NRA Illegally Used Shell Company to Coordinate With GOP, FEC Complaint Says

[DonViejo]

Source: Law & Crime



by Colin Kalmbacher | 12:33 pm, July 16th, 2018

The National Rifle Association (NRA) violated federal law by using a common vendor to illegally coordinate with four Republican Senate candidates, according to a complaint filed by a non-partisan public interest watchdog.

On Monday, the Campaign Legal Center (CLC) submitted a 25-page complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) alleging that that the NRA used a consulting firm to evade federal rules prohibiting coordination between congressional candidates and outside spending groups.

The complaint alleges that GOP consulting firm OnMessage created a shell corporation called Starboard–located at the same address and with essentially the same business model–in order to share and use strategic information between the NRA and the Senate candidacies of Tom Cotton, Cory Gardner,Thom Tillis and Ron Johnson during the 2014 and 2016 election cycles. According to the complaint:

Beginning in the 2014 election cycle, both the NRA-PVF and the NRA-ILA stopped contracting with OnMessage, and began contracting with Starboard for independent expenditures supporting senatorial candidates—Thom Tillis, Tom Cotton, and Cory Gardner—whose campaign committees were simultaneously paying OnMessage. In the 2016 cycle, both the NRA-PVF and the NRA-ILA paid Starboard for independent expenditures supporting Ron Johnson, whose authorized campaign committee was simultaneously paying OnMessage. In reports to the Commission, the NRA-ILA and NRA-PVF consistently listed Starboard’s address as that of OnMessage and the NRA-ILA and NRA-PVF are effectively Starboard’s only clients. Evidence shows that Starboard was functionally indistinguishable from OnMessage; in fact, OnMessage has repeatedly taken credit for advertisements that the NRA-PVF and NRA-ILA paid Starboard to produce (and has even won awards for such ads).

Read more: https://lawandcrime.com/administrative-law/nra-illegally-used-shell-company-to-coordinate-with-gop-in-violation-of-election-law-complaint-says/

[lark]

1. Criminals and traitors getting caught in their conspiracy against America.

[empedocles]

2. More to come against the NRA

[cstanleytech]

3. Criminal charges should be filed against everyone in the campaigns that were aware of it imo.

[AllaN01Bear]

4. nra should loose its tax exempt status .

[BumRushDaShow]

5. "Tom Cotton"

I hope this one is drummed out of office for this. I noticed I haven't heard him in the news recently.

[flamin lib]

6. The NRA is a terrorist organization colluding with foreign entities hostile to the United

States and should be prosecuted, fined and disbanded with officers of the board jailed.

[UpInArms]

14. This 👆🏼👆🏼👆🏼👆🏼

+1

[Initech]

15. +1000000000000000000000!!!!

Fuck the NRA!! Treasonous rat bastards!

[thbobby]

7. Wow! The manure is hitting the fan today!

But, I have had that thought almost weekly since trump started his presidential run. We all know the NRA is dirty. We all know trump is a traitor and a sociopath. We all know the gop is an organized crime family masquerading as patriots and Christians.

Will today break the GOP cult? I have my doubts.

[TheRealNorth]

8. Don't be surprised if the Supreme Court rules this legal

This is exactly what Scott Walker did in Wisconsin and the State Supreme Court ruled it was legal. The prosecution appealed that ruling to the US Supreme Court, but the case wasn't taken, allowing the WI State Supreme Court ruling to stand. With Kennedy being the swing vote now gone (I believe he was the one to say in his opinion for Citizens United that unlimited political spending by issue advocacy groups was okay as long as they didn't coordinate with a candidate's campaign) I totally see the 5 con justices saying this okay.

I didn't see Ron Johnson's name at first, but It's little surprise to me that he was involved. Was this all run out of WI?

[Az_lefty]

9. The NRA has to be up to their necks in all this

Go get’em

[stuffmatters]

10. Gardener & Johnson''s wins over popular Dem incumbents in lean Dem states always reeked

And Tillis over Kay Hagen seemed very,very suspicious back then.

These improbable wins seem to have been the dry run for 2018. The RW/ Koch Bros' machine and Putin's bottomless pockets came together magnificently to funnel dark money into the the RNC, McConnel's RSC, Ryan's RCC and the RGovs Committee.
I wonder how much Cambridge Analytica was involved on the "psychops"side in 2014 & how big was the Bot army coming out of Russia against these sitting Democratic Senators in 2014.

Here was the first major alarm bell to me of the "social welfare" money laundering machine together of the Koch Bros and hostile foreign govt money:
The Koch Bros had two very Kochian Propositions on the Ca ballot in 2012...Prop 30 and Prop 32: one to defeat a recent small tax increase, the another against union dues collecting. Their war chest for these was shockingly outsized, millions of dollars. Post election (where the Kochs were voted down by Ca) closer scrutiny revealed that the funds were swimming in dark foreign money funneled by the Kochs through an intricate web of "social welfare" (shielded by fed law from discloure requirements) The Kochs and their foreign pals made a stupid error tho & made some of those presumed "untraceable" transfers into Ca...which has at least some disclosure requirements they had demonstrabley violated. So:

The Koch Bros were found guilty in Ca receiving and laundering millions in illegal campaign contributions of dark money from foreign
donors and fined the biggest fine in Ca history. Now they haven't stopped doing it, they've become even more determined & successful at laundering the money from their fellow anti democracy, global petro Fascist Puppeteers to elect Senators, Congress Reps and finally in 2016 a President.

BTW the Koch Bros are back at it again full force in Ca with their anti gas tax prop on the ballot in 2018.

[Recursion]

11. This is the missing piece of the Russian woman they arrested today

Damn this feels like a race against time

[ZERTErYNOthe]

12. Follow the money

My understanding is that Wayne La Pierre resigned as president of the NRA around the time this information came to light, and the organization (the NRA) felt that their best option was to put a felon in as as President. Follow the money.

[mpcamb]

13. Follow the Money and Shut Them Down!

[jpak]

16. Down with them

Down

Down