It’s called soliciting bribes. And really really damaging to have our government run in this kind of transactional impact.
Testing the boundaries?! No, he is blatantly violating corruption laws. He is asking for a quid pro quo, you do this for me and I’ll do that for you.
John Roberts, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the USA defined corruption as “a contribution to a particular candidate in exchange for his agreeing to do a particular act within his official duties.”
And the corporatocracy will ensure he “wins” the election with thunderous applause.
He can walk that back, precedent schmecedent
He’s not testing the boundaries of the law. He’s testing the level of enforcement.
Time and again he shows he’s willing to break the rules 10 times to the point where a judge starts threatening him with jail time, then he considers not doing it and whines about how he can’t do that instead.
Here’s what’s going to happen:
- Trump will come right out and say on camera that these are quid pro quo deals
- The media will say this will finally be the thing that gets him put in prison
- Trump will be acquitted.
He’s got to be charged with something in order to be acquitted. That won’t even happen.
And when it doesn’t the media will just say “I guess that’s a non-story after all” and let it go.
Larry Noble, a longtime campaign finance lawyer, said Trump was technically allowed to ask only for contributions of $3,300 or less for his campaign, according to federal laws. But he can appear at events for his super PAC where the price of admission is far higher — as long as he doesn’t ask for the money directly.
The Biden Victory Fund is a “PAC” but openly coordinates with the DNC and Biden’s campaign, it can take a million from each citizen every year.
The establishments problem with trump, isn’t the stuff he does, it’s that he says it openly and blatantly. I can’t believe anyone honestly thinks huge donations don’t factor into governece. It always has, it was just done with plausible deniability.
So be mad at trump, we should be.
But that doesn’t mean we have to be ok with everything that is done by someone with a D next to their name too. All those large donations come with strings.
If our standards are just that they should maintain plausible deniability, then that’s effectively the same standards as republicans, and we’ve all seen where that led the Republican party.
The BVF is a joint fundraising committee — all it does is make it easy for somebody to donate big amounts and have it distributed out to a pre-determined list of recipients, in this case, the Biden campaign, DNC, and the state Democratic parties. It stinks that big contributions like that are allowed, but it’s very different from saying “Give me a billion dollars and I’ll favor you”
all it does is make it easy for somebody to donate big amounts and have it distributed out to a pre-determined list of recipients, in this case, the Biden campaign, DNC, and the state Democratic parties
It’s a way for the wealthy to violate campaign finance laws…
Do you know what the BVF evolved from?
The Clinton victory fund. I’d assumed it was still common knowledge that it bankrupted state parties and only gave them a token amount at the very end of the cycle, everything else went to Clinton and the DNC to be spent on Clinton’s campaign…
Hell, it bankrupted the DNC…
And even before Hillary was the nominee, her campaign controlled the DNC, literally
Like, this was a huge story less than a decade ago…
Individuals who had maxed out their $2,700 contribution limit to the campaign could write an additional check for $353,400 to the Hillary Victory Fund—that figure represented $10,000 to each of the 32 states’ parties who were part of the Victory Fund agreement—$320,000—and $33,400 to the DNC. The money would be deposited in the states first, and transferred to the DNC shortly after that. Money in the battleground states usually stayed in that state, but all the other states funneled that money directly to the DNC, which quickly transferred the money to Brooklyn.
“Wait,” I said. “That victory fund was supposed to be for whoever was the nominee, and the state party races. You’re telling me that Hillary has been controlling it since before she got the nomination?”
Gary said the campaign had to do it or the party would collapse.
And
Right around the time of the convention, the leaked emails revealed Hillary’s campaign was grabbing money from the state parties for its own purposes, leaving the states with very little to support down-ballot races. A Politico story published on May 2, 2016, described the big fund-raising vehicle she had launched through the states the summer before, quoting a vow she had made to rebuild “the party from the ground up … when our state parties are strong, we win. That’s what will happen.”
Yet the states kept less than half of 1 percent of the $82 million they had amassed from the extravagant fund-raisers Hillary’s campaign was holding, just as Gary had described to me when he and I talked in August. When the Politico story described this arrangement as “essentially … money laundering” for the Clinton campaign, Hillary’s people were outraged at being accused of doing something shady. Bernie’s people were angry for their own reasons, saying this was part of a calculated strategy to throw the nomination to Hillary.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/02/clinton-brazile-hacks-2016-215774/
Did you forget?
As far as I can tell, the BVF is transferring money to the state parties exactly as promised.
As far as I can tell, the BVF is transferring money to the state parties exactly as promised.
Did you miss the part where they were lying to the DNC officers?
Why would you know?
The Saturday morning after the convention in July, I called Gary Gensler, the chief financial officer of Hillary’s campaign. He wasted no words. He told me the Democratic Party was broke and $2 million in debt.
“What?” I screamed. “I am an officer of the party and they’ve been telling us everything is fine and they were raising money with no problems.”
There was a shit ton of fraud, no one faced any real consequences…
And the same groups of people are running it again…
Why do you think it’s better now?
Like, I’m not sure how else to explain this…
If you ever wonder why people think you’re a shill who’s not here in good faith.
This is why.
Ok. But Trump is doing the thing in this article, and it’s worse than the other thing the Democrats are also doing.
Do you ever complain about say the NYT bothsidsing things that aren’t equivalent to muddy the waters and dull the impact of a progressive story?
dull the impact of a progressive story?
…
What exactly is your definition of progressive?
Because in the context of your comment, I have zero idea. Like, it sounds like you think progressive is “not trump”…
But surely that can’t be right.
Associated with the progressive wing of US politics. The one the NYT hates. Bernie, Warren, AOC, etc., not Hakeem “Progressive Caucus” Jeffries. I’m not saying this is a progressive story, I’m saying you must understand how bothsidsing a story isn’t really just saying “I agree, and once we’ve addressed this problem, we should also address this other lesser issue”. All Lives Matter isn’t trying to say “in addition to black lives, we should remember to pursue justice for everyone unjustly killed”.
This is a bad thing, and bothsidsing it isn’t really an additive effort to make it so we don’t just stop at the open and advertised corruption and instead has the effect of just normalizing the new advancement in corruption. It’s ok to just agree with libs when they’re making a correct but not complete point.
