Dangers of Disclosure
NBC News: Hack of Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee ‘Similar’ to DNC Breach
Josh Meyer, Alex Moe, and Tracy Connor
Another Democratic Party group confirmed Friday it has been hacked and said the breach was “similar” to a cyber strike on the Democratic National Committee, which has been blamed on the Russians.
A senior U.S. official told NBC News that the FBI is investigating the intrusion on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s computer system but that agents have not yet found a link to the earlier DNC hack.
The Kremlin has denied it is behind either breach — and a top official responded to the allegations on Friday by denouncing a “poisonous anti-Russian” narrative coming out of Washington.
Reuters: FBI probes hacking of Democratic congressional group – sources
Joseph Menn, Dustin Volz, and Mark Hosenball
The newly disclosed breach at the DCCC may have been intended to gather information about donors, rather than to steal money, the sources said on Thursday.
It was not clear what data was exposed, although donors typically submit a variety of personal information including names, email addresses and credit card details when making a contribution. It was also unclear if stolen information was used to hack into other systems.
Politico: Hacker threat extends beyond parties
Cory Bennett and Bryan Bender
No one regulator is responsible for requiring campaigns, political operations and state and local agencies to protect the sanctity of the voter rolls, voters’ personal data, donors’ financial information or even the election outcomes themselves. And as the Democrats saw in Philadelphia this past week, the result can be chaos.
The most extreme danger, of course, is that cyber intruders could hack the voting machinery to pick winners and losers. But even less-ambitious exploits could sway the results in a close election — anything from tampering with parties’ volunteer schedules and get-out-the-vote operations to deleting the registrations of frequent voters or knocking registration databases offline. Cyber scams aimed at campaign donors’ financial data, such as a just-disclosed hack aimed at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, could deter future contributors by making them fear identity theft.
Buzzfeed: The DNC Leak Shows How Vulnerable This Election Is To Hacking
Hamza Shaban
Political parties, campaigns, and election offices don’t have a comprehensive body that oversees their cybersecurity. The Federal Election Commission, which enforces campaign finance laws, doesn’t set cybersecurity standards. In a statement, an FEC spokesperson told BuzzFeed News, “The Commission does not have the regulatory authority to investigate matters related to the unauthorized access of a political committee’s emails, servers and databases.”
So while the federal government’s role in overseeing the cybersecurity practices of political organizations and voting systems remains uncertain, the vulnerability of the US election system to hacking is very real.
“One thing we all need to accept is there’s a greater assumption that you will get hacked,” Dimitri Sirota, CEO of BigID, a cybersecurity firm, told BuzzFeed News. “It’s no longer a question of if; it’s a question of when and how.”
Independent Groups
Wall Street Journal: Hedge-Fund Money: $48.5 Million for Hillary Clinton, $19,000 for Donald Trump
John Carney and Anupreeta Das
“There are two reasons I’ve given more than ever before,” said J.B. Pritzker, managing partner of private investment firm Pritzker Group, who has donated $7.9 million to Clinton-friendly groups and helped raised funds for her campaign. “First, I think she ought to be president. Second, I want to defeat Donald Trump. I believe that he would be terrible for the country.”
Some Wall Street executives have privately expressed concerns about Mr. Trump on areas from the New York real-estate developer’s business record to his positions on trade and foreign policy. They say he strikes them as unpredictable and untested.
Daily Beast: Inside the Snoop Dogg Super PAC Party at DNC 2016: ‘F*** Donald Trump,’ ‘Hillary, You’re My Favorite Girl’
Asawin Suebsaeng
The super PAC-sponsored rap concert was billed as an event for Democratic donors. However, the audience was a reliable mix of millennial Democratic staffers, progressive activists, liberal D.C. insiders and politicos (including Rep. Steve Cohen, lobbyist Heather Podesta, and Hillary hit-man David Brock), and journalists who were busy drinking away the stress of the back-to-back Republican and Democratic conventions.
Effects of Campaign Spending
Bloomberg: Now, Get Ready for an Unpredictable General Election
Albert R. Hunt
The huge Clinton money advantage and the big media buys by her campaign and Super-PAC to attack Trump don’t seem to have resonated with voters.
“Whatever changes we see” in the next month, Newhouse says, “will likely be as a result of unforced errors or external events rather than media marketing campaigning.”
