United States Congress 5: Still Looking for a Spine

[GreyhoundFan]

"Senate Republicans: Cheap dates and small men"

Spoiler

As of this writing only four Senate Republicans — Susan Collins of Maine, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Rand Paul of Kentucky — have agreed to support the resolution ending President Trump’s fraudulent emergency declaration. Tillis and Collins are up for reelection in 2020 in purple states, and Murkowski has been the least sycophantic Republican on major votes (e.g., repeal of Obamacare, confirmation of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh). Only Rand Paul in this group would be described as a solid conservative who has supported Trump regularly on policy but here takes a principled stance based on constitutional principles.

Oh sure, there are many more Republicans harrumphing and mumbling about being “uncomfortable” with a blatant power grab-- including staunch, self-proclaimed constitutional conservatives such as Sens. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Ben E. Sasse (R-Neb.) and moderates such as Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.). It remains unclear whether there will be any other votes to defend the Senate’s core legislative function. (The New York Times reported, “Senators Marco Rubio of Florida, Ted Cruz of Texas, and Mike Lee of Utah have all voiced concern on the constitutional question, though none of them has explicitly promised to overturn the emergency declaration.”) Now Cruz was just reelected, but with nearly six years before facing the electorate he’s skedaddled whenever reporters pressed him for an answer. In fact, of the six I just listed, only Inhofe and Sasse would possibly be on the ballot in 2020.

It’s possible the fourth “no” vote from Paul will allow others to step forward. I’d like to think every Republican senator I’ve mentioned and more who should know better will follow Paul, but the majority, maybe the overwhelming majority, of Republicans will — as they have on virtually everything else — stick with Trump.

Why do Republicans, even ones in safe seats and ones not facing the voters for years, shed any semblance of principle to show mindless fidelity to Trump?

It still amazes some voters. It shouldn’t. These are not political giants; you’ll find no Sen. J. William Fulbright or Hubert H. Humphrey in this crowd. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) died in 2018, the last lawmaker distinguished by his consistent refusal to put party above country and by his contempt for spineless courtiers. The Republicans who populate the Senate cannot imagine losing their perch; they live in fear of becoming politically irrelevant. They fear the wrath of the entire right-wing machine, which includes Trump, Fox News, radio talk show hosts, right-wing billionaire donors, utterly corrupt evangelical conservative leaders and intellectually hypocritical think tankers.

Such lawmakers will do just about anything to stay in the right wing’s good graces, which they perceive as essential to their retention of power. Some like Rubio had brushes with heresy (e.g., on immigration) but now have returned to servility.

The overwhelming number of Republicans do not believe they can defend themselves if they were to act independently — or fear even risking it. They generally know what Trump is saying is bunk (whether it is Trump’s latest conspiracy theory about the FBI or some uber-theory of executive power or his fear-mongering about immigrants), but they understand Trump’s grip on the base and figure it’s easier to echo Trump, snow voters whom they consider incapable of independent thought and just regurgitate the same garbage Trump spews.

Maybe Paul will shame a few into supporting the resolution. However, I fear Eliot Cohen is on the money when he writes:

They know, in their timid breasts, that they would have howled with indignation if Barack Obama had declared a national emergency in such a circumstance. As they stare at their coffee cup at breakfast, the thought occurs to them that a future left-wing president could make dangerous use of these same powers—because Speaker Nancy Pelosi rubbed that fact in their face. Some of the brighter ones might even realize that emergency powers are a favored tool of authoritarians everywhere.

But they are afraid. They are afraid of being primaried. They are afraid of being called out by the bully whom they secretly despise but to whom they pledge public fealty. They are afraid of having to find another occupation than serving in elective office. And the most conceited of the lot—and there are quite a few of those, perhaps more in the Senate than in the House—think that it would be a tragedy if the country no longer had their service at its disposal.

You can call such pols them overly ambitious, but I wish their ambition was much grander. If only they yearned to make history, to walk in McCain’s footsteps, they might get a line in the history books. Unfortunately, if they are remembered at all, it will be for their docility in the face of an authoritarian president and for their willingness to disregard their oaths for the security of another term or a gig on Fox News after retirement or a cheesy award from some right-wing group. These are cheap dates and small men.

