Clinton 'money-laundering' campaign funds

[FATCAT 60,967]

The Democratic front-runner says she's raising big checks to help state committees, but they've gotten to keep only 1 percent of the $60 million raised.

 

In the days before Hillary Clinton launched an unprecedented big-money fundraising vehicle with state parties last summer, she vowed “to rebuild our party from the ground up,” proclaiming “when our state parties are strong, we win. That’s what will happen."

But less than 1 percent of the $61 million raised by that effort has stayed in the state parties’ coffers, according to a POLITICO analysis of the latest Federal Election Commission filings.

The venture, the Hillary Victory Fund, is a so-called joint fundraising committee comprised of Clinton’s presidential campaign, the Democratic National Committee and 32 state party committees. The set-up allows Clinton to solicit checks of $350,000 or more from her super-rich supporters at extravagant fundraisers including a dinner at George Clooney’s house and at a concert at Radio City Music Hall featuring Katy Perry and Elton John.

The victory fund has transferred $3.8 million to the state parties, but almost all of that cash ($3.3 million, or 88 percent) was quickly transferred to the DNC, usually within a day or two, by the Clinton staffer who controls the committee, POLITICO’s analysis of the FEC records found.

By contrast, the victory fund has transferred $15.4 million to Clinton’s campaign and $5.7 million to the DNC, which will work closely with Clinton’s campaign if and when she becomes the party’s nominee. And most of the $23.3 million spent directly by the victory fund has gone towards expenses that appear to have directly benefited Clinton’s campaign, including $2.8 million for “salary and overhead” and $8.6 million for web advertising that mostly looks indistinguishable from Clinton campaign ads and that has helped Clinton build a network of small donors who will be critical in a general election expected to cost each side well in excess of $1 billion.

The arrangement has sparked concerns among campaign finance watchdogs and allies of Clinton’s Democratic rival Bernie Sanders. They see it as a circumvention of campaign contribution limits by a national party apparatus intent on doing whatever it takes to help Clinton defeat Sanders during the party’s primary, and then win the White House.

But it is perhaps more notable that the arrangement has prompted concerns among some participating state party officials and their allies. They grumble privately that Clinton is merely using them to subsidize her own operation, while her allies overstate her support for their parties and knock Sanders for not doing enough to help the party.

“It’s a one-sided benefit,” said an official with one participating state party. The official, like those with several other state parties, declined to talk about the arrangement on the record for fear of drawing the ire of the DNC and the Clinton campaign.

In fact, the DNC, which has pushed back aggressively on charges that it is boosting Clinton at the expense of other Democrats, has advised state party officials on how to answer media inquiries about the arrangement, multiple sources familiar with the interactions told POLITICO.

“The DNC has given us some guidance on what they’re saying, but it’s not clear what we should be saying,” said the official. “I don’t think anyone wants to get crosswise with the national party because we do need their resources. But everyone who entered into these agreements was doing it because they were asked to, not because there are immediately clear benefits.”

Some fundraisers who work for state parties predict that the arrangement could actually hurt participating state parties. They worry that participating states that aren’t presidential battlegrounds and lack competitive Senate races could see very little return investment from the DNC or Clinton’s campaign, and are essentially acting as money laundering conduits for them. And for party committees in contested states, there’s another risk: they might find themselves unable to accept cash from rich donors whose checks to the victory fund counted towards their $10,000 donation limit to the state party in question — even if that party never got to spend the cash because it was transferred to the DNC.

Sources working with the Hillary Victory Fund said the committee is sensitive to these concerns, and that state parties were asked to submit names of donors they wanted to save for themselves.

Clinton’s campaign and the DNC argue that all Democratic politicians and state parties — even those that aren’t enrolled in the victory fund — will benefit from its fundraising. That’s because the cash will go towards enhancing national voter data, and research and communications efforts that all state parties are entitled to.

And Josh Schwerin, a spokesman for Clinton’s campaign, suggested that a handful of key state parties last month received another $700,000 in transfers from the victory fund, and enjoyed other benefits from it that will be detailed in subsequent FEC reports. (The latest reports only cover through the end of March.)

“About $4.5 million has already been transferred to state parties and there is an additional $9 million on hand that will be distributed over the coming months as state parties ramp up for the general election,” he said in an email. He added that in April “money raised through the HVF has started to be used to fund Democratic coordinated campaigns across the country, which will help strengthen the party and elect Democrats up and down the ballot.”

But Schwerin did not respond to follow-up questions about how much of the $700,000 in victory fund transfers to the state parties was subsequently transferred to the DNC.

DNC spokesman Mark Paustenbach pointed out that the national party committee “offered to engage in the same joint fundraising efforts with all the major presidential candidates early in the cycle and we welcome the efforts of the candidates to help raise money for the DNC and state parties now to ensure we can build out the infrastructure to win in November.”

