Supreme Court
New York Times: How to Tell Where Brett Kavanaugh Stands on Citizens United
By Adam Liptak
Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh has a favorite sentence. It explains why he is likely to reaffirm and build on the Citizens United decision if he is confirmed to the Supreme Court.
The sentence appeared in a 1976 Supreme Court decision, Buckley v. Valeo. It was, Judge Kavanaugh wrote in 2009, “perhaps the most important sentence in the court’s entire campaign finance jurisprudence.”
In 2013 and again last year, he went further, calling it “one of the most important sentences in First Amendment history.”
He was referring to this: “The concept that government may restrict the speech of some elements of our society in order to enhance the relative voice of others is wholly foreign to the First Amendment.” …
The divide on the question of whether the government has a role to play in regulating spending on political speech, with one side favoring liberty and the other equality, animates much of the contemporary debate over the meaning of the First Amendment. What seems plain is that Judge Kavanaugh is on the libertarian side.
IRS
Washington Post: The river of dark money just got darker and wider
By Editorial Board
The Internal Revenue Service is not the Federal Election Commission. That should be obvious, but the tax agency has been embroiled in debate in recent years over regulating the cash that is flowing into tax-exempt social-welfare groups that engage in political activity. The IRS got into hot water a few years ago when it attempted to scrutinize conservative and tea party groups over this. Now, the IRS is throwing up its hands, saying it will no longer collect information on the identity of donors to such groups…
The IRS said it didn’t need the donor identity information and that not collecting it would save budget funds. That may be true, but it also moves the country still further down the road toward a murky politics influenced by dark money.
Perhaps it was too much to expect the IRS to be the lone government cop on this beat. But that should not mean giving up. Ideally, Congress ought to step in and clarify the law to require full disclosure for all money going into politics, including cash being pumped into the battle over a Supreme Court appointment. But the reality is that Congress benefits from the dark-money tide and has failed to act on bills that would boost transparency, such as the Disclose Act.
Hidden caches of money are just the first half of corruption. The second half comes when politicians do the bidding of the secret fat cats and vested interests. Both are a cancer on democracy that ought to be excised.
By Jessica Levinson
This change has been touted as a way to protect the private information of non-profit donors. And there is evidence that government agencies have at times mistakenly disclosed private information. But in reality, this new policy will just make elections less transparent, and crack the door open wider to additional foreign influence in our elections…
The Treasury Department’s change in policy will have (at least) two negative impacts on our democracy. First, the change could allow social welfare organizations to spend more dark money, essentially acting as political committees, with no oversight and no agency to tell them they must start disclosing their donors…
Second, this change will make it easier for foreign money to infiltrate our elections via non-profit organizations. The timing is particularly awkward given that the Justice Department just announced the arrest of 29-year-old Russian national Mariia Butina, a gun activist and now accused spy, who had carefully cultivated a relationship with NRA officials for years.
Congress
Politico: House votes to prevent IRS from punishing churches engaging in politics
By Brian Faler and Aaron Lorenzo
In a 217-199 vote, lawmakers approved legislation barring the IRS from revoking the tax-exempt status of churches that back political candidates, unless it is specifically approved by the commissioner of the agency.
The provision, buried in a budget measure setting IRS funding for the upcoming year, amounts to a backdoor way around the so-called Johnson amendment, a half-century-old prohibition on nonprofits getting involved in political campaign activities…
The move came as Senate Democrats forced a temporary postponement of a Finance Committee confirmation vote on President Donald Trump’s pick to run the IRS, in protest of the Treasury decision to ease the donor-disclosure requirements. Democrats say that will abet the rise of so-called dark money political campaign donations, including from foreign contributors.
Later in the day, the panel approved Charles Rettig’s nomination to head the IRS on a party-line 14-13 vote…
Targeting the prohibition through the budgetary process is sure to be controversial in the Senate. Republicans there did not include the proviso in their draft of the IRS’ budget, and Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the tax committee, pledged Thursday to “use every tool at my disposal to prevent that from happening.”
House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady argued that the ban “ought to be fully and permanently repealed.” …
Brady also defended the relaxed disclosure requirements.
“That information was never needed by the IRS to do their job – unfortunately, it had opened up avenues for abuse where the IRS could target Americans based on their political beliefs,” he said.
Independent Groups
USA Today: The super rich boost political giving ahead of November’s tough midterm elections
By Fredreka Schouten and Christopher Schnaars
Donors who have given $1 million or more in this cycle contributed $120.1 million to super PACs in the April-to-June fundraising quarter. That’s more than twice the $58.8 million they donated during the previous three-month period.
Republicans accounted for six out of 10 of the biggest super PAC donors in the second quarter…
Of course, big money doesn’t always lead to success at the ballot box.
Democrat Rep. Conor Lamb, for instance, won a special election in Pennsylvania this year, despite the more than $10 million spent to defeat him. And Democrat Hillary Clinton lost the White House to President Donald Trump in 2016, despite a nearly 2-to-1 fundraising advantage.
