Sanders Campaign Got a Love Letter From FEC

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:http://www.politicususa.com/2016/02/01/bernie-sanders-super-pac-money-democratic-rivals.html

Thoughts?

Spin?

Sanders really can't do anything about Rove's PACs. Maybe he benefits from them, but you really can't hold him responsible for them. The Nurses PAC is different from those. According to this article:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/02/11/sanderss-claim-that-he-does-not-have-a-super-pac/

"The group filed with the Federal Election Commission as a super PAC in September 2010. Yet it rejects the label, distinguishing itself from allied super PACs."

Clearly, Sanders didn't set up a super pac in 2010 and that is obviously an independent organization not linked to his campaign. But, because it loudly declares its support for Sanders, it is a bit of a special case. Ironically, the Post's Fact Checker (the link above) concludes this:

"Sanders does not have a sanctioned super PAC that acts as an extension of his campaign and is affiliated with wealthy donor networks or corporate industries, in the way that other presidential candidates do."

But, then gave his claim that he doesn't have a super PAC one Pinocchio. It is really strange to that the Fact Checker's conclusion matched Sander's claim, but then he was given a Pinocchio anyway. That makes no sense. I don't really know what Sanders is supposed to do about the Nurses' PAC. If he told them to stop doing what they are doing, wouldn't that be "coordinating" which is prohibited?

Come on. You know the issue is that he says repeatedly that he won't accept the help of a super PAC while accepting the help of a super PAC. The donors to the super PAC are not made public. The claim that it's mostly from nurses' dues seems ludicrous, given that it's a small union and dues must obviously cover many more expenses than just the super PAC.

Yep.

This is not accurate. All donors to FEC registered SuperPACs must be reported by law under the same rules that govern traditional PACs, namely itemizing any contributions that aggregate over $200 and any individual contributions over $50. Anyone can take a look at the Nurses SuperPAC's 3x report on the FEC website and see who the donors are.

You might be thinking of 501c4 organizations, like Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS which claims not to engage in any political activity and therefore has not registered as a political committee. Donors to 501c4s are not required to be publicly disclosed.

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am not sure who I am voting for - most likely Clinton- but I really like Sanders and trust that he would not do anything illegal or unethical. He from all accounts is a good and ethical man.

It's not him, nor is it his campaign. It's more likely people using different email addresses and slight variations on their names to contribute multiple times in excess amounts. Could be Republicans, for all we know.

If you look at the report, it is mostly trivial amounts. The first excessive contribution is over by $50. The second by $38.

Except for the $23 million.

The $23 million consists of contributions that are reported as totals given by an individual rather than as an itemized list of contributions from those individuals. It is nothing more than a reporting issue.

It's a criticial reporting issue. The means by which the FEC and presumably the candidate makes sure that people are giving more than they are permitted under law. And someone who makes campaign finance reform the linchpin of their campaign should have this down.

The total of contributions made by each individual was reported. Excess donations would be revealed by that number. I agree that it should have been done correctly and, if for some reason Sanders is unable to provide the itemized data or the itemized contributions don't add up to the reported totals, those are bigger problems. But, at this stage there is no reason to suspect this is anything more than a mistake in how the data was formatted for the report.

I haven't reviewed the report, but if a contributor gave less than $200 in the aggregate, the campaign can just report that amount as "unitemized." So if he has $23M in unitemized contributions, that might be totally legitimate if he has $23M in contributors who have given less than $200. I would be surprised if the campaign voluntarily reported every single individual contribution, even those that did not aggregate to $200. It's possible they did though (again, I haven't looked at the report myself).

Anyway, there are political reporting firms that handle this stuff. I would be surprised if a major presidential campaign screwed this up-- it's not like Sanders is a nobody. He's a U.S. Senator! If it's some poor sclubb sitting in a room doing the reports then I wouldn't be surprised that there are errors, but then why is Sanders cutting corners on reporting when he's the one talking about campaign finance reform!

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:http://www.politicususa.com/2016/02/01/bernie-sanders-super-pac-money-democratic-rivals.html

Thoughts?

Spin?

Sanders really can't do anything about Rove's PACs. Maybe he benefits from them, but you really can't hold him responsible for them. The Nurses PAC is different from those. According to this article:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/02/11/sanderss-claim-that-he-does-not-have-a-super-pac/

"The group filed with the Federal Election Commission as a super PAC in September 2010. Yet it rejects the label, distinguishing itself from allied super PACs."

Clearly, Sanders didn't set up a super pac in 2010 and that is obviously an independent organization not linked to his campaign. But, because it loudly declares its support for Sanders, it is a bit of a special case. Ironically, the Post's Fact Checker (the link above) concludes this:

"Sanders does not have a sanctioned super PAC that acts as an extension of his campaign and is affiliated with wealthy donor networks or corporate industries, in the way that other presidential candidates do."

But, then gave his claim that he doesn't have a super PAC one Pinocchio. It is really strange to that the Fact Checker's conclusion matched Sander's claim, but then he was given a Pinocchio anyway. That makes no sense. I don't really know what Sanders is supposed to do about the Nurses' PAC. If he told them to stop doing what they are doing, wouldn't that be "coordinating" which is prohibited?

Yes, it would be prohibited by campaign finance law for Bernie Sanders to pick up the phone and call Rosanne DeMoro and ask her to stop. However, nothing would stop him from making a PUBLIC statement that asks them to stop their activities and disavow their actions on their behalf. He could easily put out a press release saying that while he loves nurses (who doesn't) he respectfully requests that they stop doing activities on his behalf because of his principled stance against SuperPACs.