Remember the campaign finance documents found in a Colorado meth house?
In a sharply worded ruling, a federal judge in Montana said Tuesday that documents found inside a Colorado meth house pointing to possible election law violations will not be returned to the couple claiming the papers were stolen from one of their cars.
Instead, the thousands of pages will remain where they are — with a federal grand jury in Montana, investigating the dark money group American Tradition Partnership, once known as Western Tradition Partnership, or WTP.
The documents, detailed last fall in a FRONTLINE documentary and ProPublica coverage, point to possible illegal coordination between candidates and WTP, which since 2008 has worked to replace moderate Republicans with more conservative candidates in both Montana and Colorado. The documents, including a folder labeled “Montana $ Bomb,” provided the first real glimpse inside a dark money group. Such so-called social welfare nonprofits, which have poured more than $350 million into federal election ads in recent years, don’t have to disclose their donors.
Although WTP operated at the state level, it won national attention for its fight against campaign-finance restrictions. It sued successfully to overturn Montana’s ban on corporate spending in elections, which meant the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision applied to all states. WTP also fought with state regulators for more than two years over their ruling that the group was a political committee and should have to report its donors.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/government-elections-politics/big-sky-big-money/remember-those-campaign-finance-documents-we-found-in-a-meth-house/
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