 

[AmazonGrace]

I also have sex with porn stars to express my love for my family.

[GreyhoundFan]

"The silly ways Republicans will defend keeping Trump’s tax returns secret"

Spoiler

President Trump really, really doesn’t want the public to see his tax returns. To keep them from view, he has endured a controversy that has now been running for three years, with all the attendant bad publicity and persistent questions, so it was obviously worth a great deal of political risk to make sure they remained secret.

Trump won’t stop fighting any release, but Democrats in Congress are getting ready to make their demand:

Congressional Democrats are likely to request 10 years of President Trump’s tax returns in coming weeks, tailoring their inquiry in a way they hope will survive a court battle, according to lawmakers and others involved in the discussions.

The exact parameters of the request are still in flux, including whether to seek tax returns related to Trump’s many business enterprises in addition to his personal returns.

But Democrats led by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.), along with congressional lawyers, are in the advanced stages of preparing the request. They’re relying on a 1924 law that gives chairmen of House and Senate tax-writing committees broad powers to demand the tax returns of White House officials.

Everything we have learned suggests that it is absolutely necessary to examine the Trump Organization’s returns as well, since Trump refused to divest himself of his assets as other presidents had done and, even as we speak, it serves as a conduit for all kinds of interested parties — both foreign and domestic — to put money in the president’s pocket.

When the Ways and Means Committee requests the returns, Trump apparently intends to order the treasury secretary to order the Internal Revenue Service to refuse to comply with the request, which will then set off a legal battle that will inevitably end up before the Supreme Court. If any kind of rational conception of law were to carry the day, Trump would lose by a 9-to-0 vote. The law in question is unambiguous: Congress can request any person’s tax returns. They have a compelling interest in doing so: to police corruption in the Oval Office. It’s not even a close call.

But there are five conservative justices on the court who have, in the past, shown themselves to be receptive to arguments based on the legal doctrine of “If the president is a Republican he gets to do what he wants.” So there’s no telling how the case will turn out.

Before that final decision is rendered, the president’s defenders will be called upon to argue passionately that the United States should, like Indy and Marion at the end of “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” shut tight its eyes and refuse to gaze upon the returns. So let’s run down some of the arguments they’re likely to make:

Democrats are just hoping to find something incriminating! Indeed, they are. Just as the cops are hoping to find something incriminating when they search a suspect’s house. But if the search is legitimate and is carried out professionally, that’s perfectly fine. And if nothing incriminating is found, won’t Trump be vindicated?

He won the 2016 election, which means nobody cares! Actually, lots of people care. The latest Quinnipiac poll finds that 64 percent of Americans say he should release the returns.

If they can get his tax returns, they can get anybody’s! Like whose? If Congress has a legitimate reason to get anyone’s returns, it can. It’s not requesting them just because they’re curious, and next it will be asking for Katy Perry’s. Trump’s returns are relevant to multiple congressional investigations that either have already begun or will soon begin.

Trump has a right to privacy! Not really. We ask presidents to give up their privacy in all kinds of ways — including by filing financial disclosures — because the stakes for the country are extremely high. But Trump’s finances are so complex, and the consequences of corruption in his position so profound, that only his tax returns can give us something like a full picture of whether he has conflicts of interest.

You can’t release returns while you’re under audit! This is what Trump has argued since the 2016 campaign, and it’s just bogus. He is free to release them. And, after all, the IRS knows what’s in them since it’s the IRS. And the IRS audits the returns of every president and vice president every year they’re in office, which never stopped previous presidents from releasing them.

There is one thing Trump can be thankful for: If we’re only able to see the last 10 years of his returns, we won’t be able to learn more about the massive tax fraud that he and his family engaged in during the 1990s, a story the New York Times broke last October after obtaining Fred Trump’s business records. Those records showed that Fred Trump and his children, including Donald, defrauded the Treasury of hundreds of millions of dollars with a stunning variety of tax-evasion schemes; the statute of limitations has run out, so fortunately for him there’s no possibility of prosecution, at least on that score.

But let’s be honest: If Trump’s tax returns would reveal nothing more than that he’s a shrewd businessman who has amassed great wealth and gives generously to charity, he would have mailed a copy of those returns to every household in the United States. It’s precisely because they could provide evidence of wrongdoing, conflicts of interest and perhaps even lawbreaking that he is so determined to keep them secret. His defenders in the administration, in Congress, and in the conservative media understand that perfectly well.

