A watchdog group is asking the Federal Election Commission to review whether Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign legally obtained a massive email list from a political action committee associated with the candidate.
The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust pressed the FEC Monday on how the Clinton campaign was able to “swap” unknown items for a collection of nearly 4 million supporters’ email addresses that had been compiled by the Ready for Hillary super PAC.
“Federal law explicitly prohibits a candidate from coordinating with and accepting donations, including an in-kind donation of a mailing list, from a super PAC,” wrote Matthew Whitaker, FACT’s executive director, in a letter Monday supplementing a complaint filed in April.
The original FEC complaint alleged Clinton had used Ready for Hillary to vacuum up supporter information and contributions in a manner befitting a full-fledge campaign long before announcing her candidacy.
Whitaker cited a Saturday report from Politico that suggested the Clinton campaign had “gained entry to the independent super PAC’s list through a swap with another independent group,” although Politico did not name the third group involved in the transfer.
A spokesman for the Clinton campaign declined to comment on the swap.
Larry Noble, senior counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, said the debate over whether the transaction was legal boils down to the “fair market value” of Ready for Hillary’s email list.
“It would be considered an illegal in-kind contribution to the campaign if the campaign did not pay, in monetary or list-swap terms, what the fair market value is for the list that it’s getting,” Noble said.
The FEC would be the ultimate arbiter of the fair market value if a question was raised, he noted.
“I think we’re going to run into an issue here because, as far as I know, the campaign hasn’t identified the groups involved and until we know more about that, there are going to be a lot of serious questions raised,” Noble said. “The concern is that the Clinton campaign is getting a list of tremendous value and paying little or nothing for it.”
Whitaker said his group had long suspected Ready for Hillary was preparing to transfer the email list to Clinton’s campaign.
“If the campaign swapped lists with the super PAC, what value would a list have to a closing super PAC?” Whitaker said. “Right now, we do not know who the Clinton campaign swapped lists with or how, if not the super PAC, that group got the lists.”
Ready for Hillary reportedly began to shutter its operations in April.
The super PAC survived an FEC review earlier this year after an anti-Clinton group complained about Ready for Hillary’s decision to rent an email list from the candidate-in-waiting’s prior Senate race.
The commission had an “insufficient number of votes” to find the super PAC in violation of a number of campaign laws and dismissed outright several other allegations, including that Ready for Hillary had sent an email to supporters in January 2014 that was authorized by Clinton herself.
