I Will Stop You

I think Trump has been worried that he might not get the old money Republicans to go along with his hare-brained schemes, so he's emphasizing his intentions to serve the plutocracy by telling us straight out that he's all for shit-canning every progressive policy that's been put in place since FDR.

• Privatize Social Security
• Voucherize Medicare
• Kill Obamacare outright
• Eliminate EPA and OSHA (and the departments of Energy and Education, et al)

In a democracy, even very poor people have power thru the various agencies and regulatory bodies that their votes got politicians to create, and push those politicians to maintain.

In a plutocracy, people who don't have the money don't have the power.

Say What Now?

There's a definite probability that Trump is trying to do his usual Pay-For-Play thing, but I think it's at least as likely that Trump turned against it because it signals an effort in Congress to get something done, and Trump's whole schtick is that nobody can do anything without him. ("Only I can fix it")

And of course, there's some probability that Trump is playing monkey in the middle again, setting up the conflict and looking for his profit opportunity, which kinda knits the whole thing together.

Steve Bannon Suggests Donald Trump Has Been Bought

Steve Bannon, the one-time adviser to Donald Trump, suggested on Saturday that the former president was paid off after a shift in stance on TikTok.

TikTok, the immensely popular video-sharing app known for its predominantly young audience, has once again come under scrutiny from U.S. lawmakers. The app is currently owned by Chinese tech company, ByteDance, which has spurred significant suspicion that its abundance of user data is being furnished to the Chinese government.

While ByteDance and TikTok have dismissed these accusations, lawmakers have continued to consider their options. A bipartisan bill put forward by members of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party last week would work to "incentivize divestment of TikTok" by ByteDance by blocking it from appearing in American app stores and granting Executive Branch authority to take similar action in the future against social media companies operated by a "foreign adversary."

Lawmakers on the House Committee on Energy & Commerce advanced the legislation last week in a 50-0 bipartisan vote to the full U.S. House of Representatives. TikTok, meanwhile, characterized the bill as a ban, and urged users to encourage their local representatives to block it.

Despite his past stances in favor of action against TikTok for its Chinese ties, Trump, the leading candidate for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, wrote in a Truth Social post on Thursday that he opposed the recent bill, citing his oft-repeated false claims about widespread voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election.

"If you get rid of TikTok, Facebook and Zuckerschmuck [CEO Mark Zuckerberg] will double their business," the former president wrote. "I don't want Facebook, who cheated in the last Election, doing better. They are a true Enemy of the People!"

In response to this post, reports noted that the seeming shift in stance from Trump came after a meeting with Jeff Yass, a conservative hedge fund manager who has a $33 billion stake in TikTok. Yass, according to Intelligencer, has been allegedly threatening to pull support from GOP lawmakers who back the bipartisan divestment bill.

American Plutocracy 101: The rigging of the system lies in a rich guy exerting influence over policy by waving his checkbook at the decision-makers.

Bannon, who led Trump's successful 2016 presidential campaign and served as a White House adviser for the first several months of Trump's presidency, took to Gettr to make his suspicions about the situation clear.

"Simple: Yass Coin," he wrote in a post that included a link to an Axios story about Trump's flip on TikTok, without providing further evidence. Newsweek has not seen any evidence that Trump's meeting with Yass and his stance on TikTok are connected.

Newsweek reached out to Trump's office via email for comment on Saturday afternoon. Any responses received will be added to this story in a later update.

In August 2020, Trump issued an executive order ordering ByteDance to sell its U.S. assets and destroy all data within 90 days.

"There is credible evidence that leads me to believe that ByteDance Ltd.... through acquiring all interests in musical.​ly...might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States," the order read.

Vote Your Values

... and recognize that your values guide your interests - but sometimes it has to go the other way, and your interests drive your values.

Don't abandon your belief in your better self. Just understand that you have a lesser chance to be that better self if you don't survive some of the more mundane - even crass and distasteful - things in life along the way.

It may involve issuing a few fat lips and bloody noses.

In the meantime, the plutocracy is rollin' along, singin' a song.

We're told that publicly disclosed campaign money is a determinant factor in an election. And there's still some truth to that, but this is not 2009 (ie: before Citizens United v FEC), and we've drifted away from being the kind of democracy we keep telling ourselves we are.

Press Poodles need to start looking beyond what a candidate (particularly a GOP candidate) has in their "campaign war chest".

Any given Republican running for any given office can be pretty sure that whatever they spend on ads and such will be supplemented 3- or 5- or 10-fold by private (and anonymous) "donors" who are basically buying that candidate's vote at whatever level of government they're going to "serve".

And while there's a good bit of that on the Dems' side as well, I estimate a very large majority of it goes to the benefit of the GOP.

Today's Beau

Has has to know there's little chance for it, so it makes me wonder if Hawley is signaling his intention to directly challenge McConnell.

The Buck Stops

Here's a flash: The GOP signed their souls over to Trump. He has control over "the base" so he can practically dictate who runs in certain races and who doesn't, and he's got a solid strangle hold on the small donor fund-raising. Throw in what I'm pretty sure he collects from the Russian mob, and whatever help he gets from the rest of Putin's gang, and you've got a party that's not getting back to "normal" any time soon probably ever.

I haven't found solid confirmation, but it's being reported that he's bumping the price he charges Republicans to use WinRed.

The party committed to using WinRed as their main vehicle for general public fund-raising about 4 years ago. He takes a cut by way of a company (Revv) that one of his lackeys set up. As little as half of the money sent in by Mom and Pop ends up going to either the GOP or the GOP's candidates.

Anyway.

Republicans Are Losing Money Because of Trump

Six top GOP donors stopped giving money to the Michigan or Arizona Republican parties because of their perceived support for the discredited claim that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against Donald Trump, according to a new report.

One former Michigan donor, real estate tycoon Ron Weiser, told Reuters it is "ludicrous" to claim Trump won the state in 2020, as supporters of the former president are continuing to do.

Trump is currently running to be the 2024 Republican presidential nominee, with polling giving him a commanding lead over Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is his closest rival. Concerns about the former president's impact on fundraising are likely to help DeSantis, who is attempting to convince voters he's the party's best bet for returning to the White House after the November 2024 election.

In November 2020, Joe Biden defeated Trump by 306 electoral college votes to 232, resulting in him being inaugurated as president the following January. Trump is continuing to insist the contest was "rigged" against him, though this claim has been repeatedly dismissed in court and by independent legal and election experts.

Reuters reported that six former donors had stopped giving to Republican parties in Michigan and Arizona over their backing of candidates who questioned the 2020 election's legitimacy and what they regard as extreme positions on other issues, such as abortion.

Referring to the Michigan GOP's support for election conspiracy theorists Weiser, who used to chair the party, commented: "I question whether the state party has the necessary expertise to spend the money well."

In Arizona, Jim Click, from a family of longstanding GOP donors, told Reuters that "it's too bad we let the right wing of our party take over the operations," and said he would switch to backing individual candidates rather than the state Republican party.

According to campaign finance filings the Arizona GOP had just $50,000 in its state and federal bank accounts on March 31, down from nearly $770,000 four years ago. Filings also show the Michigan GOP had around $116,000 in its federal account on March 31, compared to almost $867,000 on the same date in 2021.

Newsweek reached out to the Michigan and Arizona Republican parties via email, and Donald Trump via the press contact form on his official website for comment.

A number of Arizona Republican candidates in the 2022 midterms endorsed Trump's claims of electoral fraud including Kari Lake, who lost the state gubernatorial election to Democrat Katie Hobbs. Lake is still refusing to concede.

