[CarlV]

It Hurts To Be Right

Leaked emails show how the Republican governor of Wisconsin flouted campaign finance law to court secret donors.

By Brendan Fischer | September 15, 2016

The Guardian this week published 1,500 previously unreleased emails and financial documents leaked from a now-halted investigation into alleged campaign finance violations by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and his allies.
The leak raises questions about a highly controversial decision to shut down the probe last year by the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Four of that court’s seven justices were elected with $10 million in support (more than the jurists spent on their own campaigns) from Wisconsin Club for Growth and Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, two of the “independent” groups that Walker was accused of illegally coordinating with.

It also raises questions about whether the emails will affect the US Supreme Court, which has been asked to review the Wisconsin decision, and could announce whether it will do so in the coming weeks.

What the emails reveal is both shocking — and unsurprising.

The leaked documents confirm campaign finance reformers’ worst suspicions about political “dark money” and the legal rulings that unleashed it into our elections. And they prove the assumptions underlying the US Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision were incredibly naïve.

That 2010 decision allowed corporate entities to spend unlimited amounts on elections, helping to unleash a tide of “dark money” — election spending by groups that don’t publicly disclose their donors.
Take A Look: Bill Moyers Asks, What Is Dark Money?

In Citizens United, the justices predicted that unlimited corporate spending wouldn’t “corrupt” politicians because it would be totally independent of candidates. But the Wisconsin documents show how many “independent” expenditures are actually controlled behind-the-scenes by candidates’ campaigns.

And, although the court in Citizens United said campaign finance disclosure laws would provide citizens with all the information necessary to “see whether elected officials are ‘in the pocket’ of so-called moneyed interests,” these documents demonstrate that citizens are routinely left in the dark about who is bankrolling their representatives, thanks to corporations and wealthy donors secretly funneling their contributions through phony “social welfare” groups which disguise the identities of their funders.

Most importantly these documents show “dark money” is really only “dark” when it comes to the public’s knowledge. The politicians who benefit from undisclosed election spending know exactly where their financial support is coming from.

In the case of Scott Walker, the leaked documents show that, in the months before his June 2012 recall election, his calendar was packed with meetings with potential donors. Shortly after those meetings, checks of up to $1 million appeared in the account of the Wisconsin Club for Growth, a social welfare nonprofit backed by the Koch brothers that does not disclose donors — and that, under the terms of the Supreme Court precedent, should be independent of the candidates it supports. Yet, the documents show, Wisconsin Club for Growth was actually controlled by Walker’s campaign manager.

Talking points prepared for Walker told the governor to advise donors to give to the Club “in support of your recall,” and to “stress that donations to Wisconsin Club for Growth are not disclosed” and to emphasize “that you can accept corporate contributions and it is not reported.”

Because Walker asked, donors gave. Millions.

The memo lines of some of the checks to Wisconsin Club for Growth reflected why donors gave to this supposedly “independent” group: “Because Scott Walker asked.” Other checks reflected how donors perceived the governor’s relationship with the group; one memo line read “501c4-Walker.”

Keep in mind that donations directly to Walker’s campaign must be disclosed. Corporations cannot donate at all. And that’s why the coordination scheme is so problematic: by Walker’s campaign working with the Club for Growth, controversial donors and corporations were offered a way to evade transparency laws and prohibitions on corporate donations.

When speaking with donors, Walker framed a contribution to the Wisconsin Club for Growth as effectively a contribution to his own campaign — and his funders viewed it in the same way.

Donald Trump was one of those donors. Walker met with Trump for 45 minutes at his Fifth Avenue office in New York City, and that same day Trump wrote a check for $15,000 to Wisconsin Club for Growth.

As he ran for president a few years later, Trump boasted about his donations to Walker. Yet he never gave to Walker’s campaign; he only gave to the Wisconsin Club for Growth.

Link

Ooops


Carl