Source: https://www.lawandpoliticsupdate.com/
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 10:29:44+00:00

Document:
Below are links to key pleadings and other documents related to United States v. Cohen, in which Michael Cohen, the President’s former private lawyer, pleaded guilty to willfully causing an unlawful corporate contribution and making an excessive contribution to the President’s campaign. Also below are links to some of the key court documents in United States v. Edwards, in which John Edwards, the former U.S. senator and presidential candidate, was acquitted on a charge that he accepted an illegal campaign contribution, and was not convicted on five other, related charges.
These documents present facts and legal arguments on which the U.S. Department of Justice relied to prosecute these cases under the Federal Election Campaign Act. The defense’s motions in the Edwards case present contrasting arguments.
The rise of social media has brought multiple, recent charges of forgery and fraud in the dissemination of political attacks. The nature of such attacks is nothing new. Since the dawn of American elections, candidates have seen their words, views, and deeds fraudulently portrayed by political enemies. During the 1972 presidential election, an aide to Richard Nixon reportedly wrote a false letter to the editor of the Manchester Union Leader claiming that Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine, a candidate for the Democratic Party nomination, laughed at the use of an ethnic slur against Americans of French-Canadian descent. In 1880, a New York newspaper published a fraudulent letter, allegedly written by presidential candidate James A. Garfield, stating Garfield’s support for unrestricted Chinese immigration.
However, technology is making it easier and cheaper to develop these sorts of spurious attacks—and harder to quickly debunk them. Researchers and software companies are refining and commercializing tools, colloquially referred to as Photoshop-for-Voice, that will allow users to create realistic audio and video files of people saying things they have never actually said. Other emerging technologies will allow users to modify a person’s facial expression in real-time. Normal hardware and cheap software will allow anyone to create and manipulate these sounds and images. Through social media platforms, they can be distributed anonymously, instantaneously and widely.
How well can the law keep up with these developments? There are serious First Amendment issues involved. The cases distinguish between parodies and impersonations of candidates and public figures on the one hand, and malicious attempts to mislead viewers about the words and deeds of these figures on the other. But they do not always do so easily, as the Supreme Court signaled three years ago in Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus, when it allowed a First Amendment challenge to proceed against an Ohio statute that punished malicious campaign false statements. (The Sixth Circuit later struck down the Ohio law.) An aggrieved candidate might seek relief against a fraudulent attack under general federal or state anti-fraud or intellectual property laws, but time pressures and First Amendment protections can make their chances slim, even if the culprit can be found.
The federal campaign finance laws offer little more help. At the end of 2017, the Federal Election Commission recommended again to Congress that it broaden the federal statute that targets certain, narrow types of campaign fraud. 52 U.S.C. § 30124(a)(1) prohibits federal candidates, their employees and agents from “fraudulently misrepresenting” that they speak, write, or act “for or on behalf of any other candidate or political party . . . on a matter which is damaging” to such person or entity. However, this measure does not cover activities by independent actors. The FEC wants the statute to “encompass all persons purporting to act on behalf of candidates” and other political organizations, and it seeks to eliminate the requirement that such fraudulent activity pertain only to a matter that is “damaging.” But there has been no movement on this topic in the past, and little sign of any to come.
The best remedy for the aggrieved campaign may be self-help. As it becomes harder to detect fake audio and video, campaigns, parties and media outlets may increasingly turn to forensic experts to verify or debunk the damaging files. As with the forgery of fine art and currency, a technological arms race may develop between those who produce fake content, and those employed to spot the fakes. Candidates may also seize on growing uncertainty about what is real to keep attacks from reaching critical mass. More than ever, a major campaign in 2018 will need an integrated legal, research, communications and technological strategy to survive in a world where increasingly, it seems, nothing is real.
The lesson to the Nation … is the necessity for the abolition of the Caucus System, which, in whatever party organization operative, is a system of swindling, by which the people are defrauded out of the effective exercise of the right of suffrage. There is no honesty in caucuses … The revenues of King Caucus are corruption funds … If a Republican form of government is to be preserved … the people must make a bonfire of his throne.