Republican Kristina Karamo lost her bid to become Michigan secretary of state, which would have given her substantial influence over how the 2024 presidential election is conducted. Karamo had falsely claimed Trump really won the 2020 election in Michigan and blamed the January 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol on "Antifa posing as Trump supporters."

Who's Your Daddy?

House approves measure targeting Biden rule allowing money managers to consider ESG in retirement investing

The House on Tuesday approved a resolution that would repeal a Biden administration rule for retirement investments, marking the latest flashpoint in Republicans’ crusade against environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing.

The Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution was approved 216-204, with Rep. Jared Golden (Maine) as the only Democrat voting with Republicans in favor of the measure.

But while a Democratically controlled Senate and White House mean that the measure is unlikely to amount to more than messaging, it is part of a broader Republican effort to oppose ESG investing.

Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) in a floor speech on Tuesday characterized the regulation as being part of a “woke ESG agenda.”

“Democrats and their radical environmental NGO allies will continue to work in the shadows, strong-arming and intimidating corporations and investors alike, using any means necessary, to conscript the life savings of pensioners and retirees to implement a dangerous … investment strategy,” Burgess said.

The Biden rule Republicans are seeking to repeal clarifies that money managers can weigh climate change and other ESG factors when they make investment decisions.

ESG is a broad term for attempts to invest in an environmentally conscious or otherwise ethically manner. Proponents argue this type of investing allows people to do well for themselves while also doing good for the world, and also contend that it could mitigate some of the financial risks caused by climate change.

But many Republicans argue that ESG investing could harm the fossil fuel industry — and that consideration of additional factors by money managers could come at the expense of profits.

The Dirty Fuels Cartel is a senior partner in the ownership structure of the GOP, and their yacht money is sacrosanct.

The Trump administration previously imposed a rule that said money managers could only make investments based on financial considerations.

And there's the kicker - profit über alles.

But critics said that rule was confusing, and the Biden administration contends in its rule that its predecessor discouraged managers’ consideration of ESG factors “even in cases where it is in the financial interest of plans to take such considerations into account.”

“The Trump rule, it’s extremely convoluted and just confusing,” said Andrew Behar, CEO of As You Sow, a group that seeks to use shareholder power to push action on climate and environmental issues.

- more -

A Small Win

Wondering why the Republicans are so eager to start "investigating" everything from unicorns and pixies to laptops and puppy farms?

And yes - we could see them bring back Benghazi.

They have to keep our focus away from the shitty things they're helping to facilitate for assholes like Vladimir Putin and Bob Mercer and Charlie Koch and the NRA and and and.

Keep your dirty money

outa my elections 

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GOP operative found guilty of funneling Russian money to Donald Trump

A Republican political strategist was convicted of illegally helping a Russian businessman contribute to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016.

Jesse Benton, 44, was pardoned by Trump in 2020 for a different campaign finance crime, months before he was indicted again on six counts related to facilitating an illegal foreign campaign donation. He was found guilty Thursday on all six counts.

Elections “reflect the values and the priorities and the beliefs of American citizens,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle Parikh said in her closing argument this week. “Jesse Benton by his actions did damage to those principles.”

The evidence at trial showed that Benton bought a $25,000 ticket to a September 2016 Republican National Committee (RNC) event on behalf of Roman Vasilenko, a Russian naval officer turned multilevel marketer. (Vasilenko is under investigation in Russia for allegedly running a pyramid scheme, according to the Kommersant newspaper; he could not be reached for comment.) The donation got Vasilenko a picture with Trump and entrance to a “business roundtable” with the future president.

Vasilenko connected with Benton through Doug Wead, an evangelical ally of the Bush family who was also involved in multilevel marketing. Vasilenko sent $100,000 to Benton, who was working for a pro-Trump super PAC at the time, supposedly for consulting services. Benton subsequently donated $25,000 to the RNC by credit card to cover the ticket.

Witnesses from the RNC and the firm hired to organize the event said they weren’t told Vasilenko was a Russian citizen. Benton said in an email to his RNC contact that Vasilenko was “a friend who spends most of his time in the Caribbean”; he described Vasilenko’s interpreter as “a body gal.” In fact, according to the testimony, Benton and Vasilenko had never met.

Benton argued that he followed the advice of his previous counsel, David A. Warrington, who has also represented Trump. Warrington testified that Benton contacted him at the time to ask if he could give a ticket to a political fundraiser to a Russian citizen. Warrington said he told Benton “there is no prohibition on a Russian citizen receiving a ticket to an event” and that “you can give your ticket that you purchased to a fundraiser to anybody.”

Prosecutors said Benton failed to tell Warrington that he was getting reimbursed by the Russian citizen for the donation. Benton asked for the advice only “to cover his tracks,” Parikh said.

Benton also claimed that he earned the $100,000 acting as a tour guide in Washington for Vasilenko, whose interest was not politics but self-promotion.

Wead — who died at age 75 last December after he was indicted with Benton — had previously discussed with Vasilenko the possibility of a photograph with Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama or Steven Seagal before suggesting Trump.

“If Oprah was available,” defense attorney Brian Stolarz said in his closing argument, “we wouldn’t even be here.”

Vasilenko posted the photograph of himself with Trump on Instagram with a banner that said “Two Presidents” and advertised his own company. He said Benton “delivered on what he was asked to do,” which was “get him in a picture with a celebrity” so Vasilenko “could brag on Instagram.” To Vasilenko, he said, Trump was not a politician but “the guy who used to be on ‘The Apprentice.’ ” At the roundtable, he said Trump appeared only briefly and “just talked about polls.”

Stolarz emphasized that there was no evidence Vasilenko ever engaged with Trump outside the single event, and no evidence the RNC ever returned the donation. Witnesses from the RNC said they were in the dark about the origin of the funds.

“He wants to be an influencer,” Stolarz said. “This is just shameless self-promotion from a guy who can afford to take this picture.”

But prosecutors said that once it was offered, Vasilenko saw the value of an introduction to Trump. He was running for parliament in Russia at the time, according to the Justice Department, and after Trump’s election was invited on Russian television.

“He’s sophisticated,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle Wasserman told jurors. “He got access to someone he helped elect.”

Benton’s defense downplayed the $25,000 as “nothing” in an election that cost billions.

“This is not some nefarious backroom scheme to funnel millions of dollars from Russia,” he said.

Prosecutors argued that every dollar counted in a race where Democrat Hillary Clinton was far ahead in fundraising, and that Benton knew Trump needed money at the time.

Stolarz said Benton was also paid to organize a charity dinner Vasilenko attended on his U.S. trip, which prosecutors dismissed as a cheap meal at a chain restaurant.

“They may try to downplay it, but Maggiano’s is good,” Stolarz said.

Benton began his career on the GOP’s libertarian fringe as an aide to former congressman Ron Paul (R-Tex.), whose granddaughter is Benton’s wife. He gained mainstream credibility helping Paul’s son, Rand Paul (R-Ky.), win a Senate seat in 2010 and was hired by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) 2014 reelection campaign.

But Benton resigned before that election amid an investigation into whether an Iowa state senator was bribed to support Ron Paul in the 2012 presidential race. Benton was convicted in May 2016 of conspiracy and involvement in filing of false campaign finance reports — not long before the new scheme began.

“He knew the law,” Wasserman said. “He knew the rules.”

After the verdict, Stolarz said Benton “maintains his innocence and plans to appeal.”

Where Did All That Money Go, Rick?

Today's reminder never to put a Republican in charge of the money.

