In 2021, the CLC sued the Federal Election Commission (FEC) for refusing to launch an investigation into Donald Trump‘s presidential campaign over allegations that it coordinated with a super PAC. [37] The CLC also filed a complaint with the FEC about how Cruz‘s associates promoted his book One Vote Away: How a Single Supreme Court Vote Can Change History. [38] Campaign Legal Center (CLC) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit government watchdog group in the United States. The CLC supports the strict enforcement of U.S. campaign finance laws. [1] Trevor Potter, former Republican chairman of the Federal Election Commission, is the CLC‘s founding chairman. The CLC was originally funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, but over time it has received donations from more open center-left organizations. [8] Major donor organizations include the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, ActBlue, MacArthur Foundation, George Soros‘ Open Society Foundations, and NEO Philanthropy‘s State Infrastructure Fund. Pierre Omidyar, the left-wing founder of eBay, also donates to the CLC through various foundations. Trevor Potter is President of the CLC. Potter previously served as general counsel to Senator John McCain (R‑AZ) during his 2000 and 2008 presidential campaigns. Prior to working for the McCain campaign, Potter was a partner at Wiley Rein & Fielding and later served as FEC commissioner from 1991 to 1996. [6] In late July 2020, the CLC filed an 81-page complaint with the FEC against Trump‘s re-election campaign, claiming it had used transmission units to hide nearly $170 million in campaign expenses from the FEC.
[34] [35] [36] The Campaign Legal Center is an advocacy group that aligns itself with center-left interests and supports the strict enforcement of campaign finance laws. Legal Center attorneys pursue and participate in various cases across the country involving campaign finance law at the federal, state, and local levels. The group campaigned for more legal restrictions on campaign contributions and lobbying during the 2012 presidential primaries. [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] In 2018, the CLC launched a website allowing criminally convicted citizens to declare their right to vote in all 50 states. [21] That same year, the CLC filed several complaints with the FEC alleging illegal coordination between the Trump campaign and the National Rifle Association. [22] [23] The CLC‘s Potter also appeared on Face the Nation[24] and 60 Minutes[25] in 2018 to discuss possible violations of President Trump‘s campaign finance related to the secret money Michael Cohen paid Stormy Daniels. Prior to the 2018 election, CLC lawyers represented Native American voters in a case challenging the North Dakota voter identification bill. [26] Jason Jaffery is CLC‘s Director of Development and Director of Development at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). For seven years, Jaffery served as director of development for another left-wing organization, the ACLU Foundation of Ohio, but then moved to the Aspen Institute and then to the Democracy Collaborative. [7] The group filed an amicus curiae letter in 2007 in the landmark case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, in which he unsuccessfully ordered the court not to remove a McCain-Feingold provision that prevented unlimited political donations to organizations not directly affiliated with federal candidates.
[6] The following year, she again filed a brief with the court regarding a rule in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 that increased contribution limits when candidates faced a self-funded opponent; The group approved the rule, which was overturned by the court. [7] After first presenting its image as a bipartisan organization, the CLC established a Strategic Litigation Council for potential election-related litigation. As of March 2019, the CLC had been involved in nearly 70 election-related cases and actions. [3] In 2020, the CLC signed a letter to President Donald Trump recommending the hiring of commissioners from the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to achieve quorum and enforce election laws. In 2010, the CLC partnered with another watchdog group, Democracy 21, to ask the Internal Revenue Service to investigate a tax-exempt welfare group owned by Karl Rove. [8] Since March 2019, the CLC has opposed the practice of “partisan electoral boundaries” in Gill v. Whitford of the Supreme Court. [4] Other cases where the CLC has lobbied include fighting voter identification laws designed to protect elections from potential voter fraud, the right to vote for released offenders, and the State of Texas‘ inability to require potential voters to provide proof of citizenship. [5] The group filed an amicus curiae letter in 2011 on behalf of eight public interest groups in support of the impugned provisions of Arizona‘s Citizens Clean Elections Act. After the court struck down the provisions,[9] a spokesman for the group said the decision undermined “the integrity of our elections.” [10] Later that year, the CLC raised concerns with the FEC that Stephen Colbert‘s satirical Super PAC, Americans for a Better Tomorrow, had serious imitators who took advantage of the regulations for politicians with television contracts.
The organization‘s president, Trevor Potter, was Colbert‘s advocate when the PAC was founded. [11] In August, she asked the United States. The Department of Justice will investigate the conduct of W Spann LLC. [12] In 2004, he was a party to complaints filed with the Federal Election Commission against groups such as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and America Coming Together for attempting to directly influence the federal election. [2] [3] The CLC was founded in 2002 at the University of Utah to advocate for the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, also known as the McCain-Feingold. During this period, the CLC actively defended the law in court in McConnell v. FEC in 2003. [1] In the early years of the organization‘s history, the CLC was primarily funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts before later expanding its litigation practice to other activities related to elections and redistricting issues.