The Courts
New York Times: Tulsi Gabbard, Democratic Presidential Candidate, Sues Google
By Daisuke Wakabayashi
Tulsi Now Inc., the campaign committee for Ms. Gabbard, said Google suspended the campaign’s advertising account for six hours on June 27 and June 28, obstructing its ability to raise money and spread her message to potential voters.
After the first Democratic debate, Ms. Gabbard was briefly the most searched-for candidate on Google. Her campaign wanted to capitalize on the attention she was receiving by buying ads that would have placed its website at the top of search results for her name.
The lawsuit also said the Gabbard campaign believed its emails were being placed in spam folders on Gmail at “a disproportionately high rate” when compared with emails from other Democratic candidates.
“Google’s arbitrary and capricious treatment of Gabbard’s campaign should raise concerns for policymakers everywhere about the company’s ability to use its dominance to impact political discourse, in a way that interferes with the upcoming 2020 presidential election,” the lawsuit said.
Ms. Gabbard and her campaign are seeking an injunction against Google from further meddling in the election and damages of at least $50 million.
Google has automated systems that flag unusual activity on advertiser accounts – including large spending changes – to prevent fraud, said Jose Castaneda, a spokesman for the company.
“In this case, our system triggered a suspension and the account was reinstated shortly thereafter,” he said. “We are proud to offer ad products that help campaigns connect directly with voters, and we do so without bias toward any party or political ideology.”
Congress
The Hill: Democrats press Trump Treasury picks on donor disclosure guidelines
By Naomi Jagoda
Democratic senators at a hearing on Wednesday pressed Treasury Department nominees on guidance the department issued last year reducing donor disclosure requirement for certain tax-exempt groups.
“This makes it easier for dark-money groups to be able to do their business in secret,” Senate Finance Committee ranking member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said.
The Finance Committee held a hearing on four nominations to Treasury and tax court positions. These included the nominations of Brent McIntosh, the current Treasury general counsel, to be a Treasury undersecretary, and Brian Callanan, the current Treasury deputy general counsel, to succeed McIntosh as general counsel…
Republicans have said the guidance is important in order to protect taxpayers’ privacy and First Amendment rights. But Democrats have long taken issue with the guidance, which they say could make it easier for foreign government and “dark money” groups to influence U.S. elections. Last year, the Senate approved a resolution to overturn the guidance, though the House did not take it up.
Wyden and Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) asked the Treasury nominees about the decision to not provide a comment period before issuing the donor guidance.
Hassan noted that two states, Montana and New Jersey, have challenged the guidance in court because there wasn’t a public notice and comment period…
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) asked if Treasury was lobbied to reduce tax-exempt groups’ donor disclosure requirements.
Callanan said he was aware of a public letter from a number of tax-exempt groups, and that there were a number of lawmakers who had asked about the issue, including Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.).
Reason: Ted Cruz Wants Antifa Investigated by the FBI
By Elizabeth Nolan Brown
Cruz wants to treat them like an official criminal enterprise, chargeable under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act…
Some Antifa activists have engaged in unprovoked violence as a protest tactic; many more do not.
There is no official Antifa leadership, no formal party structures, no central planning board, no members…
Cruz did not suggest that the FBI look into particular criminal acts committed by particular criminal actors who identify as Antifa. Instead, he wants the FBI to define the whole movement as a criminal enterprise, making anyone who adopts the label potentially liable for anything anyone else using the label does…
FBI Director Christopher Wray told Cruz the agency is “absolutely concerned about violence committed on behalf of any ideology.” But “the key there,” said Wray, is that “the FBI doesn’t investigate ideology, we investigate violent criminal activity.”
Wray continued, essentially telling Cruz that you can’t just criminally investigate anyone associated with an ideological movement because a few proponents of that ideology have done bad things. The FBI definitely “considers Antifa more of an ideology than an organization,” Wray said.
The FBI has a history of investigating people based only on their ideology; readers can decide for themselves whether they want to accept its assurances that those days are in the past. It’s heartening, at any rate, to hear the bureau’s director at least pay lip service to the idea that law enforcement should focus on actual crimes rather than Wrongthink…
[Cruz] told Wray he would be sending him and the Department of Justice a letter asking for a RICO Act investigation…
None of us, no matter our ideologies, will be better off with more demands for corrupt and partisan investigations, nor from increasing pressure to make guilty-by-association the rule of law.
Wall Street Journal: Key Moments From the Mueller Hearings
Mr. Mueller emphasized that the threat Russia poses to American democracy didn’t stop at the 2016 election. “It wasn’t a single attempt,” he said. “They are doing it while we sit here. And they expect to do it during the next campaign.” …
Mr. Mueller criticized Mr. Trump’s praise of Wikileaks during the 2016 campaign, saying it could have encouraged illegal acts…
“Problematic is an understatement in terms of what it displays, in terms of giving some hope or some boost, to what is and should be illegal activity,” Mr. Mueller said in response to a question about Mr. Trump’s comments…
He also defended his hiring practices against charges of political bias. “I’ve been in this business for almost 25 years, and in those 25 years, I have not had occasion once to ask somebody about their political affiliation. It is not done. What I care about is the capability of the individual to do the job and do the job quickly and seriously and with integrity,” Mr. Mueller said.