The party that always bragged about being pragmatic and clear-eyed and competent is now officially the party you can't trust to manage a middle school car wash.

But it's more than that.

It's possible that the main problem with GOP fundraising is that people are turning away from Republicans in general because the MAGA gang has become so toxic. I think there's an awakening of distrust of a party that's spent the last 35 years fucking things up on purpose in their attempt to tear down our democracy, while disguising that project with the standard Myth of Former Greatness.

The social stigma attached to being swindled makes fraud one the most under-reported crimes. People you've been conned are likely to be very quiet about it because it's embarrassing to admit you fell for some bullshit that an awful lot of your friends and family tried to warn you about.

Republicans have been railing against "the collective" forever, so why is anyone surprised to learn they're behaving in a totally self-serving manner?

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How a Record Cash Haul Vanished for Senate Republicans

The campaign arm of Senate Republicans had collected $181.5 million by the end of July — but spent 95 percent of it. A big investment in digital, and hyperaggressive tactics, have not paid off.

It was early 2021, and Senator Rick Scott wanted to go big. The new chairman of the Senate Republican campaign arm had a mind to modernize the place. One of his first decisions was to overhaul how the group raised money online.

Mr. Scott installed a new digital team, spearheaded by Trump veterans, and greenlit an enormous wave of spending on digital ads, not to promote candidates but to discover more small contributors. Soon, the committee was smashing fund-raising records. By the summer of 2021, Mr. Scott was boasting about “historic investments in digital fund-raising that are already paying dividends.”

A year later, some of that braggadocio has vanished — along with most of the money.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee has long been a critical part of the party apparatus, recruiting candidates, supporting them with political infrastructure, designing campaign strategy and buying television ads.

By the end of July, the committee had collected a record $181.5 million — but had already spent more than 95 percent of what it had brought in. The Republican group entered August with just $23.2 million on hand, less than half of what the Senate Democratic committee had ahead of the final intense phase of the midterm elections.

Now top Republicans are beginning to ask: Where did all the money go?

The answer, chiefly, is that Mr. Scott’s enormous gamble on finding new online donors has been a costly financial flop in 2022, according to a New York Times analysis of federal records and interviews with people briefed on the committee’s finances. Today, the N.R.S.C. is raising less than before Mr. Scott’s digital splurge.

Party leaders, including Senator Mitch McConnell, are fretting aloud that Republicans could squander their shot at retaking the Senate in 2022, with money one factor as some first-time candidates have struggled to gain traction. The N.R.S.C. was intended to be a party bulwark yet found itself recently canceling some TV ad reservations in key states.

The story of how the Senate G.O.P. committee went from breaking financial records to breaking television reservations, told through interviews with more than two dozen Republican officials, actually begins with the rising revenues Mr. Scott bragged about last year.

The committee had squeezed donors with hyperaggressive new tactics. And all the money coming in obscured just how much the committee was spending advertising for donors. Then inflation sapped online giving for Republicans nationwide. And the money that had rolled in came at an ethical price.

One fund-raising scheme used by the Senate committee, which has not previously been disclosed, involved sending an estimated millions of text messages that asked provocative questions — “Should Biden resign?” — followed by a request for cash: “Reply YES to donate.” Those who replied “YES” had their donation processed immediately, though the text did not reveal in advance where the money was going.

Privately, some Republicans complained the tactic was exploitative. WinRed, the party’s main donation-processing platform, recently stepped in and took the unusual step of blocking the committee from engaging in the practice, according to four people familiar with the matter.

The texts had been part of a concerted push that successfully juiced fund-raising, though it used methods that experts say will eventually exhaust even the most loyal givers.

One internal N.R.S.C. budget document from earlier this year, obtained by The Times, shows that $23.3 million was poured into investments to find new donors between June 2021 and January 2022. In that time, the contributors the organization found gave $6.1 million — a more than $17 million deficit.

Mr. Scott declined an interview request. His staff vigorously denied financial struggles, said some of the canceled television ads had been rebooked, and argued the digital spending would prove wise in time.

“We made the investment, we’re glad we did it, it will benefit the N.R.S.C. and the party as a whole for cycles to come,” said Chris Hartline, a spokesman for Mr. Scott and the committee.

Yet as Republican chances to retake the Senate have slipped, a full-blown case of finger-pointing has erupted across Washington, with Mr. Scott a prime target. His handling of the committee’s finances has become conflated with other critiques, especially a flawed field of Republicans who have found themselves outspent on television.

Mr. Scott’s please-all-sides decision to stay out of contested 2022 primaries has been second-guessed, including by Mr. McConnell. Mr. Scott’s detractors accuse him of transforming the N.R.S.C. into the “National Rick Scott Committee” — and a vehicle for his presidential ambitions.

“The spending wouldn’t matter if the polling numbers looked better,” said Liam Donovan, a Republican lobbyist and N.R.S.C. donor. “To the extent the red wave is receding, people look for someone to blame.”

The financial fortunes of the group alone will not sink Republican chances in November. A super PAC aligned with Mr. McConnell has more than $160 million in television reservations booked after Labor Day.

Mr. Hartline dismissed those questioning the group’s digital spending as “disgruntled former staff and vendors.” He said the $28 million invested had tripled its file of email addresses and phone numbers and added 160,000 donors.

“Our goal is to build the biggest G.O.P. digital file to help the party now and in the future,” he said. He declined to discuss the texting scheme.

Mr. Hartline said the Senate Democratic arm has more money because it had not yet spent significantly on television. Mr. Scott, he said, had strategically spent early, with nearly $30 million on ads aiding Republicans through July.

That sum, however, is actually less than the $37.4 million the G.O.P. committee reported in independent expenditures for candidates as of the same date two years ago.

A huge online outlay

For months last year, the National Republican Senatorial Committee was far and away the nation’s biggest online political advertiser, outspending every other party committee combined and pouring money into platforms like Google at levels almost unseen except in the fevered final days of 2020.

The sums were so breathtakingly large — peaking at more than $100,000 a day on Facebook and Google — that some concerned Democrats began to study the ads, fretting that somehow Republicans had unlocked a new sustainable way to raise money online.

They had not.

The Senate Republican bet had been this: By spending vast amounts early, the party could vacuum up contact information for millions of potential donors who could then give repeatedly over the coming months.

The internal budget document showed the shortcomings of the approach. The first month of outreach investment, June 2021, was projected to generate $3.2 million for the committee by November 2022. But the other $22 million in investments over the next seven months combined were projected to add up to a narrow net loss by Election Day.

Still, the document showed the digital department was asking for more: an additional $12 million in February and March. Mr. Hartline dismissed the document as a “potential draft budget.”

Not long after, the spending spigot was cut off. The committee went from being the biggest political spender on Facebook to being completely absent on it. No Facebook fund-raising ads ran from April to late August, company records show.

Digital fund-raising has dried up across the Republican spectrum in recent months, and the N.R.S.C. has been hard hit. Online donations to the committee plunged by 37 percent between the first and second quarters of this year. If not for $10 million in transfers from the Republican National Committee, the Senate arm would have spent more than it raised this cycle.

In the most recent six months that fund-raising data is available, the N.R.S.C. in 2022 has raised $15 million less than during the same six-month period in 2020.

The tight finances stand in contrast to the House Republican campaign arm, which entered August with $110 million — spending 57 percent of the money it had collected, compared with the Senate committee’s 95 percent.

In its pursuit of cash, the Senate committee has increasingly adopted a pro-Trump tone: Of the more than 1,500 emails sent this year, more than 900 have invoked Donald J. Trump in the sender line. Zero have mentioned Mr. McConnell anywhere, despite the fact that the committee’s ostensible goal is to make him majority leader.

