Senate/House inquiry led by Sheldon Whitehouse/Jamie Raskin into NRA's use of shell cos to help DT
Last edited Thu Feb 7, 2019, 05:03 PM - Edit history (8)
In addition to the campaign of Donald Trump, the 6 Senatorial candidates who seem to have illegally coordinated with the NRA include: In 2014, Thom Tillis, in North Carolina; Cory Gardner, in Colorado; and Tom Cotton, in Arkansas. In 2016, Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson. In 2018, Josh Hawley in Missouri, and Matt Rosendale in Montana.
All of the 6 except for Matt Rosendale won election to the Senate. (Sen. Jon Tester beat Rosendale in Montana.)
https://www.thetrace.org/2019/02/nra-congressional-inquiry-illegal-coordination/
A joint congressional inquiry is demanding that National Rifle Association executive vice president Wayne LaPierre hand over internal documents showing whether the NRA made “illegal, excessive, and unreported in-kind donations” to the campaigns of Donald Trump and several GOP Senate candidates.
The probe, led by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, and Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, is based on a series of investigative reports published by The Trace laying out evidence that the NRA and its vendors used apparent shell companies to evade rules prohibiting coordination between outside groups and the campaigns they support.
“The evidence shows the NRA is moving money through a complex web of shell organizations to avoid campaign finance rules and boost candidates willing to carry their water,” Whitehouse told The Trace. “And if the NRA can weave such a web, so can Vladimir Putin and others trying to undermine our democracy. We need the truth about this scheme or else special interests like the gun lobby or foreign interests like Russia can flaunt the law and erode the integrity of our elections.”
Whitehouse and Raskin are demanding documents from LaPierre and five related vendors that have either worked for the NRA or for candidates it supported: OnMessage; Red Eagle Media; Starboard Strategic Inc.; American Media & Advocacy Group; and National Media Research, Planning, and Placement.
https://www.thetrace.org/rounds/nra-scheme-to-evade-campaign-finance-law/
A new complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission accuses the National Rifle Association and GOP Missouri Senate candidate Josh Hawley of engaging in “an elaborate scheme designed to evade detection” of campaign finance violations.
The complaint from the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan watchdog, and Giffords, a gun-violence prevention group, raises questions about whether Republican campaign contractors and vendors are facilitating hidden coordination between campaigns and the outside groups that support them. The complaint is the third in four months to accuse the NRA of appearing to use a shell company to circumvent laws against such coordination.
SNIP
Corporate records show that OnMessage and Starboard share the same offices and leadership. The Trace has documented six Senate races in which a Republican candidate hired OnMessage while, in the same cycle, the NRA paid Starboard for ads in support of the same candidate. In 2014, those candidates included Thom Tillis, in North Carolina; Cory Gardner, in Colorado; and Tom Cotton, in Arkansas. Two years later, the arrangement occurred in Wisconsin, with Senator Ron Johnson. And now it is playing out again, this time in Missouri, with Hawley, and Montana, with Matt Rosendale.
https://www.thetrace.org/2019/01/nra-coordinated-ad-efforts-with-gop-senate-campaigns/
The National Rifle Association appears to have illegally coordinated its political advertising with Republican candidates in at least three recent high-profile Senate races, according to Federal Communications Commission records. In Senate races in Missouri and Montana in 2018, and North Carolina in 2016, the gun group’s advertising blitzes on behalf of GOP candidates Josh Hawley, Matt Rosendale, and Richard Burr were authorized by the very same media consultancy that the candidates themselves used — an apparent violation of laws designed to prevent independent groups from synchronizing their efforts with political campaigns.
In December, The Trace and Mother Jones reported on a similar pattern of coordination between the NRA and Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. In that case, Trump and the NRA hired affiliates of the same company — National Media Research, Planning and Placement — to direct their ad spending. Employees of that firm, operating under different corporate identities, placed ads for both Trump and the NRA on television stations across the country, with the apparent goal of reinforcing each other’s message.
Representatives of National Media, operating under the name Red Eagle Media, also bought ads on behalf of the NRA in support of some of the group’s preferred Senate candidates, and simultaneously bought ads for those Senate candidates while acting as a supposedly separate entity called American Media & Advocacy Group (AMAG). In at least 10 instances across the Missouri, Montana, and North Carolina races, FCC records show that ad purchases for both the NRA and the Senate campaigns were authorized by National Media’s chief financial officer, Jon Ferrell.
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