Which is why they’re going to squeal like pigs that it is a terrible thing to let the public see what’s in the Trump’s returns. That is, until we actually see what’s inside and they can no longer justify having thought that we shouldn’t be able to know where the president gets his money and what he does with it.

 

[formergothardite]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

t’s precisely because they could provide evidence of wrongdoing, conflicts of interest and perhaps even lawbreaking that he is so determined to keep them secret.

I strongly suspect that one of the big reasons he wants them secret is because they will reveal that he isn't slightly as rich as he claims. Being revealed to not be super rich will be a massive blow to his delicate ego. 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[fraurosena]

5 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

Because if he let them vote on the bill and it passes, he knows his chances, and those of his fellow repugliklans, of re-election are nil if too many people vote.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

Next up, a senator from Florida is concerned that  Hamlet shakes pear.

 

[fraurosena]

Basic reading comprehension tests should be mandatory for anyone wanting to attain public office. One of the biggest problems America has is that you have idiots running the asylum.

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

As if we didn't already know that Marco is an idiot:

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[formergothardite]

Something has to be done about these lifetime judges. I can see why it was thought to be a good idea, but right now our entire court system is corrupted and will be corrupted for a very, very long time if people get to stay for life. 

[GreyhoundFan]

A good one from Dana Milbank: "This is how submissive Republicans have become to Trump"

Spoiler

This is how far Republicans will go in submissiveness to President Trump: They will vote to surrender military spending projects in their own home states and districts to avoid displeasing him.

A majority of Republicans in the Senate will vote to do just that this week. In upholding Trump’s emergency declaration, they are giving him blanket authority to take $3.6 billion from any of nearly 400 already approved military construction projects of his choosing in 43 states — and to spend it on a border wall. House Republicans already voted to put their districts’ military spending projects on the block.

The administration has avoided saying, beyond vague guidelines, which projects it will defund before lawmakers vote on overturning his emergency declaration. The Pentagon has already said it will take $1 billion from personnel funds meant for recruiting and pensions, part of a $6 billion overall raid on the Defense Department for the border wall.

Leave aside the constitutional and legal arguments, Trump’s politicization of the military and the long-term damage caused (Congress is likely to respond to the abuse by denying the Pentagon all such “reprogramming” authority in the future), and you’re left with a raw display of Trump’s power over Republican lawmakers: They would sooner take away money already promised to military families and constituents than anger Trump.

Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) will decide whether to put on the chopping block six projects at Buckley and Schriever Air Force bases and at Fort Carson worth more than $100 million.

Sen. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.), who, like Gardner, is expected to face a tough election next year, will choose whether to offer for sacrifice seven projects at Luke and Davis-Monthan Air Force bases, Fort Huachuca, Camp Navajo and elsewhere worth tens of millions of dollars.

Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) will decide whether to offer up 11 projects — for air traffic, cyberprotection and training facilities. and more — at Robins Air Force Base, Fort Gordon, Fort Benning and elsewhere.

Sen. Richard J. Durbin (Ill.), the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, compiled a list of several hundred “unobligated” — potentially vulnerable — military construction projects and told reporters Tuesday that 20 percent would need to be axed to get to $3.6 billion.

Among those Durbin and colleagues pointed to: a new rifle range for Marines at Parris Island, S.C.; a Special Forces training center at Fort Bragg, N.C.; a missile interceptor field at Fort Greely, Alaska; and a middle school for military families at Fort Campbell — one of seven projects at risk in Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s Kentucky.

Sen. Jack Reed (R.I.), the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee and a veteran, accused the Pentagon of either “misinformation or incompetence” in refusing to say which projects it will defund.

It’s certainly not the first instance of Trump pulling Republicans from their moorings. The one-time party of fiscal discipline just received a budget from Trump proposing years of trillion-dollar deficits. The party of free trade is now condoning Trump’s trade wars. The party of law and order blesses Trump’s attacks on the Justice Department and the FBI, and the party of personal responsibility accepts his payment of hush money to an adult-film actress. The party of internationalism complies with Trump’s rapid pullouts from Afghanistan and Syria, leaving former vice president Richard B. Cheney to fume privately to Vice President Pence about Trump snubbing allies and cozying up to autocrats. A party that professed a commitment to the United States’ social compact is now silent as Trump proposes deep cuts to Medicare.

