлынувшие на федеральные выборы после решения Верховного суда по делу Citizens United, или $130,000 долларов в качестве денег за молчание, выплаченных порнозвезде за несколько дней до президентских выборов 2016 года.

Руди Джулиани недавно устроил настоящую медиа-ажиотаж, защищая своего нового клиента, президента Дональда Трампа, от многочисленных расследований, поглотивших его хаотичное президентство. Но вместо того, чтобы...

Пол С. Райан, вице-президент Common Cause по вопросам политики и судебных разбирательств, обсуждает выплату денег за молчание в размере $130 000 Сторми Дэниэлс в дни, предшествовавшие выборам 2016 года.

“As someone who has worked on these issues for decades, I have never seen such a public interest,” Karen Hobert Flynn, president of nonpartisan government watchdog Common Cause, told Newsweek. She credits ethics experts like Painter for contributing to that interest.

“Having attorneys who specialize in this, that can explain what the law says and what the administration was doing, and could do it in ways that were accessible and understandable, I think people become hungry for it,” Hobert Flynn said. She added that her...