In August, four Senate candidates, including J.D. Vance, the Republican nominee in Ohio, trekked to Nantucket, Mass., for an event that netted each an initial $25,000.Credit...Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

The N.R.S.C.’s larger donor program has struggled at times, too. In August, four Senate candidates, including J.D. Vance, the Republican nominee in Ohio, trekked to Nantucket, Mass., for an event that netted each an initial $25,000, according to multiple officials, a paltry payout for the far-flung event.

Tensions are high. Mr. Vance recently snapped at Mr. Scott over a different issue with committee staff in a phone call, according to two people with knowledge of the conversation.

Though the committee exists chiefly to help Republican Senate candidates, under Mr. Scott it has only occasionally leveraged its enlarged email list to fund-raise directly for them. And when it does, the fine print indicates the N.R.S.C. keeps 90 percent of the proceeds.

‘Reply YES to donate’

The unsolicited text messages seeking contributions to the Senate Republican committee began buzzing phones in mid-2021 — often without identifying whom they were coming from.

“This is URGENT!” read one such flurry of messages. “Do YOU support Trump?”

Then came the key line: “Reply YES to donate $25.”

Those who wrote back “YES” automatically had a $25 donation to the National Republican Senatorial Committee charged to their credit cards, though the initial message said nothing about the destination and there were no links to click to find out. The committee used a tool that paired donors’ phone numbers with credit-card information saved on WinRed.

The Times documented the practice through interviews with people who had received such texts and made donations, Republican officials familiar with the tactic and a review of thousands of messages flagged by the spam-blocking app RoboKiller.

RoboKiller used the volume of texts marked as spam to estimate that tens of millions of “reply YES to donate” messages were sent from an 855 phone number that has been used by the Senate Republican committee.

Giulia Porter, a spokeswoman for RoboKiller, described the practice as predatory because it used donors’ saved credit card information to send money without telling them where it was going. “It does speak to how quickly the tactics have evolved technologically,” she said.

It is not clear how many people donated in response to the texts. But demands for N.R.S.C. refunds, a key metric of donor dissatisfaction, have soared, with the amount returned to donors quadrupling, from less than $2 million in 2020 to more than $8 million now.

The Senate Republican refund rate equals 6.6 percent of direct individual donations this cycle; the Senate Democratic committee’s rate is 1.67 percent.

WinRed declined to comment on stopping the Senate committee from using the tactic. The committee is still using the “reply YES to donate” function in texts, but it is now disclosing itself as the sender of the messages.

All told, the Senate committee has poured more than $26 million into expenses marked as texting-related since 2021, part of a digital budget that ballooned so quickly that Republicans, even inside the committee, are talking about a financial autopsy to examine whether there have been potential conflicts of interest.

Gary Coby, Mr. Trump’s longtime digital director, is an adviser to the committee and widely seen as the main behind-the-scenes influence on the N.R.S.C.’s current digital operations. Two of his companies, Direct Persuasion, a digital agency, and Opn Sesame, a texting firm, have been paid by the Senate committee more than $4.6 million combined. Two others that he has promoted, DirectSnd and Red Spark Strategy, have received another $9.2 million.

The N.R.S.C.’s digital director, Daria Grastara, worked for Mr. Coby during the Trump 2020 campaign. She was a director for Direct Persuasion, according to her LinkedIn page. While at the Senate committee, Ms. Grastara has maintained financial ties to at least one firm that has been paid committee funds and informed the N.R.S.C. of the arrangement, according to a person briefed on the situation.

Mr. Hartline called Ms. Grastara a “fantastic employee” but declined to discuss any specifics, adding only, “She has been open and transparent with all parties involved since the beginning of the cycle.” Ms. Grastara, who attended Direct Persuasion’s Miami Beach retreat this year, did not respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Coby referred questions to the N.R.S.C., which declined to discuss his financial relationships.

In a broad statement, Mr. Hartline said Mr. Scott had “instituted the toughest conflict of interest policy at the N.R.S.C. for our staff and vendors to clean up issues from the past.”

Scott versus McConnell

Mr. Scott has taken to saying that money could be the party’s greatest impediment to taking control of the 50-50 Senate in November, and he has been acting to make up financial ground.

Committee staff beyond the finance department have been asked to devote an hour per week to calling donors for cash. “Everyone plays a role in fund-raising,” Mr. Hartline said.

Under campaign finance law, a portion of the committee’s funds are supposed to be walled off for legal expenses, and are not to be used for campaigning. Yet in July, the committee’s biggest expense — a $1 million media buy, apparently for Colorado and Washington ads — came from those restricted legal funds, according to federal records.

“We will always find the most effective, efficient and creative way to get our message out and stretch every dollar, in accordance with the law,” Mr. Hartline said about the expenditure. “If the Democrats don’t like that, tough.”

Prior to politics, Mr. Scott led a major for-profit hospital chain. He was forced out in the late 1990s and the company went on to pay $1.7 billion in federal civil and criminal penalties for health care fraud.

He has clashed with Mr. McConnell, who recently lamented Senate “candidate quality” in 2022. Mr. Scott shot back that “trash-talking our Republican candidates” was “an amazing act of cowardice.”

Mr. Scott also rolled out his own “Rescue America” agenda despite Mr. McConnell’s desire to keep the policy focus on Democrats. Mr. Scott’s initial openness to taxing more Americans and letting Social Security expire has been used repeatedly by President Biden to bludgeon Republicans.

Mr. Scott’s sharp elbows have earned him enemies. His family vacation on a yacht outside Italy, for instance, promptly leaked.

Just after Labor Day, Mr. Scott has another trip planned. It is not to a key Senate battleground. He is headed to Iowa, helping a House candidate in the leadoff state on the presidential nominating calendar.

Don't Sleep On This

Nancy MacLean

The plutocrats are very serious and very busy.

(pay wall)

Opinion
A $1.6 billion donation lays bare a broken campaign finance system

One man has donated $1.6 billion to a nonprofit group controlled by a conservative activist who has crusaded, with startling success, to transform the country’s politics. The only reason the public knows about it? An insider tip-off to the New York Times.

The Times reported this week that electronics mogul Barre Seid last year gave 100 percent of the shares of surge protector and data-center equipment manufacturer Tripp Lite to a group called Marble Freedom Trust. The group is led by Leonard Leo — who has helped bankroll right-wing advocacy on abortion rights, voting and climate change, among other things. His chief focus for a time was reshaping the judiciary as executive vice president of the Federalist Society, including by advising Republican presidents on Supreme Court nominees. The tale of how his group got such a lavish gift underscores the sad state of this country’s campaign finance system.

The Marble Freedom Trust donation, possibly the largest ever to such an advocacy group in U.S. history, manages to encapsulate in a single case the problems with the status quo. The issue isn’t merely the distortion of democracy enabled by 2010′s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. That decision allowed for unlimited political spending by corporations and outside groups — to which, in turn, the ultra-wealthy can funnel unlimited funds of their own. The issue is also that the distortion remains, in most cases, invisible. Nonprofits groups registered as 501(c)(4)s, such as Marble Freedom Trust, don’t have to disclose their donors.

Adding insult to injury, donors can also use these nonprofits to reduce taxes — in this instance, to the tune of somewhere around $400 million. To sell his company on his own, Mr. Seid would have had to pay capital gains taxes, leaving him with less to bequeath to Marble Freedom Trust. But as supposed “social welfare organizations,” 501(c)(4)s are exempt from paying taxes. So instead he handed his shares over to the trust, which then itself sold Tripp Lite: for the $1.6 billion now in Mr. Leo’s coffers. As a result, dutiful everyday taxpayers essentially finance the extravagant expenditures of the privileged few, who use their know-how to avoid their obligations and twist the political landscape.

