Monday, October 31, 2016

17 Counts of Illegal Coordination Exposed: Pro-Clinton Super PAC Implicated!

The Citizens Audit ^ | Oct 24, 2016 | Andrew Kerr 

Facts are facts. Look no further than the public record to uncover massive violations of Campaign Finance law by the Clinton Campaign and her Super PACs.
Be wary of any pro-Clinton comments you find on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, and elsewhere on the internet. The truth is that many of those comments are not authentic – the people behind those comments are being paid to make those posts.
The organization funding those comments is Correct the Record, a pro-Hillary Clinton Super PAC that has spent millions of dollars funding a digital task force to “push-back” and “correct” Hillary Clinton’s record on social media.
What’s worse is that, even though Correct the Record is a Super PAC, they openly coordinate with Hilary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
The Super PAC claims it can legally coordinate with Clinton due to loopholes in our Campaign Finance laws.
The only problem is that the loopholes they’re claiming are completely invalid.  Correct the Record has provided well over $6 million worth of illegal in-kind contributions to the Clinton Campaign.
For those who don’t know what an in-kind contribution is, we’ve explained the concept in full here.  Here’s a summary:
An in-kind contribution is when a Super PAC does something at the behest of a Political Candidate.
  • If a Political Candidate asks a Super PAC to complete a task,
  • And the Super PAC spends money accomplishing that task,
  • The money spent accomplishing that task is considered an in-kind contribution to the Political Candidate.
Super PACs are prohibited from providing in-kind contributions to Political Candidates.  To do so would constitute illegal coordination.
Funding a digital task force to “correct” dissenting voices is just a small portion of Correct the Record’s activities.
Campaign Legal Center recently submitted an exhaustive 52-page FEC complaint detailing the litany of publicly reported illegal in-kind contributions provided by the Super PAC.  All of the examples listed below were funded and executed by Correct the Record at the request or suggestion of the Clinton Campaign:
  1. Provided hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund “talking-point tutorials and media-training classes” for Clinton surrogates.
  2. Contracted with an expert “who specializes in coaching people for television interviews” to lead the on-camera media training.
  3. Paid“trackers” to “discreetly record the public events” of Clinton’s Democratic rivals, Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley.
  4. Paid staff to conduct “opposition research” and circulate research memos to reporters portraying Clinton’s primary opponent, Bernie Sanders, as “extreme”.
  5. Paid staff to produce and circulate memos to reporters “detailing Republicans’ stance on prescription drugs” on the same day Clinton announced her health care policy.
  6. Produced videos to portray Clinton in a positive light for the “Let’s Talk Hillary” project, in addition to costs associated with pitching the video interviews to reporters, and the costs to launch a website to promote the project.
  7. Staffed a “30-person war room” to defend Clinton during hearings before the House Select Committee on Benghazi, to blast reporters with “46 research-fueled press releases, fact-checks, reports, videos, and other multimedia releases during the hearing,” and to distribute a 140-page “opposition research book to a variety of media outlets that impugns the character of Republicans on the committee”.
  8. Commissioned a private polling firm to conduct polls that showed Clinton winning a Democratic Debate in December.
  9. Paid staff to contact reporters “by email and phone to offer ‘off the record’ story pitches”.
  10. Paid staff to produce and circulate “a campaign ad” and other materials to state reporters ahead of the Democratic caucus in Nevada.
  11. $1 million in expenditures to fund “Barrier Breakers 2016”, a “digital task force” to “engage in online messaging for Secretary Clinton”.
  12. Produced “a 40-minute video” highlighting Trump’s “struggles with the truth,” which was announced via a conference call with reporters.
  13. Produced “a weekly roundup highlighting Trump’s new lies, the false claims he has repeated, and the latest reports from The Washington Post and Politifactdebunking his statements”.
  14. Paid a consulting firm “to help oversee an aggressive surrogate booking program, connecting regional and national surrogates with radio and television news outlets across the country in support of Hillary Clinton”.
  15. Produced and distributed “an extensive prebuttal” memo to reporters in advance of a Trump speech, followed by “peppering reporters’ inboxes with emails at the rate of about one every four minutes during the time Trump was speaking”.
  16. Paid staff to “develop relationships with Republicans” and “sleuth out confidential information from the Trump campaign,” and to distribute that information to reporters.
  17. Paid for professional media production, travel expenses, and personnel time to create “a video testimonial series featuring women and men telling stories about those taken advantage of, offended by, or otherwise hurt by Donald Trump,” and to create a new website to house those videos.
Correct the Record has done all of this at the request or suggestion of the Clinton Campaign.  Over $6 Million worth of illegal in-kind contributions have influenced our public election process, without so much as a peep from the Media nor our Government.
Here’s the bottom line: facts are facts. The Wikileaks emails, the Project Veritas tapes, and the Public Record are all telling the same story – the Clinton Campaign is blatantly violating campaign finance law by illegally coordinating with her Super PACs. It’s practically undeniable at this point.
The validity of our Democracy is at risk when activities like this go ignored. How can anybody think it’s okay for a Super PAC to coordinate with a Political Campaign like this? When will enough be enough?
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