The Hill: GOP blocks election security bills after Mueller testimony
By Jordain Carney
Democrats tried to get consent to pass two bills that would require campaigns to alert the FBI and Federal Election Commission about foreign offers of assistance, as well as a bill to let the Senate Sergeant at Arms offer voluntary cyber assistance for personal devices and accounts of senators and staff.
But Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) blocked each of the bills. She didn’t give reason for her objections, or say if she was objecting on behalf of herself or the Senate GOP caucus…
Democrats cited Mueller as they tried to get consent on Wednesday evening to pass their bills.
“Mr. Mueller’s testimony should serve as a warning to every member of this body about what could happen in 2020, literally in our next elections,” said Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee…
Warner tried to get consent to pass the Foreign Influence Reporting in Elections Act by unanimous consent. Under Warner’s bill, campaign officials would have to report contacts with foreign nationals who are trying to make campaign donations or coordinate with the campaign to the Federal Election Commission, which would in turn notify the FBI…
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) tried to get consent to pass similar legislation that would require candidates, campaign officials and their family members to notify the FBI of assistance offers.
“It differs in some technical aspects [from the Warner bill] … but it is the same idea because it codifies into law what is already a moral duty, a patriotic duty and basic common sense,” Blumenthal said.
DOJ
ABC News: Former US House candidate sentenced for campaign violations
By Associated Press
The Justice Department says a former congressional candidate in Rhode Island has been sentenced to three years in prison for fraud and campaign finance violations.
Thirty-year-old Harold Taub, of Cranston, was also sentenced Wednesday to three years of supervised release after his prison term. And he was ordered to pay more than $1.1 million in restitution.
Authorities say Taub pleaded guilty to soliciting donations in 2016 and 2018 to organizations he cast as political committees to help Republican candidates. The latter was purportedly to support candidates in Ohio.
The Justice Department says he never registered the organizations with or made reports to the Federal Election Commission.
Online Speech Platforms
New York Times: Ad Tool Facebook Built to Fight Disinformation Doesn’t Work as Advertised
By Matthew Rosenberg
While ordinary users can look up individual ads without a problem, access to the library’s data is so plagued by bugs and technical constraints that it is effectively useless as a way to comprehensively track political advertising, according to independent researchers and two previously unreported studies on the archive’s reliability, one by the French government and the other by researchers at Mozilla, the maker of the Firefox web browser…
United States officials are already grappling with Russian attempts to interfere in the 2020 presidential race, and are powerless to stop American tricksters from joining the fray, because they are protected by the First Amendment…
Google’s archive appears to be functioning better than Facebook’s, the Mozilla researchers and French officials found. But critics say it is missing a crucial component: It does not include what are known as issue ads … Google has said that it is looking at ways to include issue ads in the archive.
Twitter, which accounts for a tiny percentage of political advertising, has set up its own Ad Transparency Center. But the French researchers found that the initiative did not offer a comprehensive accounting of political ads on the platform. Twitter said that only a small percentage of video ads were missing, and that they would soon be incorporated into the library…
Facebook’s critics acknowledged that the company was doing more than its competitors to open up advertising to independent scrutiny. Many also noted that paid advertising represented only a small portion of disinformation on social media.
Senator Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat who has been pushing the Honest Ads Act, which would require tech companies to maintain online libraries of political advertising, said he appreciated Facebook’s efforts.
But “given the resources that Facebook has available, I would like to see more,” Mr. Warner said in response to a question from The Times.
Morning Consult: 3 in 5 GOP Voters Believe There’s Social Media Bias Against Conservatives
By Sam Sabin
Sixty percent of Republican voters agreed with the idea that social media companies practice conservative bias and prevent the spread of conservative content, compared to 16 percent of self-identified Democrats and independents, according to a new Morning Consult/Politico survey conducted July 19-21 among 1,992 registered voters. Overall, 30 percent of voters said social media companies are biased against conservative ideas on their platforms, compared to 21 percent who said there was no partisan bias at all and 6 percent who said there is bias against liberals.
Twenty-six percent of independents said there is bias against conservatives on social media, while 22 percent said there’s no political bias at all. Democrats were more likely to say there’s no political bias (32 percent) than that there’s bias against liberals (9 percent) on social media platforms…
Sixty-one percent of Republican voters, and 42 percent of all registered voters, said they want the president’s administration to make tackling alleged political biases in social media companies’ content moderation policies an important or top priority.
