The Campaign Legal Center (CLC), a Washington, DC-based election law non-profit, filed a complaint with the Federal Election Committee (FEC) Wednesday over Hillary for America and the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) conduct in commissioning the infamous “pee-pee dossier.”
According to the CLC, the Clinton campaign and the DNC violated federal law when they “failed to accurately disclose the purpose and recipient of payments for the dossier of research alleging connections between then-candidate Donald Trump and Russia, effectively hiding these payments from public scrutiny.”
The complaint alleges:
[T]he DNC and Hillary for America reported dozens of payments totaling millions of dollars to the law firm Perkins Coie with the purpose described as “Legal Services” or “Legal Compliance Consulting,” when in reality, those payments were earmarked for the firm Fusion GPS, with the purpose of conducting opposition research on Donald Trump.
Citing FEC statements of policy that the “purpose of disbursement” section on campaign disclosure forms “must be sufficiently specific to make the purpose of the disbursement clear,” CLC is arguing these facts constitute a violation of federal election law.
By no means a right-leaning organization, the officially non-partisan CLC, has taken donations from left-wing activist billionaire George Soros, is still partly funded by a Soros family foundation, and lists opposing the effects of the Citizens United decision as part of its raison d’etre.
The group is most well-known in conservative circles for playing a leading role in urging Lois Lerner’s IRS to investigate Tea Party groups in 2010 and 2011. The CLC recently filed an IRS complaint against Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore’s religious foundation and hired a prominent Obama administration official as its senior ethics director.
Any citizen or group may make a complaint to the FEC, which, if it finds reason to believe the complaint raises serious likelihood of election law violations, begins its own investigation.
Perkins Cole attorney Marc Elias repeatedly lied to mainstream media reporters investigating the dossier, denying long-running rumors that Hillary Clinton and Democrats were behind the document then-FBI Director James Comey called “salacious and unverified.” The Washington Post confirmed those rumors were entirely true Tuesday in a bombshell report that further collapses the Trump-Russia collusion narrative.
In that narrative’s place, one of wrongdoing and perhaps collusion with Russian intelligence officials on the part of Democrats, Clinton campaign surrogates, and possibly, given reports of FBI payments to the dossier’s creator, elements of the Obama era Justice Department, is forming.
Wednesday’s CLC complaint adds another element to allegations of election law violations amid the clouds brewing over Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign’s conduct.