The Courts
Politico: Feds’ probe into Trump hush money payments is over, judge says
By Darren Samuelsohn
A federal probe into hush money payments made to protect Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign has concluded, according to a judge’s order released Wednesday.
At issue is an investigation led by the Southern District of New York connected to Michael Cohen, the former personal lawyer to Trump who is serving a three-year prison term in part for breaking campaign finance law. Trump himself was implicated in Cohen’s crimes, which involved hush money payments to women that federal prosecutors have said were designed to sway the presidential election.
Cohen cooperated with federal prosecutors as part of his plea deal with the government, but their wider effort is now over, U.S. District Court Judge William Pauley wrote in a three-page order.
“The Government now represents that it has concluded the aspects of its investigation that justified the continued sealing of the portions of the Materials relating to Cohen’s campaign finance violations,” Pauley wrote.
The judge, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, made the disclosure in a ruling on a related matter dealing with the release of sealed information contained in already-public search warrants tied to the Cohen case. Pauley rejected the government’s request to keep some of the search warrant materials in the Cohen case sealed and instead ordered it publicly released by 11 a.m. Thursday.
Pauley also said the government must publicly release a status report it filed earlier this week under seal that acknowledges the end of the wider Trump Organization campaign finance probe.
“The campaign finance violations discussed in the Materials are a matter of national importance,” Pauley added.
Reuters: New York City can ban ads inside Uber, Lyft vehicles: U.S. appeals court
By Jonathan Stempel
Reversing a lower court ruling, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled 3-0 that the ban did not violate the First Amendment, in a case brought by a technology company that places digital content inside ride-sharing vehicles.
Chief Judge Robert Katzmann called the two-decade-old ban a reasonable means to advance the city’s substantial interest in “improving the overall passenger experience.”
The ban included an exception for Taxi TV, which the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission lets medallion cab owners display to offset the cost of installing mandatory technology to help passengers monitor their fares and pay by credit card.
Vugo Inc, the Minnesota-based plaintiff, sued New York City in 2015 over the ban, which it said unconstitutionally impeded its commercial speech rights.
Its ads differ from Taxi TV because passengers cannot turn them off or mute them. Vugo splits ad revenue with drivers…
The decision reversed a February 2018 ruling by U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams in Manhattan.
She had said the ban lacked a “sufficient fit” with the city’s goal of shielding passengers from annoying ads, saying the city could have required on-off switches or mute buttons, and that Vugo’s ads were no more annoying than Taxi TV.
Katzmann, however, endorsed the city’s effort to help residents and visitors enjoy “peace and quiet” from the rear seat, and said the city was entitled as a policy matter to exempt yellow cab owners who upgraded their technology.
“The prohibition is the most direct and perhaps the only effective approach to prevent the harms of intrusive and annoying advertisements,” he wrote.
Congress
Washington Post: The Technology 202: Washington lawmakers tell tech executives trust has ‘run out’
By Cat Zakrzewski
Lawmakers from both parties had a clear message to Silicon Valley at a trio of Capitol Hill hearings on Tuesday: We don’t trust you…
[A]t a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) dug into Karan Bhatia, a chief Google lobbyist. He interrogated Bhatia on a host of issues confronting the platform – from its business plans in China to the steps the company has taken to protect children from pedophiles on YouTube.
“Clearly trust and patience in your company and the behavior of your monopoly has run out,” Hawley said. “It has certainly run out with me, and I think it’s time for some accountability.”
Tuesday was a bruising day to be a technology company in Washington, as Silicon Valley executives found they had few allies on either side of the aisle as they were grilled on a host of issues. Republicans such as Hawley sounded the alarm about Google’s business interests in China, and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) blasted the search giant for allegedly censoring conservative voices online. Democrats slammed the companies’ potential monopoly power and YouTube’s failure to remove violent content from its platform…
For all the hand-wringing about greater regulation, there appears to be no consensus among lawmakers about a legislative remedy. Yet the increased public scrutiny is impacting the tech companies’ business decisions.
By Andrew O’Reilly and Talia Kaplan
The hearing, which came on a busy day on Capitol Hill for Silicon Valley’s behemoths, was the second in recent of months in which tech companies were grilled over accusations of discrimination against conservative viewpoints and the suppression of free speech.
“Google’s control over what people hear, watch, read, and say is unprecedented,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said. “Google can, and often does, control our discourse.”
