NC Speaker’s Questionable Campaign Payouts
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** CfA's September 22, 2023 Newsletter
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With your support, Campaign for Accountability is working to expose corruption and hold the powerful accountable.
** This Week's Updates:
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CfA Urges North Carolina Officials to Opine on Tim Moore Campaign Payouts
On Monday, CfA sent a letter ([link removed]) to the North Carolina State Board of Elections (NCSBE) urging it to clarify the legality around rent payments that North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore’s campaign has made to the speaker’s own private law practice. After reviewing disclosures, CfA found that Moore’s campaign committee has been consistently making monthly “office rent” payments to “Tim Moore Attorney at Law” for either $1000 or $1500. This amount appears to be commensurate with fair market rent for the entire property that the law practice occupies, making it an unusually high sum.
When questioned ([link removed]) about the size of these payments by WRAL’s Travis Fain, Moore said that the $1,500 payments were also meant to encompass time that his law firm staff spent on political issues. CfA notes that none of the disclosures made any mention of “staff time” until 2023, and that—if that is indeed the explanation for Moore’s unusually high reimbursements—campaigns have a duty to properly track staff time.
This isn’t the first time that Moore’s behavior has raised questions. A recent piece ([link removed]) in The Assembly lays out the speaker’s “complicated legacy,” which often mixed his “political, business, and personal interests." That article mentions CfA's 2019 letter ([link removed]) calling on North Carolina officials to investigate another incident involving Moore, in which he appeared to have used his position to seek preferential treatment from regulators. In July, Moore announced ([link removed]) that he would not be running for speaker again – a decision that came after another elected official accused ([link removed]) Moore of having an affair with his wife.
Federal Election Commission Hearing Drills Down on Dysfunction, Partisanship
On Wednesday, the Committee on House Administration held an oversight hearing for the Federal Election Commission (FEC), giving lawmakers a chance to question members of the Commission about their ability to enforce campaign finance laws and overcome gridlock. Democratic ranking member Rep. Joe Morelle of New York expressed his concern ([link removed]) with the agency’s failure to take up investigations recommended by its non-partisan staff; the most glaring example might be the FEC’s decision to drop its investigation ([link removed]) of a hush-money payment made by former President Donald Trump to pornographic-film actress Stormy Daniels. In that case, the agency’s Office of General Counsel (OGC) released an internal report ([link removed]) recommending that the FEC find Trump and his lawyer, Michael Cohen, responsible for violating campaign finance laws. The
commissioners, however, declined to investigate along partisan lines. Earlier this month, Republican commissioner Allen Dickerson attempted to hamstring ([link removed]) the OGC with a rule change that would have required them to get the Commission’s approval for any investigative activity, effectively preventing documents like the hush-money report from reaching the light of day. Interestingly, the rule and its implications were not discussed at the oversight hearing. You can read CfA’s letter opposing the policy change, here ([link removed]) .
Elon Musk Deflects on Antisemitism
On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu became the latest individual to encourage Elon Musk to address the issue of antisemitism on X – the platform formerly known as Twitter. The meeting came just one day after Musk made a post of his own on the platform claiming that billionaire philanthropist George Soros—a frequent boogeyman for antisemitic conspiracy theorists— “appear[ed] to want nothing less than the destruction of western civilization.” Months earlier, when Musk tweeted that Soros “hates humanity,” an Israeli government account directly criticized his rhetoric ([link removed]) —retweeting a post which showed that use of the term “The Jews” had spiked on the platform following Musk’s tweet. Despite these incidents, Netanyahu claimed ([link removed]) during this week’s meeting to “know [Musk’s] opposition to antisemitism” – a statement made even more ba
ffling given Musk’s recent support for a campaign to ban the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) from X.
Last month, CFA’s Tech Transparency Project and the ADL found ([link removed]) that X, along with other major social media platforms, was failing to stop its algorithms from amplifying hate and antisemitism. After this interview with Netanyahu, it remains to be seen if Musk will pay more heed to advocates who are calling for an end to hate speech on X.
What We're Reading
CFTC Rejects Bid to Launch Political Election-Betting Market ([link removed])
FTC sues Texas anesthesiology provider to bust monopoly ([link removed])
US SEC cracks down on funds "greenwashing" with new investment requirement ([link removed])
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Be on the lookout for more updates about our work in the upcoming weeks. Thanks again for signing up to be a part of CfA!
Sincerely,
Michelle Kuppersmith
Executive Director, Campaign for Accountability
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