Congress should close the tax loophole these donors exploit. And the Disclose Act, some version of which has been languishing in Congress for more than a decade, blocked by GOP filibusters, would at least tell voters who’s trying to buy their votes. The Internal Revenue Service can improve things on its own by collecting donors’ information again, after it stopped in 2018. Unfortunately, without a change in Supreme Court precedent or a constitutional amendment, only marginal improvements are possible.

Mr. Leo defended his gambit by saying it is “high time for the conservative movement to be among the ranks of George Soros, Hansjörg Wyss, Arabella Advisors and other left-wing philanthropists, going toe-to-toe in the fight to defend our constitution and its ideals.” Really, it’s not toe-to-toe but billions-to-billions — and neither side should be proud of that.

But Don't Get Happy

“If they were a corporation, the CEO would be fired and investigated,” said a national Republican consultant working on Senate races. “The way this money has been burned, there needs to be an audit or investigation because we’re not gonna take the Senate now and this money has been squandered. It’s a rip-off.”

Republicans are having kind of a hard time. I'll go along with most of the conventional wisdom here (ie: the primaries - where the internal squabbles are supposed to get worked out - have been brutal), but I have to add what should be obvious. Trump has captured a big chunk of the fund-raising infrastructure, and, as is his usual MO, he's taking a nice fat cut for himself, while using the money as leverage against anyone who won't toe the Trump line.

Check in with the shittiness of the GOP's Trump's WinRed money machine - The Professional Left podcast, starting at about 7:10

So it's pretty sweet to hear "the party of good business" is kinda crapping out because it's being run so poorly, and it's pretty good news when Republicans continue to eat their own, which could translate to positive outcomes in the mid-terms, but we can't let up.

Keep the balls to the wall, kids.

WaPo: (pay wall)

‘It’s a rip-off’: GOP spending under fire as Senate hopefuls seek rescue

A cash crunch at campaigns and the NRSC set off a panic as GOP candidates emerged from bruising primaries playing catch-up in polls and advertising

Republican Senate hopefuls are getting crushed on airwaves across the country while their national campaign fund is pulling ads and running low on cash — leading some campaign advisers to ask where all the money went and to demand an audit of the committee’s finances, according to Republican strategists involved in the discussions.

In a highly unusual move, the National Republican Senatorial Committee this week canceled bookings worth about $10 million, including in the critical states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona. A spokesman said the NRSC is not abandoning those races but prioritizing ad spots that are shared with campaigns and benefit from discounted rates. Still, the cancellations forfeit cheaper prices that came from booking early, and better budgeting could have covered both.

“The fact that they canceled these reservations was a huge problem — you can’t get them back,” said one Senate Republican strategist, who like others spokes on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters. “You can’t win elections if you don’t have money to run ads.”

The NRSC’s retreat came after months of touting record fundraising, topping $173 million so far this election cycle, according to Federal Election Commission disclosures. But the committee has burned through nearly all of it, with the NRSC’s cash on hand dwindling to $28.4 million by the end of June.

As of that month, the committee disclosed spending just $23 million on ads, with more than $21 million going into text messages and more than $12 million to American Express credit card payments, whose ultimate purpose isn’t clear from the filings. The committee also spent at least $13 million on consultants, $9 million on debt payments and more than $7.9 million renting mailing lists, campaign finance data show.

Trump's dominance in GOP comes in focus, worrying some in party

“If they were a corporation, the CEO would be fired and investigated,” said a national Republican consultant working on Senate races. “The way this money has been burned, there needs to be an audit or investigation because we’re not gonna take the Senate now and this money has been squandered. It’s a rip-off.”

The NRSC’s chairman, Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, has already taken heat from fellow Republicans for running ads featuring him on camera and releasing his own policy agenda that became a Democratic punching bag — leading to jokes that “NRSC” stood for “National Rick Scott Committee” in a bid to fuel his own presumed presidential ambitions.

Other spending decisions, such as putting about $1 million total into reliably blue Colorado and Washington earlier this month sparked fresh questions after the committee turned around and canceled buys in core battlegrounds.

The NRSC invested heavily in expanding its digital fundraising and building up its database of small-dollar donors. But online giving to Republicans, not just the NRSC, sagged earlier this year from what consultants said was a combination of inflation, changes to Facebook advertising policies, concerns about emails caught in spam filters, and complacency with an anticipated Republican wave. Some Republicans also suspect former president Donald Trump’s relentless fundraising pitches and cash hoarding has exhausted the party’s online donor base.

Pennsylvania Republican Senate candidate Mehmet Oz, who is struggling in his race against Democrat John Fetterman, meets with attendees during a Republican Jewish Coalition event in Philadelphia, on Aug. 17, 2022. (Matt Rourke/AP)

The NRSC still has tens of millions of dollars in reserved airtime, and its next filing, which covers the month of July and is due to the FEC on Saturday, will show millions more in ad spending. The group said its total spending on TV so far topped $40 million. On Friday the NRSC said it added more than $4 million of airtime across Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona.

“Our goal was to keep our candidates afloat and get them to this point where they’re still in the game in all our top states,” NRSC spokesman Chris Hartline said. “So when the big spending starts now we have a fighting chance.”

That big spending is coming from a super PAC aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), which this week announced a whopping $28 million rescue effort in Ohio, where Republican candidate J.D. Vance raised a dismal $1 million in the second quarter and has spent less than $400,000 on ads.

Pa. race no longer a tossup as Fetterman memes zero in on Oz's wealth

The super PAC, known as the Senate Leadership Fund, also moved up by three weeks its spending in Pennsylvania and added $9.5 million there, for a total of $34 million. Recent surveys show the Keystone State’s Senate race drifting toward Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman over the Republican nominee, celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz.

McConnell himself acknowledged the challenge of reclaiming the chamber’s majority, telling reporters in Kentucky on Thursday that the House was likelier to flip. “Candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome,” he said, according to NBC News, a comment that was widely viewed as a swipe at some of the primary winners and their lagging fundraising performance.

The NRSC opted not to pick favorites in this year’s primary contests, a break from the past decade when the committee worked to avoid out-of-the-mainstream nominees who cost the party wins in 2010 and 2012. Many of this year’s Republican candidates haven’t run for office before and emerged from nasty, expensive primaries that left their favorable ratings underwater. A string of recent polls showed Republican candidates in many battlegrounds trailing or in a dead heat with well-funded Democratic opponents.

Democrats are outspending Republicans by more than double in the Arizona Senate race; by almost two-to-one in Nevada and by four-to-one in Ohio, according to the media tracking firm AdImpact. Republicans are also being outspent by about $14 million in Georgia.

“Everything came together at once, and everyone woke up like, ‘Oh my God,’” said one Republican consultant. “It’s been an absolutely disastrous two weeks for GOP Senate stuff on all fronts.”

After The Washington Post discussed this story with the NRSC on Friday, five Senate campaigns reached out to praise the committee’s help.

“They are focused on bringing the fight to the Democrats everyday,” said Gail Gitcho with Herschel Walker’s campaign in Georgia. “Whoever says otherwise is nuts.”

Zack Roday with Joe O’Dea’s Senate campaign in Colorado added, “The NRSC has been a great partner, everything we’ve asked for.”