Sanders' campaign late last year signed a joint fundraising agreement with the DNC, but the committee has been largely inactive. Instead, after Sanders was chided by Clinton allies for not helping down-ballot Democrats, he sent out appeals to his vaunted email list that helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for a trio of progressive House candidates, who got to keep all the cash.

The Hillary Victory Fund, by contrast, allows the Clinton campaign to maintain tight control over the cash it raises and spends. The fund represents by far the most ambitious use to date of a joint fundraising committee — and arguably one the most ambitious hard-dollar fundraising efforts in modern presidential politics. Until 2014, the most an individual could have given to such a committee was $123,200. But in April of that year, the Supreme Court, in a case called McCutcheon vs. FEC, struck down aggregate limits on total giving to federal campaigns, allowing maximum donations to as many different committees as a donor wanted.

That paved the way for massive joint fundraising committees which could accept ever-larger checks based on how the number and type of committees that agreed to participate. In the case of the Hillary Victory Fund, the maximum donation in 2016 is $356,100, based on maximum donations of $2,700 to Hillary for America for the primary election, $33,400 to the DNC and $10,000 to the federal accounts of each of the 32 state parties.

After POLITICO revealed that the victory fund was asking for couples to donate or raise a whopping $353,400 in order to sit at a table with Clinton, George Clooney and his wife, attorney Amal Clooney, at a fundraiser last month in San Francisco, Clooney admitted that was "an obscene amount of money." But he justified it by saying "the overwhelming amount of the money that we're raising, is not going to Hillary to run for president, it's going to the down-ticket."

...

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/clinton-fundraising-leaves-little-for-state-parties-222670#ixzz47XHWuJsp 
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Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/clinton-fundraising-leaves-little-for-state-parties-222670#ixzz47XHOIT1G 

[Didymus 34,380]

Cackling just skipping through. This is some next level ugly ****.

Thanks for posting, Imma read it all now

[HEARTHUNTER 7,611]

Why am I not surprised?  

[Didymus 34,380]

"In fact, the DNC ... has advised state party officials on how to answer media inquiries about the arrangement, multiple sources familiar with the interactions told POLITICO."

+ sources, sources,...

I don't know how trustworthy POLITICO is, but that makes me frown.

Very interesting anyway. George better be furious Interested to see the Hillary fans tackle this from another point of view.

[lego 44,165]

@FATCAT where were you, I missed you. 

[LebaneseDude 6,146]

Expose ha!

or not...

Do you post anything other than sensationalist articles?  What's funny is that article is written by rabid Bernie supporters  

"Money laundering"  As if she did something illegal. If you were a reporter you'd get fired for making that accusation. Oh you got it from the Bernie Sanders website. How shocking.

If you read the article, it's the DNC choosing to route the money to Clinton. 

According to the agreements signed by the participating committees, which were obtained by POLITICO, the money is required to be distributed, at least initially, based on a formula set forth in joint fundraising agreements signed by the participants. The first $2,700 goes to Clinton campaign, the next $33,400 goes to the DNC, and any remaining funds are to be distributed among the state parties.

But what happens to the cash after that initial distribution is left almost entirely to the discretion of the Clinton campaign. Its chief operating officer Beth Jones is the treasurer of the victory fund. And FEC filings show that within a day of most transfers from the victory fund to the state parties, identical sums were transferred from the state party accounts to the DNC, which Sanders’ supporters have accused of functioning as an adjunct of the Clinton campaign.

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The gist of it is that the DNC is funneling most of the funds for the presidential campaign, much like they did for Obama, and will redistribute funds appropriately after the fact. So the donations aren't going to the state personnel now, but will do so down the line. It's a matter of now vs later.

In fact what's told to the people who contribute is that the proceeds would be invested in the national electoral roll, state party budgets, and expanded research, digital, and communications systems.

Any Democrat legally running for office can benefit from this fund. Notice no purity test is required.  Most of the funds go through the DNC. The Obama Victory Fund had the same setup as Clinton's Victory Fund.

What's even funnier is that this article is implying that money that goes in the Victory fund is all going to Clinton. The entire point is to have the money to support the down-ticket personnel when you become president. That's the issue at hand. All the DNC's focus is on the presidency right now.

Honestly, the only difference this year is that both of these writers are in support of Sanders not Clinton. These funds are acting in the same way as each other nothing has changed except the politics of the writers. 

So these writers were fine with it when it was Obama but not when it's Hillary  

Oh noes...the establishment is supporting the candidate that doesn't demonize them and is using them for his own goals  

What I'm not shocked about is the timing of this release. Looks like Bernie's getting real dirty.

