July, 20 2021, 04:01pm EDT
CMD Files IRS Whistleblower Complaint Against ALEC for Illegal In-Kind Campaign Contributions Worth More Than $6 Million
MADISON
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is illegally providing its state legislative members with sophisticated voter management and campaign software deeply tied to the Republican Party and worth more than $6 million per election cycle, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) charged in a submission to the IRS Whistleblower Office today.
In its whistleblower complaint filed with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), CMD details ALEC's extensive and ongoing violations of its 501(c)(3) charitable tax-status, which prohibits engaging in any electoral activity, based on information gathered from ALEC's legislative members and other documents obtained through its investigations and open records requests.
The software, dubbed "ALEC CARE" and valued by ALEC at $3,000 per legislator, is owned and operated by VoterGravity, a Republican voter data company conceived and run by Ned Ryun. Ryun, is the founder and president of a right-wing candidate training operation, American Majority, and its voter mobilization affiliate, American Majority Action, which are closely allied with the Tea Party. American Majority Action's latest available IRS filing shows that it owns 84 percent of Voter Gravity, and both list a post office box in Purcellville, Virginia as their address.
"CMD has obtained conclusive evidence that ALEC has been providing sophisticated voter management and campaign software, run by partisan political operatives and linked to the Republican National Committee's voter file, to its legislative members since at least 2016 in continuing violation of its 501(c)(3) status," the complaint states. "By ALEC's own admission, and other evidence provided below, those unreported in-kind campaign contributions to ALEC's 2,000-plus members, almost all of whom are Republicans, have a total value of more than $6 million per election cycle."
CMD and Common Cause are also filing campaign finance complaints with the appropriate oversight agencies in 15 states.
"It is crystal clear from CMD's investigation and internal ALEC sources that the CARE program provided by ALEC is just a repackaging of VoterGravity's highly partisan campaign software, designed to help Republicans win and retain elected office," said Arn Pearson, CMD's executive director. "ALEC CARE is a brazen scheme to help ALEC's overwhelmingly Republican members win reelection."
"ALEC has abused its tax exempt status for a decade or more," said Eric Havian, a prominent whistleblower attorney at Constantine Cannon who filed the IRS claim on CMD's behalf. "I can only hope that we have not become too accustomed to fraud in plain sight, and that the IRS will finally take action to stop taxpayers from subsidizing ALEC's partisan electioneering and lobbying."
Marcus Owens, former Director of the Exempt Organizations Division of the Internal Revenue Service, told CMD, "The fact that ALEC's constituent management program typically costs 'thousands of dollars,' but it is being provided free of charge to selected legislators, would constitute a contribution to the legislator."
"The fact that there may well be sub rosa links between databases created by the management program and organizations engaged in partisan political activity suggests another potential electioneering event," Owens said.
ALEC's disclaimers and transparent repackaging of a powerful campaign tool as "constituent communications" do nothing to reduce its campaign value. The RNC-integrated software comes fully loaded with all campaign data and functions, and data entered by ALEC members get added to the RNC's database, thereby directly benefiting the Republican Party. ALEC's promotional pitch that, "With the opportunities afforded by CARE, our members can be ahead of their colleagues," is just coded language for what VoterGravity says to its users at its demo page: "Ready to win?"
ALEC has abused its non-profit status for many years. Common Cause filed a separate whistleblower submission to the IRS in collaboration with CMD in 2012--and supplemented in 2013, 2015, and 2016--detailing ALEC's extensive underreporting of lobbying activity and activities to promote the private interests of its corporate sponsors, including ExxonMobil, in violation of its 501(c)(3) status.
The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) is a non-profit investigative reporting group. Our reporting and analysis focus on exposing corporate spin and government propaganda. We publish PRWatch, SourceWatch, and BanksterUSA. Our newest major investigation is available at ALECexposed.org. We accept no funding from for-profit corporations or the government. If you would like to make a financial contribution to support our work, please click here.
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The high court voted along nonideological lines, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson joining five conservatives in the majority opinion and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joining liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan in a dissent.
According to the majority, former Pennsylvania police officer Joseph Fischer cannot be charged with obstruction of an official proceeding for joining a mob of Trump supporters who breached the U.S. Capitol to stop lawmakers were certifying the 2020 election.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion that to prove January 6 defendants, including Fischer, obstructed an official proceeding, prosecutors must show they "impaired the availability or integrity for use in an official proceeding of records, documents, objects, or... other things used in the proceeding."
The case hinged on a law enacted in 2002 after the Enron financial scandal, which the majority said was intended to apply to limited circumstances involving physical tampering.
Trump is among nearly 250 people whose January 6 cases could potentially be affected by the Fischer ruling, as they have been charged with obstructing an official proceeding.
There are 52 cases in which obstruction was the only felony conviction or charge, and The Washington Post reported that those are the "most likely defendants to be significantly affected by the decision."
Trump faces four charges in his election interference criminal case, including one count of obstructing an official proceeding and one count of conspiring to do so.
Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is overseeing the election interference case, has said a dismissal of the obstruction charges against Fischer and other January 6 defendants would not impact Trump's case, but Trump's legal team "may use [the ruling] to try to whittle down" prosecutors' arguments against the former president, according to the Post.
On social media shortly after the ruling was handed down, Trump posted the message: "BIG WIN!"
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The ruling could negate questions about whether the 2002 law applies to Trump's conduct, suggested legal analyst Norm Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
"This is important in its own right but also signals what's to come in [the] immunity case," said Eisen.
The court sent the Fischer case back to the lower courts to determine whether the U.S. Justice Department could still prosecute January 6 defendants under the more narrow interpretation of the law.
While Jackson sided with the conservative majority, she wrote in a separate opinion that Fischer and other defendants could still be charged with obstruction if it is found that they tampered with electoral vote certificates.
Barrett wrote in the minority opinion that the question of whether Fischer can be prosecuted for an obstruction charge "seems open and shut," since the goal of breaching the U.S. Capitol was to disrupt the joint session of Congress where lawmakers were certifying the election results.
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Sotomayor continued:
Homelessness is a reality for too many Americans. On any given night, over half a million people across the country lack a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence. Many do not have access to shelters and are left to sleep in cars, sidewalks, parks, and other public places. They experience homelessness due to complex and interconnected issues, including crippling debt and stagnant wages; domestic and sexual abuse; physical and psychiatric disabilities; and rising housing costs coupled with declining affordable housing options.
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Attorney Theane Evangelis, who represented Grants Pass in the case, cheered the decision, arguing that the 9th Circuit ruling had "tied the hands of local governments."
Some leaders in places where the homelessness crisis is most acute welcomed Friday's ruling, including Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who filed an amicus brief in the case, and London Breed, the Democratic mayor of San Francisco, which also filed an amicus brief.
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noted Raya Steier, communications manager at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area. "Congratulations London Breed and David Chiu, this is now your legacy."
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"This is the outcome of a multi-decade crusade by big business and right-wing extremists to gut federal agencies tasked with protecting Americans’ health and safety."
An array of right-wing and industry organizations—including groups with ties to the Koch network and Federalist Society co-chairman Leonard Leo—pushed the Supreme Court to scrap the Chevron doctrine, and Friday's decision could embolden separate legal challenges.
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Climate advocates warned the ruling could also be devastating for the planet, potentially hamstringing the Environmental Protection Agency and other departments as they attempt to rein in planet-warming pollution using existing law. The American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. oil and gas industry's largest lobbying group, celebrated Friday's ruling as environmentalists voiced dismay.
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