Can Chicago’s experience in 1860 repeat itself in Cleveland in 2016? One recent commentator suggested that, after the first ballot, presidential contenders “would engage in a fierce lobbying battle for delegates, wooing them with ideological sweet talk, political promises and anything else they have to offer.” Another projected that, on the third ballot, the “delegations will be a hotbed of rumors, deals and rumored deals.” A third suggested that candidates may lure support by offering Cabinet posts, lucrative consulting contracts, and hard cash for votes. One need not watch House of Cards to imagine candidates, top aides, party leaders, and donors fanning out across the floor of the Quicken Loans Arena and hitting the phones to determine the cost of securing the support of delegates, party leaders, and donors. From this perspective, the issues of money and access loom much larger than when conventions were simply derided as “unabashed festivals of corporate cash.” The restrictions that Congress placed on lobbyist-paid events seem quaint when applied to what some think may happen in Cleveland.
But the law is far less forgiving in 2016 than in 1860. Had Lincoln’s convention manager and future Supreme Court appointee, David Davis, been active today, he might have found his way to the Court as a defendant instead of a justice. The federal criminal code at 18 U.S.C. § 599 prohibits candidates from promising to appoint, or using their influence to appoint, any person to any public or private position or employment, “for the purpose of procuring support in his candidacy.” An accompanying provision establishes criminal consequences for promising employment, positions, contracts, appointments or other benefits resulting from congressional action as consideration or reward for political activity or support in connection with general elections, primary elections, or political conventions or caucuses. The Hobbs Act bars extortion affecting interstate commerce and has been used to prosecute various cases of public corruption. Multiple provisions prohibit individuals from offering cash or things of value in exchange for votes. And, finally, the campaign finance laws create avenues for identifying and prosecuting unreported or misreported contributions.
One cannot casually dismiss the viability or constitutionality of these statutes. To do so would depend mainly on an energetic reading of a 1982 decision, Brown v. Hartlage. There, the Supreme Court struck down a Kentucky law as it applied to the nullification of an election result because a candidate pledged to cut his own compensation, if elected, by $3,000. But the Brown candidate’s civic-minded pledge to drain his own pockets is plainly distinguishable from a corrupt attempt to fill someone else’s.
Moreover, these laws, and others besides, operate against a backdrop in which courts and prosecutors have focused closely on electoral transparency and integrity and the protection of “merit-based administration.” The Supreme Court has recognized the legitimacy of regulations “upholding the integrity of the electoral process” and stated plainly that “some kinds of promises made by a candidate  and some kinds of promises elicited by voters from candidates  may be declared illegal without constitutional difficulty.” The Justice Department has asserted that the Hobbs Act can apply to promises of future official action, and its Office of Legal Counsel pronounced in 1980 that the law might be violated “if people were promised employment or special consideration for employment  as an enticement or reward for future political activity or support of a party or candidate.” If a candidate may not offer a primary voter or caucusgoer pecuniary benefits without impermissibly commercializing the voting process, under what logic may a candidate offer such benefits to a delegate standing in the shoes of thousands or tens of thousands of voters?
The general trends toward criminalization of the political process and aggressive enforcement of the bribery laws raise the possibility that a brokered convention could bring these same laws into play, even if the convention in Cleveland more closely resembles the one on The West Wing than the one on House of Cards, or the one in Chicago in 1860. “Exploiting the political process for personal gain will not be tolerated, and we will continue to pursue those who commit such illegal actions.” This is what the Justice Department declared in 2014, when an Iowa state senator pled guilty to concealing payments he received to switch his presidential endorsement before the Iowa caucuses. The Iowa endorsement-buying case is a very good example of where a conspicuous lack of transparency in the political process fueled criminal prosecution. The conventions have long been a lightning rod for reform. This summer, the wattage may be higher.
1 Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (2008), available at: https://www.knox.edu/about-knox/lincoln-studies-center/burlingame-abraham-lincoln-a-life.
2 Three Against Lincoln: Murat Halstead Reports the Caucuses of 1860, at 27 (William B. Hesseltine, ed., Louisiana U. Press, 1960).
The Federal Election Commission met on Thursday, October 1. The agenda included two advisory opinion requests, discussion about whether to ban foreign national contributions to state and local ballot measures, and a notice of proposed rulemaking on reporting multistate independent expenditures and electioneering communications on presidential primary elections.

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