Democrats point to signs of a newly energized base and a national political environment that is, at the very least, less bad for them. The party in power typically loses ground in midterms.

Democrats more hopeful for midterms — but brace for GOP spending surge

JB Poersch, president of the main Democratic Senate super PAC, pointed to the Jan. 6 hearings, recent mass shootings, the Inflation Reduction Act and the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade as changing the dynamics in the past two months.

“It’s surprising and says a lot about the Republican brand that their candidates have struggled to raise money,” Poersch said. “With extreme candidates and extreme positions, maybe Republican donors are finding these candidates are out of step with where they are. Maybe voters are feeling the same way.”

Vance’s disappointing financial report touched off new urgency for air support from the McConnell-aligned super PAC, a person familiar with the planning said. The size of the buy reflects the expense of advertising statewide in Ohio with its multiple media markets, and that Republicans view the state as both winnable and as a must-win. An affiliated nonprofit known as One Nation is spending an additional $3.8 million to help Vance against his Democratic rival, Rep. Tim Ryan.

Several public polls recently showed Ryan leading, and internal Republican surveys found Vance with an even bigger deficit, according to people familiar with the findings.

A Vance campaign adviser rejected suggestions that the super PAC’s intervention showed weakness, saying the race was always going to be competitive.

“If the Washington punditry thinks Trump won the state by 8 so it should be a slam dunk, they’re sorely mistaken,” the adviser said, referring to Trump’s margin of victory in Ohio in 2020. “Them putting money in this race shows they believe this is a race they can win.”

Vance benefited in the primary from about $10 million by an allied super PAC funded by technology billionaire Peter Thiel. But people involved in the race said it’s unclear whether Thiel, whose style in the past has been to invest early and then bow out, will put money behind Vance in the general election. Thiel also funded the Arizona Senate bid of Republican nominee Blake Masters, his former employee.

A spokesman for Thiel declined to comment.

The Senate Leadership Fund, which typically expands spending in the final stretch after Labor Day, finished June with more than $100 million in the bank. Starting in September, the PAC has reserved $14.4 million in Arizona, $37.1 million in Georgia, $15.1 million in Nevada, $27.6 million in North Carolina, $15.2 million in Wisconsin and $7.4 million in Alaska.

Rays Of Hope

Lindsey Graham's support plus 2 dollars will get you a small coffee at 7-11, but when he's willing to stand up and be helpful on something that doesn't including licking MAGA's boot heels, you need to move on it and get some shit done.

And once we get some of this Oligarch shit done, we need to take the expertise and experience we've gained from that and apply it to a project of going after dark money and the outright bribery of (eg) the NRA buying American politicians practically in bulk.

Uh-Oh

When a legit bank moves to cut ties with a (seemingly) legit billionaire, you know there's gotta be real trouble here somewhere.

Raw Story:

During an appearance of indicted Steve Bannon's podcast, embattled MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell revealed that his bank recently contacted him and asked him to close his accounts with them because they fear their association with him will cause "reputational damage."

According to the report from Newsweek, Lindell -- who is already facing a billion-dollar civil lawsuit filed against him by Dominion Voting Sytems for defamation -- played a recording he purports came from a bank officer at Heartland Financial and Minnesota Bank and Trust who gave him 30 days to close his accounts and take his business elsewhere.

In the recording, Lindell was told the bank fears the FBI may subpoena his bank records and want no part of being associated with him, admitting any link to him is "... more of a reputation risk."

With that, the bedding executive and Donald Trump booster claimed the bank is going to have to kick him out because he is not leaving, telling Bannon and his listeners, "I said, 'I am not being part of this. I'm not leaving. So you're going to have to throw me out of your bank.'"

According to Newsweek, Bannon then "put the phone numbers and contact information of top officials at the institutions onscreen—urging supporters to call and complain."

Jan6 Stuff #2

Here's a report from Accountable.US:

REPORT: After Jan. 6 Insurrection, Corporations Reopened Money Floodgate to Election Objectors Within Months, To Tune of Millions

Washington, D.C. — In reflection of the year that followed the deadly coup attempt at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021, government watchdog Accountable.US released an interactive report called ‘In Bad Company’ that spotlights the hypocritical and complicit post-insurrection behavior of twenty Fortune 500 companies and 10 leading industry groups. The report found many of these organizations sought praise for condemning the insurrection or made flowery statements in support of democracy in the aftermath — and then chose to abandon those stated values within months in pursuit of more political influence. One by one, the organizations gave tens of thousands of dollars to Members of Congress that voted to reject the 2020 election results in service of the Big Lie, including companies that pledged to cease contributions to these 147 lawmakers that have been dubbed the ‘Sedition Caucus’. Profiled companies include: Boeing, UPS, FedEx, Cigna, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson. *Click HERE to read ‘In Bad Company’.

“Major corporations were quick to condemn the insurrection and tout their support for democracy — and almost as quickly, many ditched those purported values by cutting big checks to the very politicians that helped instigate the failed coup attempt,” said Accountable.US president Kyle Herrig. “The increasing volume of corporate donations to lawmakers who tried to overthrow the will of the people makes clear that these companies were never committed to standing up for democracy in the first place. Even as democracy continues to be in the crosshairs of powerful purveyors of the Big Lie, these CEOs would rather amass political influence than stand up for their customers, shareholders, and employees.”

AT ISSUE:

CEOs were quick to forgive and forget the election objectors’ rhetoric and actions that were a major escalation factor in the lead up to the assault on democracy. The question is, did these companies honestly care about preserving our democracy in the first place?

Key Findings from ‘In Bad Company’’

Cash Flow:

The 30 companies and trade groups profiled in the report contributed over $3.3 million to the Sedition Caucus since the January 6th insurrection.

What Pause?: 

After the insurrection, major corporate donations subsided for a single quarter but reached nearly $3 million in Q2 and Q3 respectively; given October’s total, Q4 is on pace to be the largest quarter of the year.

Corporate Complicity:

At least 85 percent of the corporations that we profiled—17 of the 20—are major contributors to the Sedition Caucus and either pledged to or publicly considered pausing or reviewing their political spending after the January 6 insurrection.

Purported Values:

 At least 60 percent of the trade groups that we profiled —6 of the 10—have stated values on furthering diversity initiatives despite their political donations to the Sedition Caucus.

Enemies Foreign but not Domestic:

100 percent of the defense contractors profiled—6 of the 6—claim to help protect the nation and people around the world, despite that they are major contributors to the members of Congress who voted to object to the 2020 electoral college vote, which helped incite the attack on the Capitol.

Ties to Trump: 

At least 53 percent of the companies and trade associations profiled—16 of the 30—have connections to the conservative establishment or former President Trump.

In addition, Accountable.US released an updated analysis finding Fortune 500 company PACs and corporate trade groups in general have now donated more than $8.1 million to the Sedition Caucus from January 2021 through November 2021 – including $1.2 million in November alone. In August, the watchdog launched a searchable tracker that allows the public to search contributions in this universe of donors, which was used to compile data for ‘In Bad Company’.

Jan6 Stuff

This is all I need to know to confirm the obvious about not trusting business to run things.

There's no heart, and no soul in business decisions that account for nothing but short-term profit-n-loss.

And when any company supports any politician who won't stand up and condemn The Big Lie, that company is dead to me.

MSNBC:

Several large corporations that previously condemned the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, including some who pledged not to fund its sympathizers in Congress, have resumed donating to Republican lawmakers who tried to overturn the 2020 election.