The Media
New York Times: Tabloid Company, Aiding Trump Campaign, May Have Crossed Line Into Politics
By Jim Rutenberg and Ben Protess
Federal authorities examining the work President Trump’s former lawyer did to squelch embarrassing stories before the 2016 election have come to believe that an important ally in that effort, the tabloid company American Media Inc., at times acted more as a political supporter than as a news organization, according to people briefed on the investigation.
That determination has kept the publisher in the middle of an inquiry that could create legal and political challenges for the president as prosecutors investigate whether the lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, violated campaign finance law.
It could also spell trouble for the company, which publishes The National Enquirer, raising thorny questions about when coverage that is favorable to a candidate strays into overt political activity, and when First Amendment protections should apply.
A.M.I.’s role in the inquiry received new attention on Friday with news that federal authorities had seized a recording from Mr. Cohen in which he and Mr. Trump discussed a $150,000 deal A.M.I. struck before the election, effectively silencing a woman’s claims of an affair by buying the rights to her story and not publishing it.
Trump Administration
Bloomberg: Trump Says Bezos’s Washington Post Lobbies on Amazon Antitrust
By Terrence Dopp, Justin Sink, and Ben Brody
President Donald Trump resumed his public campaign against the Washington Post on Monday, calling the newspaper an “expensive lobbyist” for Amazon.com Inc., which shares billionaire Jeff Bezos as an owner.
Trump has previously argued that the online retailer has a “huge antitrust” problem. His administration could theoretically act against Amazon through antitrust, USPS, consumer protection probes or even a push against their government contract business.
Amazon fell as much as 2.4 percent after Trump’s tweet, before recovering some of that loss…
Trump’s broadside against the Washington Post follows a report in the newspaper Sunday that he was venting behind the scenes over a lack of progress in negotiations with North Korea on eliminating its nuclear program. Shortly before criticizing the Post, the president tweeted that “all of Asia is happy” with the progress and noted that North Korea hadn’t conducted a ballistic missile or nuclear test in months.
“But the Fake News is saying, without ever asking me (always anonymous sources), that I am angry because it is not going fast enough,” Trump said. “Wrong, very happy!”
Fifteen minutes later he began tweeting about Amazon.
USA Today: President Trump tweets NFL players shouldn’t play or be paid if they kneel for national anthem
By Nate Davis
President Trump took the opportunity Friday to take another shot at the NFL as the league attempts to put the kibosh on its latest national anthem controversy.
“The NFL National Anthem Debate is alive and well again,” Trump tweeted, “can’t believe it! Isn’t it in contract that players must stand at attention, hand on heart? The $40,000,000 Commissioner must now make a stand. First time kneeling, out for game. Second time kneeling, out for season/no pay!”
Candidates and Campaigns
Wall Street Journal: Carter Page Surveillance Documents Set Off New Skirmish
By Del Quentin Wilber and Byron Tau
The weekend release of top-secret surveillance warrants has reignited partisan skirmishes over whether the Justice Department was justified in monitoring a former Trump campaign adviser.
President Donald Trump said on Twitter Sunday that the warrant applications make it look “more & more likely” his campaign was “illegally being spied upon.”
Democrats countered that the heavily redacted records actually show the Justice Department had acted properly in investigating and documenting the need to spy on Carter Page, the former Trump adviser…
The secret surveillance of Mr. Page, which started in October 2016 and continued through at least June of the next year, is at the heart of a partisan battle over whether the Federal Bureau of Investigation had gone too far in investigating potential ties between Mr. Trump’s campaign and Russia. Moscow has denied it interfered in the election, and Mr. Trump has called the investigation a “witch hunt.”
Legal experts say it is the first time they can recall an application to the spy court being made public in the four decades since Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
Los Angeles Times: Trump’s lawyer secretly recorded him; tape reveals discussion of payment to ex-Playboy playmate who alleged an affair
By Chris Megerian and Eli Stokols
If a payment was made with a political purpose – for example, to conceal embarrassing information shortly before the election – federal campaign finance law would have required that it be publicly disclosed. Failure to do so can be a criminal offense in some circumstances.
Such cases can be difficult to prosecute, however. John Edwards, for example, the former Democratic presidential candidate, was indicted in 2011 over payments to his mistress, Rielle Hunter. Prosecutors said he violated campaign finance laws by having friends funnel the money to Hunter to keep the story under wraps during the 2008 campaign. Edwards’ lawyers argued the payments were made by Edwards’ wealthy friends, not to influence the election, but primarily to hide the affair from his wife.
Edwards was acquitted on one charge, and the jury deadlocked on the rest.
The question raised by the Cohen recording is, “What did Donald Trump know and when did he know it?” said Paul S. Ryan, a campaign finance expert at Common Cause, which has filed complaints with the Justice Department and Federal Election Commission. “Did Donald Trump knowingly violate campaign finance law, and did he commit a crime?”