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Oh my God just looked at Bernie Sanders' website and the article is completely trashing Hillary as opposed to the DNC.  He's trying to skirt the blame on her completely while half-assedly remaining on the DNC's good side  

[Didymus 34,380]

10 minutes ago, LebaneseDude said:

So these writers were fine with it when it was Obama but not when it's Hillary  

That's what I figured. So they really did do this in favor of Obama in the middle of the nominations race?

[LebaneseDude 6,146]

3 minutes ago, Didymus said:

That's what I figured. So they really did do this in favor of Obama in the middle of the nominations race?

Not in the middle of the nominations race I believe, but after the fact. It's irrelevant though. It's not like she has actually spent a significant portion of the money yet. The writer is just blowing it completely out of proportion and blaming Clinton for the DNC playing favorites.

These guys are just pressed that the DNC is favoring Clinton before the actual presidential race, as if he's not the one who is outright claiming to use them for his own goals  

If anyone thought Sanders was going to be treated the same way, they're delusional.

[Aura Veil 2,395]

I wonder if people know how much Clinton has effectively screwed party democratics in their own state races. SHE is the one who is sabotaging the party's chances of regaining congress and the house.

Jim Weaver put it best:

If Secretary Clinton can’t raise the funds needed to run in a competitive primary without resorting to laundering, how will she compete against Donald Trump in a general election?

[Morphine Prince 109,983]

Interesting. 

[Didymus 34,380]

1 minute ago, LebaneseDude said:

Not in the middle of the nominations race I believe, but after the fact. It's irrelevant though.

Well, I wouldn't say that Like George expressed, the amount of money raised was not for Hillary. So if I wrote my check, I'd be pretty stunned.

2 minutes ago, LebaneseDude said:

as if he's not the one who is outright claiming to use them for his own goals  

Don't get that, would you mind explaining?

[LebaneseDude 6,146]

10 minutes ago, Didymus said:

Well, I wouldn't say that Like George expressed, the amount of money raised was not for Hillary. So if I wrote my check, I'd be pretty stunned.

The amount raised was for the DNC. The DNC, as it always does around the time of presidential elections, chose to distribute the money to state-level offices and then rerouted some of that money to the presidential campaign fund.

The purpose of the donation was clear. It never said that it won't go to Hillary's Victory Fund. Even then, people are making the implication that the money is all for the presidential campaign. Talk about assumptions 

10 minutes ago, Didymus said:

Don't get that, would you mind explaining?

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-03-15/sanders-yes-im-a-democrat-of-convenience

Bernie Sanders raised eyebrows Monday when he admitted his decision to join the Democratic Party to run for president was not an ideological choice or driven by loyalty, but a way to hack the nominating process.
“Here’s the truth. You’re right, I am the longest serving independent in the history of the United States Congress,” the Vermont senator, who identifies as a Democratic Socialist, told MSNBC’s Chuck Todd during a town hall Monday night in Ohio. 
“We did have to make that decision: Do you run as an independent? Do you run within the Democratic Party?” He said. “We concluded – and I think it was absolutely the right decision – that, A, in terms of media coverage, you have to run within the Democratic Party.”
He added that to run a campaign outside the major two-party process, “you need… to be a billionaire.”

If Bernie ran as a Democrat for money and media coverage, it's probably time for that money and media coverage to end,” saidSeth Bringman, the communications of the former Ready for Hillary PAC, the grassroots organization that formed to encourage Clinton’s run.
Brad Woodhouse, president of the progressive group Americans United for Change and a Clinton supporter, said Sanders’ comments exposed him as a “political calculating fraud.”
“If Bernie Sanders had real principles he would have run as an independent,” Woodhouse tweeted. “He railed against the Democratic Party when it helped him in Vermont, then decides to run as a Democrat when it could help him in a national race. He's just a typical politician looking out for himself.”

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So on topic, would anyone be shocked that the DNC does not trust Bernie?

[Lion Heart 15,041]

But less than 1 percent of the $61 million raised by that effort has stayed in the state parties’ coffers

 

Well no ****? The General Election is in November. Why would the DNC distribute the money now? My guess is that once the General Election comes up, and once all donations have been collected, the DNC will use the formula mentioned in the article for the appropriate allocation of all funds raised. Then the state party coffers will see that money roll through, as they should.  

[JevyDuty 2,961]

That smell of desperation is coming from the Bernie camp.

[LebaneseDude 6,146]

13 minutes ago, Aura Veil said:

I wonder if people know how much Clinton has effectively screwed party democratics in their own state races. SHE is the one who is sabotaging the party's chances of regaining congress and the house.

Jim Weaver put it best:

If Secretary Clinton can’t raise the funds needed to run in a competitive primary without resorting to laundering, how will she compete against Donald Trump in a general election?

Jim Weaver is calling it laundering when it is anything but. 

He's essentially accusing Obama of having stolen the presidency from McCain.