Calling foreign influence on U.S. elections “a matter of national security,” FEC commissioner Ellen Weintraub is joining her colleague Ann Ravel in calling for the full commission to plug the flow of foreign money into American political campaigns.
In a new memo to her five fellow commissioners, Weintraub writes that the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision created “new avenues for corporate political activity would make our democracy vulnerable to foreign individuals, corporations, and governments that seek to manipulate our elections.” Weintraub will ask the full FEC at its meeting on Thursday to begin the process of writing new regulations to deal with Citizens United and foreign money.
Weintraub cites recent reporting by The Intercept on a $1.3 million donation by a U.S. corporation owned by Chinese citizens to a Super PAC backing Jeb Bush as evidence that this is not a “hypothetical” issue. “A person would have to be wearing some very rose-colored glasses,” Weintraub writes, “to think there are not foreign operatives interested in exploiting any vulnerability to influence our elections.”
Her fellow commissioner Ann Ravel called on the FEC to take action in August, in the wake of The Intercept’s story.
The Citizens United decision opened up a peculiar loophole for foreign money. Federal law prohibits “foreign nationals” — a legal term encompassing foreign individuals, corporations and governments — from putting money into the U.S. political process. But federal law also states that any company legally incorporated in the U.S., no matter its ultimate ownership, is a U.S. national.
This was not a significant concern prior to the Citizens United decision, because corporations had been largely barred from spending money on federal elections. By lifting that ban on corporate political donations, Citizens United changed the equation and made it possible for a corporation that is 100 percent owned by foreigners to participate in U.S. politics.
Barack Obama warned in his State of the Union address immediately after the Citizens United ruling that foreign-owned corporations would now be able to “spend without limit in our elections.” Justice Samuel Alito, part of the Citizens United majority, was in the audience and shook his head at Obama’s claim, mouthing “not true.”
The Intercept obtained a memo from Charles Spies, one of the Republican Party’s top campaign finance lawyers, written for a client and showing exactly how to do it.
Weintraub is asking the FEC to direct its counsel to begin the process of creating new regulations to close the Citizens United loophole and prevent corporations with significant foreign ownership from participating in U.S. elections.
“Our courts have said that foreign money may be barred from our elections,” Weintraub writes in her conclusion. “Congress has said that foreign money must be barred from our elections. The American public has the right to expect the Federal Election Commission to ensure that foreign money is barred from our elections.”
Ravel’s proposal, also on the agenda for this Thursday’s FEC meeting, would not go as far as Weintraub’s. Rather than calling for the commission to create entirely new regulations, Ravel is asking the commission to rescind previous advisory opinions that outlined how foreign-owned corporations could legally spend small amounts of their own money to set up a company-sponored political action committee that would then receive donations from U.S. citizens. Spies relied on those opinions in his memo to create an avenue for foreign-owned corporations to make unlimited donations to Super PACs from their own treasuries.
There is cause for skepticism that the FEC will take action on either proposal. The commission has six members and by law no more than three can be from the same political party. In the past this had led to frequent 3-3 deadlocks, with the Republican commissioners consistently voting against investigations or new regulation of campaign donations. Weintraub and Ravel are the commission’s two Democrats; Steven T. Walther, an independent, often votes with them.
Top photo: Ellen Weintraub (second from left) testifies during a hearing before the Elections Subcommittee of the House Committee on House Administration in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 3, 2011.
“There are no nations, there are no peoples, there are no Russians, there are no Arabs, there are no third worlds, there is no West … there is only one holistic system of systems … [a] multinational dominion of dollars. Petro dollars, electro dollars … There is no America, there is no democracy; there is only IBM and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those ARE the nations of the world today.” Arthur Jenson from the Movie Network (1976).
Foreign money was pouring in this country long before Citizen’s United. In 2008, a hefty percentage of foreign money found it’s way into the coffers of “Obama for President”.
Problems are just solutions without a gun.
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Problem: Countries (especially the USA) are handing out citizenship to wealthy foreigner individuals and corporations like they take VISA, which makes it much harder to determine who is a foreigner and who isn’t.
Solution: Don’t just accept citizenship papers as proof of citizenship–look for subtle clues they may have forgotten to cover up in their unending quest to pass as American.
Names are a great way to determine who is and isn’t American. Names are very culturally specific and are hard to credibly mimic for true foreigners. For example the name “Pierre.” There is no fucking way an American names their kid “Pierre.” Every red blooded American is laughing their ass off right now at the idea of naming their kid “Pierre.” Naming your kid “Pierre” is legally child abuse in twelve states. Admittedly, most of those are in the south, but still.
