“As a donor to WeBuildTheWall, I humbly ask you to support my run for the Senate,” Kobach’s email pleaded. The email provided links to the campaign’s official fundraising page and asked for “a financial contribution of $50, $100, $250, $500, or any amount up to the maximum of $2,800 per individual.”The solicitation likely violated federal campaign finance laws, according to Paul S. Ryan, the vice president for policy and litigation at the group Common Cause.
“At a minimum, this Kobach for Senate fundraising solicitation email appears to violate the ‘paid for by’ disclaimer requirement” for official campaign communications, Ryan said in an email, referencing the requirement that campaigns clearly disclose the financial sponsors—generally the campaigns themselves—behind official political communications.
The We Build The Wall organization has faced significant legal challenges. Its goal is to use private funds to build a wall along the southern border. Its fundraiser for the purpose went viral among MAGA types, and it raised $22 million. Since then, it claims to have built a half-mile of border wall on private land in New Mexico, but it’s since gotten a cease-and-desist letter from the city because the wall violates city code.
The barrier also surpasses the city ordinance’s maximum allowed height of six feet, Perea added, meaning [fundraiser Brian] Kolfage’s wall is “not in compliance."City officials issued a cease-and-desist order Tuesday as lawmakers condemned construction efforts. In a statement to the Silver City Sun News, El-Paso-based Democrat Rep. Veronica Escobar took particular aim at Kobach and Bannon.
“It’s deeply disturbing when outsiders, like Kris Kobach and Steve Bannon, come in and use our community and people as a backdrop to further their racist agenda,” Escobar said. “It’s even more disturbing that a business in our community is furthering this xenophobic narrative. While this wall may be necessary fuel for the president’s political campaign, it will not prevent people from seeking asylum.”
In neighboring Missouri, former Gov. Eric Greitens was indicted for similar use of an email list from a nonprofit organization he ran.
Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens was indicted Friday on suspicion of stealing an electronic list of donors to the pro-veterans charity he founded in order to raise money for his political career, prosecutors say.The new charge against the Republican governor comes at the tail end of the three-year statute of limitations, St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner said in a news release.
According to a probable cause statement, Greitens instructed the April 22, 2015, disclosure of a donor list owned by the Mission Continues, a nonprofit Greitens founded, without the charity's permission.
That charge was dismissed when Greitens resigned. He also stood accused of blackmailing a woman he’d had an affair with after he took nude photos of her without her permission and threatened to release them publicly if she ever told anyone of the affair.
Needless to say, prosecutors should be looking at Kobach’s fundraising through the nonprofit. Based on the reporting from the Daily Beast, it seems clear that the blurring of the lines between Kobach’s campaign and the nonprofit are at a minimum worth more scrutiny, possibly rising to the level of a felony.
“You’ll sometimes see a campaign paying to rent a c4’s list, but that’s clearly not what’s happening here,” said Brendan Fischer, the director of federal reforms at the Campaign Legal Center. “[T]he content of the message describing a We Build the Wall event and the logo at top make clear it is an official communication from the c4 itself.”In the email, Kobach even compares his role as the nonprofit’s top lawyer to the one he hopes to play in the upper chamber of America’s legislature, writing, “I'm [sic] want to represent you in the United States States [sic] the same way I'm going to continue to represent WeBuildTheWall as General Counsel.”
Kansans were already tired of Kobach embarrassing the state with one legal misfire after another. As secretary of state, Kobach worked tirelessly to make sure as many people as possible lost the right to vote. He used his Crosscheck voter system, which flagged allegedly questionable voter registrations, to systematically kick voters off the voter rolls by demanding they present proof of citizenship, voters who happened to have names like Garcia and Jackson.
He also tried to create a two-tier voting system, one that would allow people to vote in federal elections (because of the constitutional right to vote), but not in state elections if they didn’t jump through his citizenship hoops. He was essentially laughed out of court. Again. His performance in court defending these laws was so bad, and his paperwork filled with so many errors, that a federal judge ordered Kobach to take remedial legal classes.
He is also the man who was the architect of the most racist law in modern American history, Arizona’s S.B. 1070, which allowed law enforcement officers to stop anyone they pleased to demand citizenship paperwork on the spot and indefinitely detain them if they didn’t carry their birth certificate or citizenship paperwork with them. Nicknamed “Papers Please,” the law meant that officers could detain an entire family. Kobach hoped to take it nationwide. Indeed, it does seem similar to what ICE and Trump are now doing, doesn’t it?
And with all of that, please enjoy this just-released video from Kris Kobach in which he spends five full minutes waving around an empty coffee mug while helpfully explaining that all the articles about him being a super-duper racist are wrong.