Cruz added: “The American people are subject to overt censorship and covert manipulation” by Google’s algorithm.
Google’s vice president of global government affairs and public policy, Karan Bhatia, defended the tech giant…
“We work hard to fix our mistakes,” Bhatia said. “But these mistakes have affected both parties and are not a product of bias.”
He added: “We are not censoring speech on our platforms… We do have community guidelines against uploading, for example, videos that have violent imagery.”
Later in the hearing, Cruz criticized Google’s executives for their broad support of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election, saying that 88 executives at the company contributed to her campaign.
“You know how many contributed to Donald Trump?” Cruz asked. “Zero, goose egg.”
Democrats on the committee defended the tech giant against the bias accusations but didn’t spare the company when it came to criticism that it did little to remove violent and disturbing imagery and videos from its platforms.
Online Speech Platforms
The Bridge (Mercatus Center): Section 230 Isn’t an Aberration, It’s a Distillation of Common Law Trends
By Andrea O’Sullivan
Is platform liability protection a gross exception to American publishing standards? Opponents of a rule called Section 230, which protects online intermediaries from expensive lawsuits over certain kinds of user-submitted content, say so. They argue that websites are shielded by the rule from legal risks in ways that other editorial broadcasters are not.
To restore sanity and fairness to publishing norms, online liability protections must be overhauled, critics maintain. Antagonism to Section 230 has moved beyond rhetoric, with Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) proposing a bill that would remove platform liability shields from “non-neutral” services. Websites would need to earn their liability protection by curating content in a government-approved manner.
New research by Mercatus scholars Brent Skorup and Jennifer Huddleston points out that critics’ core assumptions is factually incorrect. Section 230 was not an aberration that bucked prevailing US legal trends. Rather, a body of common law providing Section 230-like protections had already naturally developed in the courts. Statutory platform protections merely codified judicial developments. Furthermore, “neutrality” was never a statutory condition for liability protections. The authors conclude that critics should not attempt to utilize publisher liability rules for what are actually other purposes, like antitrust concerns.
Candidates and Campaigns
Wall Street Journal: Old Election Cash Gives New Life to Some Democratic Presidential Candidates
By Julie Bykowicz
In the first half of the year, nine contenders-all but one of the senators and representatives seeking the White House-transferred more than $41 million from previous election bids to their presidential accounts…
Candidates are legally permitted to move money from one federal account to another. But governors and mayors aren’t allowed to seed their federal bids with leftover state and local campaign cash. Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, noting Monday how tough his fundraising had been, said he was at a disadvantage because he wasn’t a federal elected official: “We didn’t start out with $5-$10 million in the bank.” …
[Sen. Elizabeth Warren] has vowed not to hold exclusive fundraisers for big donors or make calls to entice them. But she didn’t apply those restriction to her earlier Senate bids, and cash from those campaigns is now helping her stay flush in the presidential race.
Ms. Warren “does not believe that the Democratic nominee should be determined by who can line up the most support from billionaires and millionaires,” said Chris Hayden, a campaign spokesman. He didn’t address questions about whether her transfers diluted her presidential campaign’s pledge.
Other campaigns, including those of California Sen. Kamala Harris and Ms. Gillibrand, transferred money raised while they were taking lobbyist and corporate political-action committee contributions, which they no longer accept…
Most of the candidates are using a more traditional fundraising playbook, soliciting small donors through frequent emails and online advertisements while also holding events for people willing to give the $2,800 maximum individual contribution allowed for the primary.
Center for Public Integrity: Feel The Burn Rate: Some Presidential Candidates Are Racing To The Red
By Carrie Levine
Although the massive Democratic primary field has collectively raised $277 million so far, almost three-fifths of the money flowed into the coffers of only five campaigns, according to new filings with the Federal Election Commission
What that means: a few top candidates are racing to expand their campaign staff and advertising budgets. Most of the rest will pour their dwindling resources into crossing the Democratic Party’s fundraising thresholds for debate participation – or simply paying their bills.
No fewer than 11 campaigns of Democratic presidential hopefuls – including Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas – spent more money during the year’s second quarter than their campaigns raised during the same period…
One of the biggest expenditures for most presidential campaigns is digital advertising aimed at reaching donors and engaging supporters – donors and supporters who can later be turned into volunteers and voters…
Tara McGowan, chief executive of Acronym, a liberal organization that tracks digital spending by candidates, said all the campaigns are investing in it at a “heavy rate at this stage” – but their strategies vary depending on how the candidates are doing…
“It’s really important to think about to what end you’re reaching voters online with ads,” McGowan said. “Are you giving them more info about why they should support you, or are you just begging?”