Now we see the party of limited government assenting to executive overreach — potentially at the expense of their own constituents.

In the House, all but 13 Republicans did so. Rep. Don Young (Alaska), for example, voted to put projects on the chopping block worth some $287 million in his state. Rep. Lee Zeldin (N.Y.) offered up a $20 million project for a National Guard base in his district. Reps. George Holding, Richard Hudson and others in North Carolina would sacrifice more than $42 million at Fort Bragg. Rep. Chip Roy (Tex.) voted to put $35 million at Joint Base San Antonio in play, and Rep. Dusty Johnson (S.D.) offered up $15 million for a National Guard center.

Maybe Trump really convinced them of the need to pilfer from the military in support of an emergency declaration that the president himself said was unnecessary. More likely, they are frightened of crossing a man who warns that those who do “put themselves at great jeopardy.” Either way, it’s not that these lawmakers are ignoring their constituents — it’s that they are heeding a constituency of one.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"After Republicans prostrate themselves before Trump, he humiliates them further"

Spoiler

As we noted earlier, Senate Republicans have been searching for a way out of a very difficult jam. They will be forced to vote Thursday on President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency. Yet, with four of them apparently ready to vote to terminate the emergency, this will mean Trump would have to veto the measure, enraging both the president and his voters.

So Republicans hit on a preposterously absurd scheme, in which they would vote on a measure that would place limits on future national emergencies — by requiring regular congressional votes to keep them going — without placing any limits on this particular one. This was supposed to give cover to Republicans, enabling them to stand with Trump’s national emergency while creating the impression that they are generally concerned by the issues raised by the president’s abuse of power.

But it now turns out that Trump is killing this effort, too. As Politico reported on Wednesday:

President Donald Trump scuttled a final effort by Senate Republicans to avoid an intraparty clash on his emergency declaration this week, a move that could juice the number of GOP senators that vote to rebuke Trump on the floor.

The president delivered the news in a phone call to Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) during a Republican lunch on Wednesday, according to three people familiar with the call. Trump told the Utah senator that he would not be able to endorse Lee’s effort to change the National Emergencies Act to require congressional approval of emergency declarations — derailing a push by Republicans to find some way out of a confrontation with the president. . . .

Republicans wanted Trump to endorse it and then would consider standing with him on the disapproval vote. It’s unclear whether that compromise would have caused the disapproval vote to fail, but it had the potential to significantly scale back defections.

Senate Republicans will now be forced to vote Thursday on the resolution terminating Trump’s national emergency because the House passed one recently, and under the law, the Senate is required to act on it. And Republicans will not be able to vote to limit national emergencies later, to give themselves political protection from Thursday’s vote.

To be clear on what just happened here, Republicans tried to come up with a way to give Trump the national emergency he wants, while also giving themselves a way to mitigate the political damage from it. And this does have the potential to be damaging: A new Politico/Morning Consult poll finds that only 38 percent of Americans favor the emergency declaration, while 52 percent oppose it. Independents oppose it by a 27-point margin (57 percent disapprove to 30 percent approve), and 46 percent of independents say they would be less likely to vote for a lawmaker who backs Trump on this.

That means senators up for reelection have to think about this vote. As Tyler Sinclair, Morning Consult’s vice president, puts it: “Backing Trump’s national emergency declaration could be politically toxic for senators up for reelection bids in 2020.”

It’s probably not an accident that two of the four Republican senators who are prepared to vote to terminate Trump’s national emergency — Susan Collins of Maine and Thom Tillis of North Carolina — are up for reelection next year. The effort to create an escape hatch, as ham-handed as it was, appeared designed to give Tillis a way to vote against terminating it. And it appeared to be close to working: Tillis was reportedly thinking of changing his position, which would sink the termination measure, avoiding a veto.

Yet Trump has now pulled away the football. It’s not clear why the president opposes the compromise measure; one reasonable guess is that he doesn’t want any limits on his future use of emergency powers.

