In the News

Washington Examiner: The strangest scenes from Mark Zuckerberg’s Senate testimony on Facebook

By Joe Albanese

The hearing was ostensibly about data privacy, but that subject (and the hearing’s more outlandish moments) are not the only reason Americans should care about Facebook. Zuckerberg’s exchanges with senators have important implications for political speech rights as well.

First, it’s worth noting the emerging consensus that the senators’ lines of questioning revealed startling ignorance about how Facebook even works. That hasn’t reduced their propensity to regulate that which they do not understand…

This ties into a crucial matter relating to free speech – the intermittent references to the so-called “Honest Ads Act,” which would impose regulations on broad swaths of political speech online. Senators like Tom Udall, D-N.M., did their best to connect the bill to Russian interference in U.S. elections. Despite this, by the sponsors’ own admission, the bill would restrict the 99.99 percent of online political ads purchased by Americans in order to address less than 0.01 percent purchased by foreigners in the 2016 cycle. The Internet is unique as an inexpensive and invaluable forum for allowing virtually anyone to express their viewpoints to the broader public. The Honest Ads Act would negate these benefits with burdensome reporting and disclaimer requirements. Even ads that are not targeted to the “relevant electorate” of an election would face these conditions, making the bill stricter than existing rules for large-scale TV and radio advertising.

Daily Caller: Remember Blago? SCOTUS Says He’s In Jail Until 2024

By Kevin Daley

A 1991 case called McCormick v. U.S. explains that extortion in the campaign contribution context is only unlawful when a politician accepts a donation in exchange for an explicit promise or undertaking. However, a different case, Evans v. U.S., makes it unlawful to accept a contribution knowing a donor made it with certain expectations.

His petition claims federal appeals courts are divided as to how to reconcile these two cases, while the government says Blagojevich’s lawyers are manufacturing a non-existent controversy. The Court is much more likely to intervene when multiple federal appellate courts disagree about the same question of law.

The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which sets precedent for the jurisdiction where Blagojevich was convicted, has embraced the weaker Evans standard. The former governor’s lawyers say the Supreme Court should clarify which case controls extortion prosecutions, toss out the conviction, and order a new trial.

Free speech advocates say the Evans standard is dangerous, and lends itself to prosecutorial overreach. The Institute for Free Speech submitted an amicus (or “friend-of-the-court”) brief urging the justices to take the case, arguing the Evans standard is so vague and overbroad that it allows prosecutors to bring cases based only on the subjective expectations of donors. They also fear it helps entrench incumbents, as it makes fundraising more difficult for first-time candidates.

Wall Street Journal: The Michael Cohen Raid

By Editorial Board

The probe into allegations of Trump campaign collusion with Russia has careened into a dive into the dumpster of a payoff to a porn actress to keep quiet about an alleged affair with Mr. Trump. This is the way of special prosecutors, and Washington now seems headed toward a fight-to-the-end between the President and his enemies.

The press is reporting that Mr. Cohen is being investigated for possible bank fraud and campaign-finance violations in connection to his $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels (née Stephanie Clifford ) in October 2016. Mr. Cohen said he made the payment as a personal favor for his friend and client, Mr. Trump.

But if the payment was intended to silence the actress to help Mr. Trump win the election, then it could be considered a campaign contribution that exceeded the donation limit in 2016. As Bradley Smith notes nearby, proving such a crime would be difficult, and former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards was acquitted in a similar case. But these days in politics anything can be criminalized.

Washington Post: Sean Hannity had a lot to say about Michael Cohen lately. But he left a few things out.

By Paul Farhi

On his syndicated radio and Fox TV show, Hannity has torn into special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential campaign, calling it a “witch hunt” in an echo of Trump’s rhetoric. He has also played down Cohen’s role in facilitating payments to Daniels.

On his program on Thursday, for example, he quoted former Federal Election Commission chairman Bradley Smith, a Republican, who disputed the notion that Cohen should be charged with a crime “in connection to this whole Stormy Daniels payment.”

Said Hannity: “Smith is arguing that Cohen’s payment is a perfectly legitimate business move, and that any attempt to connect it to an in-kind [political] contribution is an extreme stretch. It doesn’t fit.”

Congress

Seattle Times: Facebook hearings are not enough: Congress must act to defend democracy

By Rep. Derek Kilmer

Passing The Honest Ads Act is a no-brainer. Americans ought to know who’s paying for the political ads that show up in their newsfeeds. Even Zuckerberg supports it. In fact, Facebook announced it will voluntarily follow many of the steps the bill requires even if Congress fails to act. Twitter and Microsoft endorsed the Honest Ads Act, , too…

Beyond that, if Congress is serious about limiting the influence foreign actors and deep-pocketed special interests exert in America’s political system, it’s time to bring some other bills up for a vote as well.

For example, Congress should pass the DISCLOSE Act, which would strengthen political disclosure rules so Americans know exactly what group or person is donating to the candidates asking for their vote…

The president should fill critical vacancies at the FEC so it has what it needs to do its job this November. Congress could also make the FEC more effective by passing a bill I wrote with my fellow co-chair of the Bipartisan Working Group, Jim Renacci (R-Ohio), called the Restoring Integrity to America’s Elections Act. The bill would restructure the FEC to give it some teeth and break the near-constant deadlock the group’s current structure creates…

This is just a start. From reducing the power of special interests to unwinding the harmful Citizens United court decision, there’s plenty more to do to reduce the role of money in politics.

