Subject: One Email That Proves Campaign Finance Laws Are A Joke
From: "Eric Schwerin" <[email-masked]>
To: "Hunter Biden" <[email-masked]>, "Joshua Alcorn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 2015 21:04:12 -0400

One Email That Proves Campaign Finance Laws Are A Joke
This what you talking about, Hunter?

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/55b79747e4b0074ba5a6233c

One Email That Proves Campaign Finance Laws Are A Joke Politics

Super PACs and candidates can't coordinate, except when they obviously do.

 1 day ago | *Updated* 1 day ago

   -  Paul Blumenthal </us/author/paul-blumenthal> Money in Politics
   Reporter, The Huffington Post

 WASHINGTON -- Carly for America, the super PAC backing former
Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina’s presidential campaign, invited
supporters to join a conference call on Thursday with -- Carly Fiorina.
Think this required any "coordination" between the supposedly independent
super PAC and the candidate?

The email invite from the super PAC informs supporters that "Special Guest
Republican Candidate for President Carly Fiorina" will be joining them. At
the same time, it contains the necessary legal notice that Carly for
America "is an independent expenditure committee and not authorized or
coordinated with any federal candidate or candidate's committee."
 Carly for America

The problem is that federal campaign coordination laws ban only
certain types of cooperation and association between candidates and
supposedly independent groups. A candidate cannot have input on the content
-- text, video, imagery or other materials -- or the conduct -- strategy,
timing or payment -- of a communication. This leaves a lot of other
activity open to the interpretation of the Federal Election Commission,
which rarely enforces the anti-coordination rules in particular and at this
moment is deeply divided on how to enforce its regulations overall.

FEC gridlock is just one of many reasons why the 2016 presidential campaign
has seen a complete meltdown
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/07/09/2016-campaign-finance_n_7757258.html>
of
the notion that candidates don't work with the super PACs and nonprofits
supporting them.

Few have gone as far as Fiorina
<http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/carly-fiorina-2016-campaign-super-pac-outsourcer-in-chief-20150619>,
whose campaign is essentially being run out of the super PAC. The joint
conference call with supporters featuring Fiorina but hosted by the super
PAC is just one example of this. Staffers at Carly for America -- which has
raised $3.4 million so far and will report its donors on Friday -- have
taken on such core campaign functions as managing rapid response to press
questions, rolling out endorsements of the candidate, funding grassroots
organizing and organizing advance work for Fiorina’s appearances.

This is all a far cry from 2012 when Republican presidential nominee Mitt
Romney distanced himself from attack ads made by Restore Our Future, the
super PAC supporting his bid, by stating that he would go “to the big house
<http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/21/politics/romney-super-pac/>” if he so much
as urged the super PAC to stop running the ads.

This year, people are talking to each other. Just as Fiorina will speak on
her super PAC-organized conference call, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry
delivered his anti-Donald Trump speech at a July 22 event hosted by his
super PAC, Opportunity and Freedom PAC.
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*Also on HuffPost:*
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Eric D. Schwerin
[email-masked]

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