But whatever the motive, consider the plight of poor Tillis. Last month, he put out a lengthy statement expressing grave concern about how Trump’s national emergency would further damage the separation of powers (Trump’s declaration came explicitly because Congress wouldn’t hand over funding for his border wall) and aggrandize executive power.

After this expression of extreme seriousness, Tillis was prepared to support an escape-hatch measure that would put limits on national emergencies (which in itself is a good thing), yet at the same time would literally exempt this national emergency from those limits. In effect, this would have amounted to a straight up declaration that Trump is abusing his power — yet he should be permitted to get away with it just this once. But Trump killed the effort.

All of this is moot, in a way, because even if the Senate does vote to terminate Trump’s national emergency, he’ll veto that, and the veto won’t get overridden. And many Republican senators will be just fine with this — all but four are set to vote against terminating it — because they simply don’t see any problem with Trump exercising national-emergency powers to circumvent them based on an invented rationale. They think Trump should do this.

Still, you’d think this affair would be chastening to senators such as Tillis (and any others who had real concerns about what Trump is doing). They had tried to conjure a clever way to give Trump what he wants while (minimally) protecting themselves from the stain of it all. Yet Trump wouldn’t even let them do that. The result is that for a senator such as Tillis, this latest turn undercuts the seriousness he had hoped to project all along.

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

It seems Lindsey has caught Dumpy-Twitteritis:

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

Rachel reads Strzok and Page transcripts. 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

From conservative columnist Max Boot: "The GOP’s declaration of moral bankruptcy"

Spoiler

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.

“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”

That famous exchange from Ernest Hemingway’s novel “The Sun Also Rises” comes to mind when contemplating the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the Republican Party.

You can debate when the GOP’s road to ruin began. I believe it was more than a half century ago, when Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon showed their willingness to pander to racists to wrest the segregationist South from the Democrats. The party’s descent accelerated with the emergence of Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich and Fox News in the 1990s, of Sarah Palin in the 2000s, and of Ted Cruz and the tea party in the 2010s. There were still figures of integrity and decency such as John McCain, Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush. But the GOP evinced no more enthusiasm for any of them than it had for George H.W. Bush. With the election of Donald Trump in 2016, the party’s plunge into purgatory picked up momentum.

Republicans now found themselves making excuses for a boorish, ignorant demagogue who had no respect for the fundamental norms of democracy and no adherence to conservative principles. The party of fiscal conservatism excused a profligate president who added $2 trillion in debt and counting. The party of family values became cheerleaders for what Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg has witheringly and accurately called the “porn star presidency.” The party of law and order became accomplices to the president’s obstruction of justice. The party of free trade did nothing to stop the president from launching trade wars. The party of moral clarity barely uttered a peep at the president’s sickening sycophancy toward the worst dictators on the planet — or his equally nauseating attacks on America’s closest allies. The party that once championed immigration eagerly joined in the president’s xenophobic attacks on refugee caravans. And the party that long castigated Democrats for dividing Americans by race pretended not to notice — or even cheered — when the president made openly racist appeals to white voters.

Faster and faster went the GOP’s descent into oblivion. Now its bankruptcy is complete. It has no more moral capital left. The Republican Party as we once knew it — as a party of limited government — officially ended on March 14.

That was the day that 41 of 53 Republican senators voted to ratify President Trump’s blatantly unconstitutional and transparently cynical declaration of a national emergency so that he can spend money for a border wall that Congress refuses to appropriate. This comes 16 days after 182 out of 195 House Republicans voted the same way. Only 13 Republicans in the House and 12 in the Senate dared to block this flagrant assault on the Constitution. So only 10 percent of Republicans in Congress have any — any — principles left. By an interesting coincidence, that’s also the percentage of Republican voters who disapprove of Trump. The party of Lincoln — the party that freed the slaves and helped to win the Cold War — is now devoted exclusively to feeding Trump’s insatiable ego and pandering to his endless lust for power.

And to think that some commentators hailed the Senate’s abysmal failure to muster a veto-proof majority as a victory for principle because, why, 12 whole Republicans dared to defy their supreme leader. There were indeed some pleasant surprises in that list, such as Roy Blunt (Mo.), a member of the Senate leadership, and Roger Wicker (Miss.), who typically votes with robotic predictability for whatever Trump desires.

