{"id":164684,"date":"2024-12-26T07:00:53","date_gmt":"2024-12-26T12:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=164684"},"modified":"2024-12-23T21:58:39","modified_gmt":"2024-12-24T02:58:39","slug":"ethics-group-calls-out-ethically-suspect-pols","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=164684","title":{"rendered":"Ethics group calls out ethically suspect pols"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-104392 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/congress-2-300x285.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"285\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/congress-2-300x285.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/congress-2-351x333.jpg 351w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/congress-2.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! Back to those paragons of virtue&#8230; our legislators.<\/p>\n<p>FACT, the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, released their annual ethics report &#8211; and it ain&#8217;t purty. And before you go excoriating just those damn Democrats&#8230;\u00a0 remember that Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Justice apparently blind to the optics of HIS actions, has been found to have accepted another $4.5 mill. All pols are dogs with fleas. How nice.<\/p>\n<p>Ad expected in a campaign year, most of the sinnin&#8217; is related to election campaigns. And the article is from Fox, so Republican campaigners don&#8217;t get much mention. Sure are a lot of familiar names, though.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8230;whether Eugene Vindman and his Virginia House campaign unlawfully solicited and accepted multiple contributions from the<br \/>\nVoteVets PAC in violation of the contribution limits under the Federal Election Campaign Act. During his campaign, a media outlet contacted Vindman\u2019s office for comment on his military experience. Vindman&#8217;s campaign manager pointed the media outlet to the political director of VoteVets PAC and stated that all media requests could be directed to him. VoteVets, a \u201chybrid PAC\u201d, endorsed Vindman, made $10,000 in direct campaign contributions to him during the election cycle, and spent more than $400,000 on advertisements supporting the candidacy of his successful congressional run. VoteVets, in handling Vindman\u2019s campaign communications, appears to have significantly exceeded federal law&#8217;s contribution limits.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And then we move west to Wisconsin.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u2022 U.S. Representative Gwen Moore of Wisconsin: In July, FACT filed a complaint requesting the Federal Election Commission investigate and take appropriate action on Rep. Moore for abusing her leadership PAC to the point that its activities demonstrate it to be a \u201cscam PAC\u201d. Rep. Moore\u2019s leadership PAC, named GWEN PAC, was established to support candidates for public office and is legally required to do so. In the 2024 election cycle GWEN PAC made only $14,500 in 12 contributions to political committees or organizations&#8211;just 5% of its overall spending. Thus, 94.8% of GWEN PAC\u2019s spending went toward things other than the law\u2019s required purpose of supporting candidates or causes. GWEN PAC spent almost eight times more on food and travel than it did on its required purpose of supporting candidates. Some examples of their spending were on alcohol, catering, food delivery, restaurants, hotels, and a resort in California\u2019s wine country. GWEN PAC\u2019s spending proves that instead of being the leadership PAC it claims to be, the organization is operating as a scam PAC, or a PAC that raises funds under the guise of supporting candidates when in fact the majority of their spending goes to \u201coperating costs\u201d. Federal candidates may not operate a scam PAC according to the\u00a0 Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA).<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio: In May, FACT urged the Federal Election Commission to investigate whether Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and his campaign knowingly solicited excessive contributions for his 2024 Ohio Senate campaign. Sen. Brown&#8217;s campaign committee reported no outstanding debts in connection with his uncontested primary on March 19. After this, however, Sen. Brown continued to actively solicit contributions for this past primary election through a joint fundraising committee\u2014a clear violation of federal law.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And one of our most familiar faces:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u2022 Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York: In April, FACT filed a complaint requesting the Office of Congressional Ethics investigate Rep. Ocasio-Cortez for using official resources for political purposes, including official House floor and committee video, in violation of federal law and House ethics rules. House ethics rules clearly state that Members are forbidden from using official resources for any campaign or political activity, which she did on multiple occasions.\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/politics\/watchdog-releases-report-highlighting-worst-ethics-violations-from-public-officials-who-ran-office-2024\">Fox News<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Read the article.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! Back to those paragons of virtue&#8230; our legislators. FACT, the &hellip; <a title=\"Ethics group calls out ethically suspect pols\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=164684\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Ethics group calls out ethically suspect pols<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":668,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[643,89,185,478],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-164684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2024-election","category-congress-sucks","category-crime","category-none"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/668"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=164684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164684\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=164684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=164684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=164684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}