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Problem: So called “corporate race mixing” (this is when a corporation isn’t 100% purely owned by people of the same country) is rampant, rapacious and threatens the moral fabric of our something something outsourced something.
Solution: Only allow corporations to have money and/or cross burnings.
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Problem: Scary stories about Russia have not only been unable to get any traction with the USA…USA…USA part of the USA, but they have now become beyond parody. Did you see the thing where Clinton collapsed (I mean–lost her shoe) was because she was poisoned by Putin. I now believe football head injuries are so bad that they also affect the people who study them.
Solution: Use the word foreign instead of Russian.
Yes–foreigners should be prevented from using the internet to comment on American elections.
We need some way for people to prove their citizenship before they can post to the internet. Also we should require people to put flags next to their real names.
Really? How about foreigners being prevented from using the internet to comment on American elections when the US stops invading other countries, stops pulling off coups in other countries, and stops interfering in the rest of the world’s affairs. More than any other nation on earth, at the present time, whomever the American people elect will effect the ENTIRE world. So you have to be kidding me when you want to censor other nations from even commenting on whomever is going to be the next President – because frankly it is looking like it is going to be disastrous for all of us (I am Canadian)!
Let me be clear.
This will only apply to corporations, except of course for media outlets because if these rules applied to the media, then that would be the end of journalism.
Now, I realize you are going to argue that the corporate media loophole is so big that it makes the whole corporate campaign finance argument seem like an unprincipled mess designed to demonize and silence my detractors instead of a consistent philosophical position–and you would be right.
Think about it–a billionaire (American or not) can just buy or start a “media” outlet and conveniently the sins of corporate finance are magically washed away. That is how you launder money into an election. Stop me if any of this sounds familiar.
I would say that I can’t wait for this election to end so we can rid ourselves of this unprincipled nonsense, but the end game is not to be elected–so why would anyone think that this crap ends with the election.
This is our everyday world.
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I would apologize that my original satire Tom Sawyered you into writing some great arguments against the original article, but you wrote some great arguments against the original article.
It is not so much a foreign government that contributes. The real problem is when a billionaire, such as Haim Saban, contributes on BEHALF of a foreign government, specifically the Likud agenda of settlements and land theft. He and others have shown their ability to stifle legitimate criticism that is espoused by Israelis in Israel. BTW, I lived and worked in Israel and the MSM never shows how racist the settlers are and/or publish photos of them burning churches, bulldozing Christian cemeteries, as well as ethnically cleansing Christian Palestinians.
I am not sure foreign contributors can throw an election one way or another if that is the point. Even in the Ukraine the oligarchs and fascists had to rely on a violent overthrow. That money buys, if their guy or gal wins, access and favorable outcomes to their self interests. Now of course, the money can be used to run the campaign, under the table bribes (jobs), etc. But as we saw with the republicans, one billionaire can sustain an entire campaign. In this way, a foreign power or interest could totally sponsor one candidate.
Any sizeable foreign company should have an American registered affiliate through which the money can be channeled. I think the proposed legislation will help increase the number of American registered companies, which is good.
However, I’m not clear why corporations feel a need to donate money to a PAC. Those fees don’t go directly into the candidates pocket and therefore don’t buy a whole lot of influence. Paying prospective candidates for a series of paid speeches, at $250k a pop, seems like better value.
Money in politics is like water in a river. You can close off one channel, but the water always finds another.
One, or most or all Americans might say that Alito and the rest of the supreme court “justices” that decided in favor of the farcical decision called citizens united should be removed from their positions for dereliction, taking bribes or at a minimum incompetence…which is it?
I kind of wonder how much the US spends in other countries foreign elections through organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy, USAID etc. (Arab Spring, Orange Revolutions etc.)? Maybe the lesson is that ALL COUNTRIES should not interfere in the governmental processes in other countries.
Nice related companion piece by Bill Moyers, if anyone is interested in reading:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-moyers/we-the-plutocrats-vs-we-t_b_11973330.html?
And one in the Guardian today:
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/sep/12/global-justice-now-study-multinational-businesses-walmart-apple-shell
I totally agree, just as foreign spending by the US to the tune of 5 billion, helped overthrow the president of the Ukraine two months before an election.
Of course, it didn’t keep him from being popular. Yanukovich led in the polls until the armed mob forced him out.
The threat to democracy is Jeb Bush’s campaign? Is that what I just read?