During last year’s election cycle, the Obama administration criticized conservative 501(c)(4) political action committees. President Obama himself called the existence of such groups a “threat to our democracy.” The Democratic National Committee ran an ad speculating that Republicans taking donations from these PACs, since the groups have no legal obligation to disclose their donors, were taking “secret foreign money.”

In October of last year, then-White House spokesman Bill Burton said of such groups, “The people who want to keep these donations secret are those with something to hide.”