Free Speech
Media Research Center: ‘The Intimidation Game’: The Story Behind the Left’s Attacks on the First Amendment
Kimberley Strassel
This week’s Philadelphia convention is playing host to a string of Democratic speakers promising to alter the First Amendment, to give government more control over who can engage in politics. “The Intimidation Game,” tells the story behind those calls.
The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision freed up millions of Americans to again speak openly in elections. No longer able to bar their opponents from engaging in politics, and unable to win the public debate, the left adopted a new strategy: to intimidate and threaten their political opponents out of the arena. “The Intimidation Game” is the exposé of these tactics. It’s the first real telling of how Democrats used the IRS to shut down Tea Party groups and harass conservative donors. It’s the story of how liberal prosecutors persecute political opponents with investigations. It chronicles the rise of activist groups who mount blackmail and boycott campaigns against free-market groups. And it is a narrative of the average Americans who have also found themselves on target lists, forced to defend their Constitutional rights to take part in democracy.
FEC
Washington Examiner: Harry Reid admits to violating election law, but FEC won’t prosecute
Paul Bedard
The agency voted 4-0 against pursuing action after FEC lawyers wrote a four-page memo that said Reid’s fundraising committee admitted to failing to comply with an election law requirement, but that it wasn’t worth the time or money to prosecute.
At issue was a fundraising memo Reid’s team did for 2014 Nevada lieutenant gubernatorial candidate Lucy Flores. She lost in a landslide.
In the fundraising email, Reid did not include the required disclaimer that only federally compliant donations are allowed.
“The Reid Committee admits that the email, which was meant to facilitate low dollar contributions, did not inform recipients that Reid was soliciting only federally compliant funds,” said the FEC memo.
Influence
Yahoo Finance: Here’s what rich people get when they donate millions to politicians
Rick Newman
“It’s about the access,” filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi, whose new documentary, “Meet the Donors,” debuts on HBO on Aug. 1, tells Yahoo Finance in the video above. “Most people on the street can’t just sit down with Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. But the megadonors can because they write the big checks.”
Pelosi, the daughter of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the former House Speaker, interviewed more than a dozen megadonors on camera, including Democratic patrons Tom Steyer, J.B. Pritzker and John Catsimatidis and Republican backers Brad Freeman, Fred Eshelman and T. Boone Pickens. Virtually all of them denied expecting any kind of quid pro quo, such as legislative or regulatory favors that might benefit their business interests. Instead, most said they were backing candidates they thought would make America a better place.
Washington Post: In ‘Meet the Donors,’ Alexandra Pelosi plays Captain Obvious on money and politics
Hank Stuever
“All you have to do is write a big check and you, too, can be part of the endless circuit of mystery appetizers,” says Pelosi, who, yes, is the youngest child of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
Few take her up on her offer, but they include media biggie Haim Saban, a reliable Clinton megadonor; energy tycoon T. Boone Pickens; investor J.B. Pritzker of the Chicago Pritzkers; and Manhattan supermarket mogul John Catsimatidis, who has given millions to Republicans and Democrats and has a vanity wall of photographs with presidents and lawmakers a mile long.
The States
Fox News: Federal probe into campaign funds latest headache for Dem Gov. Malloy
The Hartford Courant first reported that a federal grand jury is being convened to investigate whether the Connecticut Democratic Party broke campaign finance law by illegally using contributions from state contractors to benefit Malloy’s campaign. It’s the latest chapter in a controversy that began when Republicans filed a complaint arguing Democrats wrongly funded Malloy mailings with $250,000 from an account that’s allowed under federal law to take state contractor money.
Because Malloy chose to accept public financing through the state’s clean elections law, he was not permitted to receive additional donations.
New York Daily News: Mayor de Blasio finds loophole to spend campaign money on lawyers as he faces criminal probe into fund-raising methods
Greg B. Smith
He’s taking advantage of the fact that while city law mandates donations for primary and general elections can only be used for lawyers handling non-criminal matters related to a campaign, funds raised for run-off elections face no such restriction.
That’s because run-offs fall under state law, not city law, and the state allows campaign funds to pay for criminal defense lawyers. Convicted Albany leaders Sheldon Silver and Dean Skelos both took advantage of that this year.