That’s according to a report from the corporate watchdog Accountable.US, the same group that previously outed corporations for similar hypocrisy on voting rights. The new report, titled “In Bad Company,” includes Boeing, UPS, FedEx, Cigna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson among a list of companies that claimed to support democracy in public only to quietly continue funding its biggest opponents.

“CEOs were quick to forgive and forget the election objectors’ rhetoric and actions that were a major escalation factor in the lead up to the assault on democracy,” the report says. “The question is, did these companies honestly care about preserving our democracy in the first place?”

The report profiles 20 large corporations and found they “donated over $8.1 million to the 147 members of the Sedition Caucus,” a label given to Republicans who voted against the certification of President Joe Biden's 2020 election win.

Cigna, for example, may have had some people fooled in the wake of the attack. Last year, the insurance giant vowed to stop donating to Republicans who “hindered the transfer of power” on Jan. 6. They went on to donate tens of thousands of dollars to Republican lawmakers who voted to overturn the 2020 election results.

Duke Energy is another one. After last year’s attack, a spokesperson for the energy giant said the organization was “shocked and dismayed” by the insurrection attempt, and claimed they were “taking this very seriously.” But surprise: The shock and dismay didn’t last long. In 2021, Duke Energy reportedly donated more than $50,000 to Republicans who voted to overturn the 2020 election.

These donations shouldn’t be interpreted as American industries playing political games as usual. Republicans who objected to certifying the 2020 election did so intent on denying Americans their duly-elected president in favor of a handpicked Republican. Any corporation funneling money to those lawmakers is sponsoring that anti-democratic mission, which hasn’t subsided in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack.

Overt pro-Trump benefactors, like pillow-pusher Mike Lindell and former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, have rightly become pariahs for their continued support of the conservative conspiracy theories that spurred last year’s insurrection attempt.

But all of the companies listed in the latest Accountable.US report deserve similar scrutiny now. Their donations equal permission for Republicans to continue their efforts, and these unscrupulous companies will bear responsibility for the attacks on democracy that have happened and will follow — regardless of the statements they release.

Dirty Fuels Plus Dirty Money

... makes for dirty politicians.

WaPo: (pay wall)

Manchin cites a blind trust to justify climate votes. But much income from his family’s coal company isn’t covered.

In Sen. Joe Manchin III’s hilly West Virginia home county, his family’s business has made millions by taking waste coal from long-abandoned mines and selling it to a power plant that emits air pollution at a higher rate than any other plant in the state.

That enterprise could have taken a hit under a key part of President Biden’s climate agenda, a $150 billion plan to push coal plants toward cleaner energy. One lawmaker, though, played a central role in killing that proposal: Manchin, who has earned hundreds of thousands of dollars annually from the family coal company while using his role as a Democratic swing vote in a 50-50 Senate to dictate Biden’s policies.

When pressed about whether he has a conflict of interest, Manchin bristles. “I have been in a blind trust for 20 years. I have no idea what they’re doing,” the senator told reporters in September, referring to his family’s coal firm. “You got a problem?”

But contrary to his public statements, documents filed by the senator show the blind trust is much too small to account for all his reported earnings from the coal company, as of his latest financial disclosure report, which covers 2020 and was filed in May.

Manchin’s latest financial disclosure report says that the West Virginia family coal business that he helped found and run, Enersystems, paid him $492,000 in interest, dividends and other income in 2020, and that his share of the firm is worth between $1 million and $5 million. He signed a sworn statement saying he is aware of these earnings, underscoring that he is not blind to them.

Excerpts from Manchin's financial disclosure reports.

By contrast, Manchin set up a blind trust with $350,000 in cash in 2012. In his latest financial disclosure report, the senator reported that the Joseph Manchin III Qualified Blind Trust earned no more than $15,000 last year and is worth between $500,000 and $1 million. By design, it is not possible to know precisely what’s in the blind trust. But the financial disclosure records show that it doesn’t include all of Manchin’s income from Enersystems.

If Manchin’s coal interests are not in a blind trust, ethics experts said, it calls into question the impartiality of a senator who in October forced Biden to drop the plan in his Build Back Better bill to phase out the same kinds of coal plants that are key to his family company’s profitability.

The senator’s effort to dismiss questions about his coal interests by declaring he has a blind trust is “misleading and at worst it’s just not true,” said Don Fox, a former general counsel and acting director of the Office of Government Ethics in the Obama administration, who examined Manchin’s financial records at The Washington Post’s request. He cited the vast difference between Manchin’s reported income from the trust and his family’s coal business.

“The question I would ask him would be, when he says it’s in a blind trust, ‘Well, your public financial disclosure report that you sign and swear is true does not have Enersystems in the blind trust,’ ” Fox said. “And if the blind trust is truly blind, how do you know what’s in it?”

Manchin declined an interview request. The Post sent his spokeswoman, Sam Runyon, a list of detailed questions and a copy of the document establishing the blind trust. She did not directly respond to queries about the blind trust and conflict of interest.

Instead, she emailed a statement that said in full: “Senator Manchin is in full compliance with Senate ethics and financial disclosure rules. He continues to work to find a path forward on important climate legislation that maintains American leadership in energy innovation and critical energy reliability, as exemplified by the many provisions to address climate change in the Energy Act of 2020 and the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.”

It is legal for Manchin to make millions of dollars from his coal interests even as he chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and legislates on matters affecting the industry. That is because members of Congress are not required to divest their assets to avoid a potential industry conflict.

Senate rules prohibit members from using their position to pass legislation in which “the principal purpose” is to benefit themselves or family members. There is no evidence Manchin has taken action solely to benefit himself or the family company, though critics say that by killing the clean electricity provision in Biden’s agenda, he is helping all coal-related companies — potentially including Enersystems.

Ed Note: Aye, there's the rub - Manchin hasn't pushed for legislation or regulation that could benefit his portfolio, he's just blocked legislation and regulation that might decrease his portfolio. That is some top flight smarmspace fuckery right there.

Congressional rules are more lenient than, for example, those governing many top executive branch officials, whose assets would be reviewed by the Office of Government Ethics for potential conflicts of interest, making them subject to a requirement to divest, recuse or seek a waiver.

Craig Holman, an ethics expert at Public Citizen, said that regardless of the congressional rules, Manchin’s declaration in the trust that he wants to “avoid any conflict of interest, or any appearance of such a conflict” is undercut by his simultaneous earnings from a coal business and his work against climate policies.

“It is a very blatant conflict of interest,” Holman said, citing the senator’s financial disclosures. “Manchin is not only very wealthy, but most of his assets and wealth are invested in a single industry, coal.”

Holman said Manchin’s financial position is one of the most conflicted of any member of Congress he has studied because so much of the senator’s financial stake is in the coal industry while he is playing a key role on climate policies. Nonetheless, he said, “what Manchin is doing is not illegal. The conflict of interest code for Congress is just way too weak.”

Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), who sought for months to convince Manchin to support the plan to transition power companies to cleaner forms of energy, said the West Virginia senator ultimately balked. Manchin’s opposition effectively killed one of the most far-reaching climate policies in the bill, outraging environmentalists and leading to an increased focus on his family’s coal business and his own earnings.

“After working on the Clean Electricity Performance Program, which I think is the strongest and best way of getting the utility sector to net-zero emissions as quickly as possible, Sen. Manchin ultimately said he just couldn’t get there,” Smith said in an interview. “And I think that was a mistake — I think the [program] would have been a powerful tool to get the emissions reductions we need, while keeping utility rates low.”

She stressed that she is still having “good conversations” with Manchin and is negotiating on other parts of the bill affecting climate change, but she has “no expectation that any kind of clean electricity plan will be included.”

