Two watchdog groups filed complaints with the Federal Election Commission alleging the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee broke campaign laws by filing reports meant to conceal their hiring of the opposition research firm Fusion GPS and British ex-spy Christopher Steele.
And one has now filed a lawsuit in federal court.
The Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit, filed its complaint with the FEC in 2017, alleging that Clinton and the DNC “failed to accurately disclose the purpose and recipient of payments for the dossier of research alleging connections between then-candidate Donald Trump and Russia, effectively hiding these payments from public scrutiny, contrary to the requirements of federal law.”
The Coolidge Reagan Foundation, a conservative nonprofit, filed its complaint with the FEC a year later against Clinton, the DNC, Steele, and the Perkins Coie law firm, which represented Clinton and the DNC in 2016 and was paid $12 million in 2016-2017. Perkins Coie hired Fusion GPS, which then hired Steele.
Backer, a prominent campaign finance attorney well-versed in federal election compliance succinctly explained how the Clinton campaign could have kept from getting in a world of hurt:
They should’ve reported a payment to Fusion GPS. They could’ve called it opposition research. They could’ve just called it research. But it definitely wasn’t just ‘legal services, Backer told reporters.
Read the full article at the Washington Examiner.
AAN Staff
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