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National News See other National News Articles Title: Court Just Nailed Hillary in $6 Million FEC Violation Case, 45x Bigger Than Trump's $130k So-Called Violation The Washington D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign and an affiliated super PAC violated federal election law in spending that totaled close to $6 million. The amount in question is more than 45 times the $130,000 a Manhattan court convicted former President Donald Trump of misreporting in business records during the same 2016 campaign. It should be noted that the Federal Election Commission and the Justice Department looked at the payments Trump made through his personal attorney at the time, Michael Cohen, to adult film star Stormy Daniels as part of a nondisclosure agreement and declined to prosecute him. But Democrat Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg chose to bring the case under New York law, bootstrapping the alleged FEC violation as an underlying crime to the state business record violations. The reimbursement payments made to Cohen were listed by the Trump organization as legal expenses. Bragg argued these payments made to Daniels initially by Cohen amounted to an illegal contribution to the Trump campaign. Regarding the Clinton campaign case, the D.C. Circuit found the super PAC Correct the Record "set out to engage in a wide range of coordinated activities to support Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign." "In an administrative complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission, nonprofit watchdog Campaign Legal Center alleges that Correct the Record spent close to $6 million in coordination with the Clinton campaign during the lead-up to the 2016 election, including to conduct polls, hire teams of round-the-clock factcheckers, and connect Clinton media surrogates with radio and television news outlets," the Court said. The three-judge panel noted that Correct the Record coordinated all these activities with Clinton's campaign. "But it characterized all of the committee’s myriad expenditures -- from staff salaries and travel expenses to the cost of commissioning polls and renting offices -- as 'inputs' to unpaid communications over the internet. For that reason, neither Correct the Record nor the Clinton campaign designated any of Correct the Record’s expenditures as contributions to the campaign," the ruling said. In other words, Correct the Record committed FEC "business record" violations, if you will, by failing to properly account for money spent to help the Clinton campaign. The FEC had dismissed the complaint against the Clinton campaign and Correct the Record, citing an internet exemption had allowed them not to list the coordination between the two, but the D.C. Circuit Court found that decision was in error. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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