Manchin could further scale back Biden’s climate change efforts. The senator has also objected to a measure in the Build Back Better bill designed to reduce emissions of methane, the main component of natural gas, and a tax credit for electric cars. He has not yet announced his support for the Democrats’ spending bill.

Questions about a conflict between Manchin’s coal interests and his government service go back decades, a review by The Post found.

Manchin helped found and became president of Enersystems, a coal brokerage firm, in 1988. One of its customers since 1993 has been a power plant in Grant Town, W. Va., that uses waste coal to produce energy.

In the mid-1990s, when Manchin was a state senator, he backed legislation that gave plants such as the one in Grant Town a property tax break. When a group of local citizens complained that Manchin had a conflict of interest, he responded that he had avoided any ethical problem by giving the break to all similar projects.

Had the bill only benefited the Grant Town plant, Manchin said at the time, “I would have excused myself from voting,” according to a contemporaneous account in the Charleston Gazette. But by backing a broad measure, Manchin said ethics officials told him it was allowed, notwithstanding the benefit for Grant Town.

After Manchin was elected West Virginia’s secretary of state in 2000, he gave control of Enersystems to his son Joseph Manchin IV, who still runs it. The younger Manchin did not respond to a request for comment.

After Manchin was elected governor in 2005, he said he put his company shares in a blind trust. He reported receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars from his coal business on a state financial disclosure form in 2009 and 2010, and told the news service Greenwire in 2011 that his holdings had “absolutely not” affected his policies, adding, “I have been in a blind trust for a long time.”

In his successful 2010 bid for the U.S. Senate, Manchin ran an ad that showed him shooting at President Barack Obama’s proposed legislation to address climate change “because it’s bad for West Virginia.” Between 2011 and 2020, Manchin earned $4.8 million from Enersystems, according to a tally by the Center for Responsive Politics. His net worth as of 2020 was between $4.4 million to $12.8 million, the center said.

Enersystems is a private company based in Fairmont, W. Va., near Manchin’s hometown of Farmington. Public records show that the business is among those that benefit from federal programs to clean up long-shuttered coal mines, where mountains of mining debris, known as waste coal, have been piled and abandoned. The company sells the waste coal to the only power plant in the state that still burns it: the Grant Town Power Plant, an 80-megawatt electricity-generating facility in Manchin’s home county of Marion.

Compared with ordinary coal plants, power plants that burn waste coal, or what the industry calls “gob,” are dirtier and don’t generate as much electricity. The Grant Town plant emits more greenhouse gases and the main components of acid rain — nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide — into the air per megawatt-hour of electricity produced than any other power plant in West Virginia, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s most recent data. Only a handful of waste coal-burning plants still operate nationally. They are such heavy polluters that the Trump administration created a separate category for them, weakening the air pollution standards they had to meet.

“Burning waste coal, like burning trash, turns pollution on the ground into pollution in the air,” said Eric Schaeffer, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project, a nonprofit founded by former EPA officials. The environmental benefits of clearing waste coal from mining sites are questionable, he added. Although removing the piles of gob can reduce acid runoff, the process of burning it creates an enormous amount of ash that can release toxins into streams or groundwater.

The Manchin family doesn’t own or operate the Grant Town plant, which is run by American Bituminous Power Partners, a limited partnership registered in Delaware. But records of coal transactions from last year suggest the power plant is Enersystems’ primary customer. It is the only publicly recorded buyer of Enersystems’ waste coal.

In response to written questions from The Post, American Bituminous Power Partners Executive Director Ken Niemann said the Grant Town plant “is in full compliance with all its state and federal air emissions controls and limitations.”

As the economics of burning coal have become less favorable, the Grant Town plant has come close to shutting down at least twice. In 2006, when Manchin was governor, the state’s Public Service Commission rescued the plant by approving rate increases, which the utility passed on to customers. The commission’s chair at the time was a Manchin appointee.

Those higher prices were supposed to be temporary until 2017. But by 2015, the power plant’s owners were back before the commission, claiming financial difficulties. The commissioners sided with the plant, and the higher rates became permanent.

The Grant Town plant faced a new threat this year: Democrats’ plans to rapidly shift the electricity sector away from coal and toward cleaner sources of energy. The clean electricity program would have rewarded utilities for purchasing more electricity from wind, solar and other emissions-free sources — and penalized those that did not.

If the program had become law, the power company that buys electricity from the Grant Town plant would have faced growing financial pressure to shift away from coal power, increasing the odds that Grant Town would eventually close, said James Van Nostrand, director of West Virginia University law school’s Center for Energy and Sustainable Development.

The clean electricity program “would have helped us out a lot,” Van Nostrand said. West Virginia’s embrace of coal power over less expensive alternatives like gas, wind and solar has contributed to a decade of rising electricity bills. According to Van Nostrand’s analysis, between 2010 and 2019 West Virginians’ electricity costs increased about five times more than the national average.

“By definition, if the federal government is going to help us transition to cheaper, cleaner electricity, then our electricity bills would either go down or wouldn’t go up as fast as they are now,” he said.

In 2019, Manchin co-authored an op-ed with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) in The Post that said, “There is no question that climate change is real or that human activities are driving much of it. We are seeing the impact in our home states.” They said they were working to find “pragmatic policies that can draw strong and enduring support” and pinned much of their hope on what they called “the next scientific breakthrough” for “game-changing technology.” They opposed what they called “drastic, unattainable measures to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.”

Manchin’s role as the potentially decisive vote in the Senate and his opposition to efforts at abandoning the filibuster have given him outsize power, which he’s used in part to reduce the Build Back Better bill from more than $3 trillion to $1.75 trillion.

Manchin has argued that the clean electricity plan he insisted on removing from the bill is unnecessary because coal companies are already moving toward other energy sources. “The only thing they want us to do is pay $150 billion for what’s already happening,” Manchin told reporters in September in explaining his opposition to the measure. “We’ve transitioned.”

The legislation that passed the House last month still contains $555 billion in tax credits, grants and other efforts to lower planet-warming greenhouse gases, which would be the largest clean energy investment in U.S. history. The bill’s tax incentives would make it easier to install solar panels, build wind turbines and retrofit buildings with energy-saving upgrades. Electric vehicles would become less expensive, reducing a barrier that has prevented many Americans from purchasing them.

Around the time Manchin helped kill the clean electricity provision, he was asked during a walk with reporters on Capitol Hill about whether he has a conflict of interest and was pressed on the fact that his son runs the family coal company. Manchin responded, “I’m very proud of my son. He does a good job. You’d do best to change the subject now.”

Manchin’s critics said that while the senator was not violating any law, he is violating the premise of his promise to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest.

Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, manager of government affairs at the Project on Government Oversight, said the best way to prevent such a conflict of interest would be to require members of Congress to divest most investments. If that was adopted, Manchin would be required to liquidate his shares in the coal company and put the assets in a blind trust, and authorize a trustee to invest the money in any way deemed appropriate, and without his knowledge.

“Under the current framework, you are not required to divest anything,” he said. “I think there should be someone in Congress who introduces a bill that says, ‘Look, if you become a member of Congress, you have to divest basically everything except for a widely diversified mutual fund.’ ”

But Hedtler-Gaudette said he has not found a single member of Congress willing to sponsor such legislation. As a result, he hopes Manchin’s case will prompt legislators to consider requiring divestment of any asset — not just publicly traded stock — that could be perceived as a conflict of interest.

“If you don’t like it, that’s fine,” Hedtler-Gaudette said. “There’s isn’t anyone who requires you to be a member of Congress.”