Faced with President Trump’s booming economy and the lowest unemployment rate in history for African-Americans and Hispanics, Democrats are struggling to find a rallying cry ahead of the November midterms. Armed with little more than #HateTrump rhetoric, they’ve fallen back on an age-old hobbyhorse: “Campaign finance reform.”
In House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s words, “Republicans have turned the already swampy GOP Congress into a cesspool of self-enrichment, secret money and special interests.” Of course, she makes no mention of the millions of dollars in corporate money she’s collected herself over the years.
Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-Ill., repeated Pelosi’s talking points, claiming American voters are “tired of Washington Republicans like President Trump … turning America into a nation that appears to be of the rich, by the powerful, and for the lobbyists.” Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., meanwhile, urged Democrats to “make a difference” by restricting political spending and, by extension, free speech and free association.
The hypocrisy is beyond belief, even by the Left’s standards. This is the same Democratic Party that refused to return the disgraced Kevin Spacey’s campaign donations, which amounts to tens of thousands of dollars. And don’t forget the equally disgraced Harvey Weinstein, many of whose donations to Democrats remain unreturned, even in the face of media pressure.
Democratic two-facedness suffuses Hollywood. The same party’s 2016 presidential nominee welcomed for her foundation more than $10 million in funding from the kingdom of Saudi Arabia — notorious for its treatment of women and sexual minorities. This is in addition to millions of dollars from a corrupt Ukrainian despot and shady Lebanese-Nigerian real estate developers.
And then there’s Hillary Clinton’s $84 million campaign finance scandal, which could potentially ensnare the entire Democratic political establishment. Clinton’s campaign cash machine stands accused of soliciting six-figure donations from Democratic mega-donors — including fashion icon Calvin Klein and “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane — and laundering them through state parties en route to the Democratic National Committee and ultimately to the Clinton campaign. This could become the single largest campaign finance scandal in U.S. history.
Last year, the Committee to Defend the President intricately documented the Clinton machine — through the Democrats’ own financial reports — “us[ing] state chapters as straw men to circumvent campaign donation limits and launder the money back to her campaign.”
For perspective, conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza was prosecuted and convicted in 2012 for giving his associates money that they then contributed to a candidate of his preference — in other words, straw man contributions. D’Souza was sentenced to eight months in a community confinement center and five years of probation. Only $20,000 was involved in his case. The Clinton scandal weighs in at $84 million — more than 4,000 times larger!
Yet Democrats like Pelosi remain mum on their presidential nominee’s blatant disregard for campaign finance laws. If our campaign finance rules are indeed “broken,” then Clinton did her part in breaking them. And not a single elected Democrat has publicly admitted it.
Until they start practicing what they preach, the campaign finance “reformers” are just full of hot air.
Dan Backer has served as counsel to more than 100 campaigns, candidates, PACs, and political organizations, including the Committee to Defend the President. He is the founding attorney of Political Law, a campaign finance and political law firm in Alexandria, Va.
