MAGA Royalty. Kari Lake filed yet another amended version of her personal financial disclosure form this week, finally reporting the terms of her publishing contract. Lake previously reported $100,000 in royalty income for her book, Unafraid, and the new disclosure shows that money was all an “advance against share of profits.” The form says Lake will receive “25% of net profits from sales” from her book publisher, Winning Team Publishing, the company run by Mar-a-Lago backslapper Sergio Gor. The royalty checks will start rolling in again if Lake’s book sells enough copies to “earn out” the $100,000—which, at the current cost of $26 a pop on Amazon, means a little more than 15,000 copies, though that price will likely soon drop. Notably, Lake’s new disclosure also shows that she signed the contract in March 2023. That corresponds with another date on the form, when Lake stopped working for conservative technology firm Superfeed. Both those developments—signing the contract and leaving Superfeed—came in the same month that Lake recorded a conversation in her house with former Arizona GOP chair Jim DeWit, which she released in January to support bribery allegations against DeWit, prompting his resignation. And DeWit, as we previously reported, also ran Superfeed. Lake had actually hinted at these allegations in March 2023, when she told a CPAC audience that someone had recently visited her and offered a bribe from “powerful people back east” if she would stay “out of politics.” “They came to my door and they tried to bribe me [into] getting out of politics,” said Lake, who hadn’t yet specified her next political or professional move and did not declare her Senate bid for another seven months. She claimed that the alleged extortionist “tried to bribe me with a job title, with a huge salary, a position on a board,” adding that the person had been “sent at the request of some powerful people back east.” Lake delivered that speech on March 4. The same month, her disclosures show, she left Superfeed and signed her publishing contract with Gor. Azerbai-bye. Indicted Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX) is facing allegations of bribery and acting on behalf of foreign agents, and the feds have a key witness against him—his former campaign manager. Colin Strother’s attorney told the San Antonio Express News on Tuesday that his client is looking forward to cooperating in the case. “If I were Henry or Imelda Cuellar, I’d be concerned,” the lawyer said, referencing Cuellar’s wife, who was indicted alongside the centrist Democrat last week. Two days later, two middlemen in the alleged scheme—both political strategists—pleaded guilty to conspiring with the congressman to launder bribe money. Strother, who worked off and on for Cuellar from 2003 to 2021, might know a great deal. He appears in the indictment as “Individual-4,” described as “campaign manager and former chief of staff,” and was said to have acted as a conduit for secret $10,000 monthly payments from a Mexican bank to Imelda Cuellar for nearly two years between 2016 and 2017. The Cuellars also stand accused of accepting bribes from the government of Azerbaijan in exchange for political favors. Strother, notably, also ran a “dark money” group that supported Cuellar. That nonprofit, called the “Voter Education Foundation,” doesn’t have to disclose its donors, and it ran ads attacking Cuellar’s progressive opponent during the hotly contested 2022 Democratic primary, starting just weeks before the FBI raided Cuellar’s campaign office. The VEF was created in 2020, but IRS records show that its nonprofit status was revoked last year after the group failed to file any tax returns. Changing his stripes. After achieving fame as the star of the Netflix series Tiger King, Joseph Maldonado-Passage, a.k.a. Joe Exotic, is no longer fundraising for his quixotic presidential bid. Exotic’s campaign committee filed a termination report last week. Raw Story first reported the news, prompting Exotic’s agent to confirm that the campaign would not raise any more money. He added that the candidate is still seeking write-in votes. Exotic is currently serving a 22-year federal sentence on murder-for-hire charges and numerous counts of wildlife-related crime. He launched a libertarian presidential bid last March, before quickly switching to the Democratic Party. But it’s not like the campaign was going anywhere. According to FEC data, the final donations to his committee amounted to several hundred dollars from Exotic’s running mate, Thomas Wolf. Meanwhile, the bulk of the committee’s spending went to campaign merch like bumper stickers and T-shirts. Not all of it, though—the campaign last year sent $190 to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the cost of the prison email fees required to send thank you cards to donors. Beer money. With just