The Fulcrum: Presidential field spends more on Facebook attacking dark money than on any other topic
By Tristiaña Hinton
In speeches and the first debates, the Democratic presidential candidates haven’t put much emphasis on their plans for making democracy work better. On Facebook, it’s a slightly different story: Collectively, they’ve been spending more to attack dark money than to promote any other policy position.
In the 14 weeks ending July 6, the aspirants spent a combined $879,000 on ads across the social media platform promising to change campaign finance rules so that nonprofit groups engaged in political advocacy are required to disclose the identities of the donors. That easily eclipsed the second biggest chunk of online issue spending: $721,000 on their economic policy platforms.
To be sure, spending to lambaste dark money was No. 1 because of just one candidate’s investment: Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota spent more than $432,000 – almost more than all the others, combined – emphasizing her stump speech line promising to “get dark money out of politics” by pushing a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling…
Bully Pulpit Interactive, a communications firm, pulled together the data from the Facebook Ad Library Report, which the tech giant introduced to create more transparency around advertisements related to social issues, elections and politics.
As the top Democrat on the Rules and Administration Committee, Klobuchar has also been the party’s prime sponsor of the bill, dubbed the Honest Ads Act, that would mandate disclosure of those paying for online political ads.
The States
KRWG New Mexico: Toulouse Oliver Releases Amendment to Campaign Finance Rule and Announces Public Input Process
New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver released a draft amendment to the state’s Campaign Finance Rule and announced a public hearing in the state’s capital [on August 16] to gather community input about the draft amendment. Here is a statement from her office:
The amendment was mandated by the passage of Senate Bill 3 during the 2019 New Mexico Legislative Session, which directed the Secretary of State to promulgate rules in order to implement the changes to the Campaign Reporting Act (“the Act”) contained in Senate Bill 3.
“The proposed amendment to the existing Campaign Finance Rule will give the public a better understanding of who is trying to influence our elections by providing more transparency and accountability in campaign finance reporting,” said Secretary Toulouse Oliver. “In order to make this amended rule work in the best possible way it can, I encourage every New Mexican to participate in this rulemaking process and to provide their comments and feedback.” …
The purpose of the amendment to the rule is as follows:
Campaign Finance Rule (1.10.13 NMAC) – to provide clear guidance regarding the application and implementation of the provisions of the Act, while also providing for clear and specific guidance to the Secretary of State’s Office in administering and enforcing the law. This amendment provides clarifying language on the regulation of independent expenditure reporting, advertising, and legislative caucus committees…
Click here for a copy of the draft amendment to the Campaign Finance Rule…
The public may also submit official comments on the draft amendment…
The deadline to submit written comments by mail, email or fax is 5:00pm on Thursday, August 15, 2019.
MLive.com: Michigan House bill would set minimum fines for campaign finance violations
By Lauren Gibbons
House Bill 4703, sponsored by state Rep. Lynn Afendoulis, R-Grand Rapids Twp., would set new parameters around campaign finance by requiring fines imposed by the Secretary of State to be at least 25 percent of the total value of the campaign material that violated the law.
Afendoulis, who is also a candidate for Michigan’s 3rd Congressional district, said in a statement the bill was inspired by a conciliation agreement between the state and Build a Better Michigan – a political nonprofit that aired two television ads explicitly supporting now-Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
The group disagreed with the state’s conclusion that the ads violated campaign finance law, but ultimately paid a $37,500 fine. Republicans and conservative groups criticized Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson at the time for levying a fine that former Secretary of State Ruth Johnson, now a state senator, called “exceedingly too small.” …
Benson has said a lack of enforcement options for her office to collect on the roughly $1.5 million in unpaid fees for campaign finance violations by candidate committees or political action committees, also known as PACs, is a big concern.
She previously told lawmakers that more could have been done in the Build a Better Michigan case if there had been more clarity or prior precedent in Michigan’s campaign finance laws: “As a result, we had an imperfect outcome that could have been avoided if the law was clear to begin with,” she said during a House Ethics and Elections Committee hearing in March.