But despite the president’s several claims of such bias on platforms, Republican voters are still more likely to push for self-regulation of the issue, with 43 percent saying that the companies that host the content are responsible for crafting and implementing policies on how political content is shared, compared to 9 percent who put the onus on the president and his administration and 15 percent who said it was the responsibility of congressional lawmakers. Among all voters, 39 percent also said it’s the responsibility of the companies hosting the content to regulate how they handle political content.
Fundraising
Mercury News: Foreign government lobbyists are donating to Democrats, and some candidates are keeping the cash
By Casey Tolan
The top contenders in the race – former Vice President Joe Biden, Sens. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Kamala Harris, and South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg – have all vowed to reject donations from registered federal lobbyists, including those who work for foreign governments. They’ve put their money where their mouth is, a Bay Area News Group analysis found, refunding over $15,000 during the first six months of the year.
But other lower-tier candidates who are more strapped for funds haven’t made that commitment. Govs. Steve Bullock of Montana, John Hickenlooper of Colorado, and Jay Inslee of Washington, as well as former Maryland Rep. John Delaney, have all received foreign lobbyist donations and appear set on keeping them…
Bullock, who’s painted himself as a crusader against the influence of big money in politics, got more than $4,000 in donations from foreign lobbyists since he launched his White House bid in May…
In an interview with Politico last week, Bullock argued that it was easier for frontrunners rolling in campaign cash to “be pure” when it comes to rejecting lobbyist money…
Over the last six months, Buttigieg refunded donations from at least three foreign agents. In addition, he received $2,800 from John Garziglia, the operator of a Virginia radio station who’s leased his company’s airwaves to the Russian government-run radio channel Sputnik, which the U.S. intelligence community has called a propaganda outlet. Garziglia has argued that he shouldn’t be required to register as a foreign agent, but the Department of Justice required him to do so, ruling that he qualifies as a “publicity agent” and “information-service employee” for the agency.
“This one slipped through the cracks in our internal review of thousands of names, and we have refunded the money,” said Chris Meagher, a Buttigieg spokesman.
Real Clear Politics: Top GOP Senate Campaigns Aren’t Using WinRed
By Susan Crabtree
One week after national Republican Party leaders used strong-arm tactics, threats and legal action to try to force all GOP campaigns onto their preferred online fundraising platform, three of the party’s top Senate incumbent campaigns are still using rival companies…
National Republican officials are engaged in an aggressive campaign to convince all Republicans that WinRed is the key to the party’s very survival when it comes to competing with Democrats’ small-dollar fundraising advantage…
The Give.GOP fundraising portal re-launched as Right.us this week amid a fierce backlash against Republican leaders’ efforts to consolidate behind WinRed…
Last week, top party officials laid down the law and told candidates and committees that they would not have the RNC’s financial or other support if they did not use WinRed, labeling as a “scheme” rivals’ “misuse” the party’s logos.
After the officials sent cease-and-desist letters, Give.GOP — now Right.us — removed the logos but defended its product…
One nationally known fundraiser argued that party leaders didn’t have to make .GOP a publicly useable domain suffix, but they chose to do so a few years ago and now there’s a chilling effect after the hammer dropped on Give.GOP. State parties and other conservative organizations have spent years and thousands of dollars developing their websites and email lists, and now have to worry that national Republicans can shut their operations down…
Moreover, other Republican sources argue, the WinRed website isn’t working properly. Even though the Trump campaign is using it as the main donation page on its website, it’s continuing to send out other fundraising solicitations utilizing platforms such as Lansing’s company, Revv, but not WinRed. The National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee and National Republican Congressional Committee also appear to be using other platforms for at least some of their solicitations.
The States
amNewYork: Public campaign financing, in the hands of 9 people
By Mark Chiusano
One of the quiet bombshell parts of the state budget agreed to this spring was a Public Campaign Financing Commission…
Yet it wasn’t until the beginning of July that the nine members of the commission were named.
And in the weeks since then, they haven’t met and have had limited internal communication. They’re still getting their government emails set up, according to commission members.
The clock is ticking, because the legislation that created the commission says it has to wrap up its work by Dec. 1. Barring any legislative changes, that work would have the full force of law before Christmas.
Only this week did some hints of a schedule for the commission’s work come out, when commission member and state Democratic Party chair Jay Jacobs told amExpress that he has asked other members for blackout dates they won’t be available. A possible four hearings around the state would “likely” start in mid to late September, he said.
That would be an opportunity for people to show up and talk about how they’d like to see state elections improve. The commission also will take written presentations.
The commission is getting lobbied with emails, according to two members, including pro-public financing material from organized campaigners…
As for the main substance of the commission’s work, Jacobs says, “I think we have a model in what the city of New York does,” referencing NYC’s small-dollar-match system for city elections as a starting point.
That would likely be music to the ears of advocates who like NYC’s substantial match and reasonable thresholds for candidates to get into the program.
But the devil is in the details, as was true when a bizarre public campaign financing pilot program for just the state comptroller’s office went nowhere in 2014, when candidates either didn’t meet the strict requirements or didn’t opt in.
