John,
CREW won a major victory in 2018 when a federal court sided with CREW in CREW v. FEC and Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies and threw out an illegal regulation that allowed dark money groups to keep their donors anonymous.
Since then, we’ve seen some increased disclosure of dark money as a result of that victory—but of course, many of these secretive groups are still refusing to follow the law. Turning Point Action, the dark money group associated with Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, is one of those groups. We filed a complaint saying so with the FEC.
Turning Point Action spent more than $1.4 million on independent expenditures—a type of political spending—in 2020, and solicited donations that it said it would spend supporting Donald Trump’s re-election and Joe Biden’s defeat. But Turning Point Action failed to disclose any information about their contributors, even after the FEC notified them that they needed to. Thanks to the precedent set by CREW’s case in 2018, that appears to be illegal.
Campaign finance laws are only effective if they are enforced. CREW fought for years in court to overturn the illegal regulation that allowed dark money groups to keep Americans in the dark about who is influencing their elections, and now we’re continuing the fight to ensure that groups cannot evade the law. The FEC must promptly investigate and hold Turning Point Action accountable for following the law.
Thank you,
Robert Maguire
Research Director, CREW