days to go before Maryland voters cast their ballots, the already record-setting Senate primary battle is growing even more costly. Democratic Rep. David Trone had already become one of the top self-funders in Senate primary history, with the Total Wine & More founder pouring almost $42 million into his candidacy as of last month. According to a filing this week, Trone isn’t letting up, putting another $4.5 million into his campaign on Monday, eight days before primary day, on top of another $3.15 million at the tail end of April. Trone is locked in a bitter primary fight with Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks, who has brought in far less money but who has notched the endorsements of several prominent Maryland Democrats and black political leaders, including Gov. Wes Moore. Alsobrooks was also the beneficiary of some late spending this week, though it pales in comparison to the scale and duration of Trone’s investment. Women Vote!, a super PAC affiliated with EMILY’s List, recently launched a $2 million anti-Trone ad buy, with FEC records indicating the spending is split between TV and digital. Party’s over. The Tea Party conservative organization FreedomWorks, founded four decades ago with ties to a Koch-backed group, shut down this week. In an interview with Politico, the group’s president blamed the ideological divisions of the Trump era, citing MAGA activists whose preferred policies did not align with the libertarian priorities of free trade, small government, and opportunities for immigrants. With staff’s last day of work set for Wednesday, FreedomWorks PAC on Tuesday filed a termination report. The committee emptied its coffers, spending $1,000 on compliance consulting and funneling the rest of it—just over $91,000—to FreedomWorks Inc. as a charitable contribution. An associated PAC, FreedomWorks Victory 2023, filed a termination report at the beginning of April. The super PAC FreedomWorks for America submitted its quarterly filing on schedule last month and has not yet filed a termination report. As Politico reported, the group’s demise was the result of a significant drop in fundraising. FreedomWorks’ president told Politico that revenue had dropped by half over the last two years, amounting to around $8 million in total. Opening the floodgates. The FEC commissioners have made some notable recent moves, one of which allows candidates to raise unlimited money—including foreign money—for state ballot initiatives, and another proposes potentially sweeping exemptions to donor disclosure requirements. The ballot fundraising decision came in response to a request from a Nevada abortion rights group, and, as The New York Times reported, could amplify Biden’s cash influence in a number of states currently considering abortion legislation. However, the FEC saw pushback from a pair of unlikely allies—government transparency advocates at Campaign Legal Center, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. The NRSC had specifically expressed concerns that the new ballot fundraising rules could open a new channel for foreign money into U.S. elections, arguing that the proposed language was too broad and did not account for the many states that have not independently banned foreign contributions from ballot measures. That language, the NRSC argued, “would permit federal candidates and officeholders to solicit unlimited funds from foreign nationals on behalf of ballot measure committees—funds that ballot measure committees could then spend on federal election activity boosting the soliciting federal candidates.” The FEC approved the new opinion 4-2. In a separate development last Friday, Trump-appointed commissioner Allen Dickerson proposed possibly revolutionary new donor disclosure exemptions. If approved, Dickerson’s proposal would allow campaigns, PACs, and party committees to withhold or disguise the names of their donors, as long as they can show a “reasonable probability” that disclosure might lead to “threats” or “harassment.” Additional language in the proposal indicates that the public would not know if these exemptions were even granted. This policy would potentially shelter corporate donors who might want to grease the wheels with certain powerful but unpalatable politicians, but who wouldn’t want to be “harassed” for it by an outraged public (or shareholders). The proposal could also have an inverted effect, disproportionately awarding anonymity to the most extreme, fringe groups, where potential donors might otherwise have wanted to avoid the risk of public exposure. Dickerson’s idea would remove social barriers to extremist support and potentially put a thumb on the scale for those groups to raise more money—including from corporate backers who would otherwise be shamed out of it. Dickerson asked the full commission to vote on his idea at their May 16 meeting. |