But only one Republican who is up for reelection next year — Susan Collins (Maine) — had the guts to defy the president. Other senators stared into the abyss and blinked. Ben Sasse (Neb.), who prides himself on his devotion to the Constitution and his independence from Trump, was among the sellouts. No one should take his claims to be a serious person seriously ever again. So too supposed constitutional conservatives such as Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), Charles E. Grassley (Iowa), Cory Gardner (Colo.) and John Cornyn (Tex.) revealed themselves to be rank hypocrites and craven partisans. We ask soldiers to risk their lives to defend the Constitution, but these cowards would not even risk their political careers.

Cruz (Tex.) was a particularly choice study in situational ethics. He thundered in 2014 that “it’s incumbent on Republicans in Congress to use every single tool we have to defend the rule of law, to rein in the president, so that the president does not become an unaccountable monarch imposing his policies.” But his devotion to the rule of law ended with the Obama presidency.

Somehow Thom Tillis (N.C.) managed the difficult feat of making himself even more ridiculous than Cruz. As recently as March 5, he proclaimed his intention to vote against the state of emergency. “It’s never a tough vote for me,” he said, “when I’m standing on principle.” Turns out reelection mattered more to him than any principle. Facing threats of a primary challenge next year, he folded like an accordion.

Trump won’t be president forever — he could be gone in less than two years. The GOP can always find a new leader. But where will it find new principles? Because it has none of the old ones left.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Typical Repug crap from Ernst and Lee. They act like they're doing something good for Americans, but it's actually a knife in every back:

 

[fraurosena]

Congressman Steve King is inciting violence. Looks like the repugliklans know they won't win the next election and are fully prepared to go to war in order to keep hold of power. Scary stuff.

[apple1]

Is that Steve King thing for real? I mean really? Has he lost his sanity - or is it an f***-you to his critics? ???

[GreyhoundFan]

"Ted Cruz campaign inaccurately reported loans from Goldman Sachs, Citibank, FEC says"

Spoiler

The Federal Election Commission has fined the 2012 Senate campaign of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) $35,000 for inaccurately reporting the source of more than $1 million in loans that came from Goldman Sachs and Citibank, according to records made public Friday.

Cruz’s campaign committee had reported to the FEC that the candidate loaned himself just over $1 million in “personal funds.” But the funds actually came from Goldman Sachs — his wife’s employer — and Citibank, the FEC concluded, according to a legally binding conciliatory agreement.

Cruz obtained an $800,000 loan from Goldman Sachs and a $264,000 line of credit from Citibank, the agreement says.

Candidate loans financed by commercial lenders or a line of credit must be reported to the FEC, which regulates federal campaign activity. The candidate must report specific information about the loans, including the interest rate and any collateral or other sources of repayment that helped the candidate secure the loan.

The Cruz campaign disclosed the loan accurately in personal financial disclosures filed with the Senate. But campaign committees must file separately with the FEC, reporting where their money came from and where it was spent.

The Cruz campaign has maintained that the reporting inaccuracy was an inadvertent omission.

“As has repeatedly been reported, the loans were public at the time and fully disclosed on Senate ethics disclosures, but they weren’t reported correctly on the FEC forms,” Catherine Frazier, Cruz’s campaign spokeswoman, said Friday. “This agreed settlement resolves that filing mistake once and for all.”

In a 2013 interview with the New York Times, Cruz said he and his wife agreed to “liquidate” their “entire net worth” to help pay for his 2012 run for the Senate.

The Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21, organizations that advocate for greater regulation of money in politics, filed a complaint against the Cruz campaign after the New York Times reported the discrepancy in a separate article in 2016.

Tara Malloy, senior director of appellate litigation and strategy at the Campaign Legal Center, said Friday that the FEC’s decision underscored the importance of disclosure laws and requirements for candidates to reveal sources of their campaign money to the public.

Cruz deprived voters of important information they may have wanted to know about the sources of his campaign funds, she said.

“The whole point of the disclosure laws is to require full and timely disclosure,” Malloy said. “The point of disclosure is not to allow the candidate to pick and choose what they disclose and when they disclose the sources of financing.”

 

[AmazonGrace]

Devin Nunes sued people for saying mean things about him on Twitter https://www.scribd.com/document/402297422/Nunes-Complaint-3-18-19