{"id":13167,"date":"2019-10-18T17:51:24","date_gmt":"2019-10-19T00:51:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=13167"},"modified":"2019-11-23T16:45:19","modified_gmt":"2019-11-24T00:45:19","slug":"lev-and-igor-are-just-the-tip-of-the-dark-money-campaign-finance-iceberg-bradcast-10182019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/?p=13167","title":{"rendered":"Lev And Igor Are Just the Tip of the Dark Money Campaign Finance Iceberg: ‘BradCast’ 10\/18\/2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

The outlook for Donald Trump appears grimmer by the day, but the systemic institutional problems that brought him to office and have now helped bring him to the brink of impeachment are of even larger concern on today’s BradCast<\/i><\/a>. [Audio link to today’s program is posted below.<\/i>]<\/p>\n

First up, the latest in the House’s ongoing impeachment inquiry, as the worm may — emphasis on ‘may<\/i>‘ — be turning, following Trump’s Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney’s nationally-televised admission<\/a> that the Administration withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in Congressionally-allocated military aide to Ukraine in an effort to strong-arm the former Soviet nation into investigating Democrats and the 2016 election. Mulvaney’s “confession”, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi described it<\/a>, of a pretty clear quid pro quo has knocked several Republicans off their footing, as they struggle to find ways to defend the President’s actions.<\/p>\n

A number of Congressional Republicans in both the House and the Senate now appear troubled<\/a> by the admission (which Mulvaney attempted to walk back<\/a> just hours later) and it has led Ohio’s former Republican Governor John Kasich to concede<\/a> on Friday that he now supports the impeachment and removal of Trump based on the latest information.<\/p>\n

Then, we’re joined by BRENDAN FISCHER<\/b>, Associate Counsel at the Campaign Legal Center<\/a> (CLC) in Washington D.C., which filed a formal complaint with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) in July of 2018, detailing serious campaign fiance law violations by Rudy Giuliani associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. The Soviet-born Ukrainian-Americans were dramatically arrested and indicted<\/a> at Dulles International Airport just over a week ago by federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York, as they were attempting to flee the country with one way tickets to Vienna. Parnas and Fruman were charged [PDF]<\/a> with using a fake shell corporation to illegally funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars from an unknown source to Republicans, including Trump’s America First Action SuperPAC, in a successful effort to gain political power.<\/p>\n

They also paid some $500 thousand to Giuliani — who is working, for free, as Trump’s personal lawyer — and donated to Texas Congressman Pete Sessions, all in an effort to act on the conspiracy theories used by Trump and Giuliani to strong-arm Ukraine. As Fischer lays out in a piece at CLC detailing the backstory of the arrests<\/a> of the two Trump donors, “Working closely with the president\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s personal attorney, Giuliani, their efforts touched two branches of U.S. government, two presidential administrations in Ukraine, at least five countries, numerous individuals in and out of government, and, now, an impeachment inquiry into the U.S. President himself.”<\/p>\n

“The big giving opened a lot of doors,” Fischer tells me. “It got them into political fundraisers where they rubbed shoulders with President Trump’s inner circle. That money allowed them to build and deepen a relationship with Giuliani. And they were able to leverage that relationship in order to advance this narrative about Ukraine — the same narrative about Ukraine that President Trump espoused in his call with Ukrainian President Zelensky, which has now led to this impeachment inquiry.”<\/p>\n

In other words, despite the ongoing mysteries behind the true source of their funding, they got a lot of bang for their campaign finance bucks used to buy influence with GOP officials and effect actual U.S. foreign policy in the bargain. But, as Fischer explains on today’s program, had they not used a phony corporation to do it with someone else’s money (and lied about that to the FEC), everything they did appears to be largely perfectly legal under U.S. campaign finance laws! Yes, apparently if you have enough money, you are allowed to use it to buy a major political influence operation that can directly effect U.S. foreign and domestic policy, even out of the White House.<\/p>\n

Fischer explains how the dark money operation — which didn’t even include all that much money — is still being unraveled by federal investigators as the probe (which could even nab Giuliani) continues and, perhaps even more importantly, how it may represent just be the tip of a campaign finance iceberg that illustrates the dangers of our disgraceful campaign finance laws in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United<\/i> ruling in 2010.<\/p>\n

“The indictment makes clear that the purpose of the political contributions that Parnas and Fruman made was to buy access and to build influence with powerful political officials in order to advance their own personal financial interests,” says Fischer. “But that is not what they are being indicted for. They were indicted because they laundered the funds through shell corporations and then lied about it.” So, had they actually been rich dudes who used their own money<\/i> for this scheme, it would have been just fine? “Yes, it would have been just a beautiful expression of their First Amendment right to free speech.”<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153This indictment of Parnas and Fruman is really an indictment of our big money political system. It lays out very clearly how powerful political figures operate on this cash-for-access practice. It’s become entirely commonplace for wealthy political actors to buy their way into Congressional offices and into the President’s inner circle. If you don’t have money, your voice does not get heard in our democracy.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Finally, longtime good government watchdog Fischer also rings in on Mulvaney’s stunning announcement<\/a> that the Administration has officially selected Trump National Doral resort in Miami, Florida as the location for next year’s G-7 Summit of world leaders, despite the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution which strictly bans payments to the President from foreign officials — a point that even Fox “News”<\/a> (well, at least some<\/i> there<\/a>) appear to have a problem with as well…<\/p>\n

CLICK TO LISTEN OR DOWNLOAD SHOW!…<\/a><\/i><\/b>
\n[audio:http:\/\/BradBlog.com\/audio\/BradCast_BradFriedman_Impeachment_BrandonFischer-ParnasFrumanGiulianiSessions_101819.mp3]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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The outlook for Donald Trump appears grimmer by the day, but the systemic institutional problems that brought him to office and have now helped bring him to the brink of impeachment are of even larger concern on today’s BradCast. [Audio link to today’s program is posted below.] First up, the latest in the House’s ongoing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1395,675,405,479,1393,1180,1396,754,477,1397,458,981,1394,366,698],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-andrew-napolitano","category-bradcast","category-bush-legacy","category-donald-trump","category-francis-rooney","category-g7","category-igor-fruman","category-john-kasich","category-kpfk","category-lev-parnas","category-lisa-murkowski","category-mick-mulvaney","category-pete-sessions","category-torture","category-ukraine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13167\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bbnewdb.webbyspice.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}