Internet Speech Regulation

National Review: Facebook Understands User Needs Better Than Congress Does

By Ryan Khurana

Zuckerberg responded to Congress’s concerns with remarks about how Facebook is proactively dealing with user issues, leaving little need for extensive government action.

These appearances boosted investor confidence in the company and assuaged fears of heavy-handed regulation of social media. Instead, we can expect more-limited regulations, such as the Honest Ads Act, which aims to increase the transparency of online political advertising.

On the issue of election meddling, Zuckerberg made clear that governments around the world have brought the issue to Facebook’s attention, and the company is working to address it. Facebook is boosting disclosure rules for issue ads to limit interference by malicious actors…

Weakening Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which shields online platforms from liability for user-generated content, was also suggested. This would make Facebook accountable if someone does something illegal on its platform. The result would be to increase Facebook’s tendency to censor users for fear of lawsuits, which would be damaging to free speech online.

Real Clear Politics: The Zuckerberg Hearings Prove Government Shouldn’t Regulate Facebook

By David Harsanyi

A number of panics have brought us to this preposterous place: the idea that Russian trolls on Facebook could swing the 2016 election and undermine our “democracy”; the idea that Facebook’s leftward bias is so corrosive that we should regulate it like a utility; and, finally, the general way in which social media tends to reveal the ugly side of human nature — which is indeed scary but has little to do with any particular platform…

[T]he rent-seeking Facebook desires more regulation. For one, it would make the state partially responsible for many of the company’s problems — meting out “fairness,” writing its user agreements and policing speech — but more importantly for Zuckerberg, it would add regulatory costs that Facebook could afford but upstart competition almost certainly could not…

The bigger ideological problem with the Facebook circus is that our politicians are acting as if being subjected to an opinion — or an ad — they dislike is some kind of attack on an individual’s rights…

The answer to quelling the outrage mob isn’t for the government to help Facebook entrench its position with some cronyistic regulation but to let Facebook fix itself or go the way of Myspace.

Corporate Speech

Reason: A Civil Rights Movement for Corporations? Inside the 400-Year Struggle: New at Reason (Video)

By Paul Detrick

You may want to rethink what you think you know about the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision.

A new book called We the Corporations by UCLA Law Professor Adam Winkler says the fight for corporate rights started hundreds of years before Citizens United. “The movement and struggle to win rights for corporations,” says Winkler, is “one of the least well-known yet most successful civil rights movements in American history.”

FEC

Fox News: FEC hit with lawsuit over ignoring civil complaint accusing Clinton, DNC in election scheme

By  Perry Chiaramonte

The Committee to Defend the President (CDP), a political action committee formally known as Stop Hillary PAC, filed its complaint with the FEC in December 2017 with the claims that the Hillary Victory Fund (HVF) solicited cash from big-name donors, and allegedly sent that money through state chapters and back to the DNC before ending up with the Clinton campaign…

On Monday, the CDP filed a lawsuit against the FEC with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. They claim that the commission failed to act, calling the inaction “arbitrary, capricious, contrary to law, and an abuse of discretion.”

A copy of the suit obtained by Fox News urges the court to exercise its statutory authority under the Federal Election Campaign Act and take action against what they say is an unprecedented scheme to circumvent federal campaign finance law.

Candidates and Campaigns 

The Intercept: GOP Primary Challenger Invents a George Soros Connection to Attack Incumbent Republican

By Zaid Jilani

Jones is facing a primary challenge from two Republicans. One of them, Craven County commissioner and lobbyist Scott Dacey, aired an ad titled “Walter Jones: Paid for by George Soros.”

The ad claims that Soros and his son Jonathan “fund every radical liberal cause, from banning guns to impeaching President Trump. And the politicians they bankroll, they’re all Democrats, except one: Walter Jones.” It goes on to insinuate Jones has received $80,000 from the Soros clan…

In order to make this claim, the ad and press release cite two things: Friends of Democracy, a Soros-linked PAC, and Democracy Engine, a donation processing tool that Friends of Democracy has used…

The Dacey campaign claims that the $80,000 is “Soros-backed” because the payments were processed through Democracy Engine, which is a payment processing service that was, at one point, used by Friends of Democracy.

Although Democracy Engine works with some progressive groups, it is billed as nonpartisan. The $80,000 was given by individual donors, none of whom happen to be named George or Jonathan Soros…

The Jones campaign, after looking at its internal records, noted that the only donation it received through the Friends of Democracy website during this campaign occurred on April 8, 2018. It was a total of $1, and it came from Kane, the spokesperson for Jones’s challenger Dacey.

Independent Groups

Bloomberg View: NRA Proves the Need for Campaign-Finance Reform

By Editorial Board

Exploiting lax campaign-finance law, and a Federal Election Commission that has all but abandoned its enforcement duties, anonymous donors have poured money into 501(c)(4) organizations that channel the funds not to “social welfare” but to partisan election activities. How much of that money is from foreign sources advancing the agendas of foreign businesses or rival nations? No one knows.

The DISCLOSE Act of 2017 would require organizations to report information to help determine sources of political funds, and ban campaign contributions and expenditures by corporations controlled, influenced or owned by foreign nationals. This would be a step forward — whether the groups support gun rights, gun regulations or don’t care about guns at all.