The Latest News from the Institute for Free Speech August 29, 2022 Click here to subscribe to the Daily Media Update. This is the Daily Media Update published by the Institute for Free Speech. For press inquiries, please contact Luke Wachob at [email protected]. Donor Exposure Politico: Document reveals identity of donors who secretly funded Nikki Haley’s political nonprofit By Alex Isenstadt .....[T]he organization Documented, which describes itself as a nonpartisan government watchdog that investigates money in politics, obtained an unredacted copy of Stand For America’s 2019 filings, which it then shared with POLITICO. The group did not share the original source of the filing, but it bears a stamp from the charity office of the New York state attorney general... “It’s very rare that the public has the opportunity to see the identities of the donors who are providing five- or even six-figure contributions to a dark money group. It’s called dark money for a reason. Typically, the public does not know who is financing these groups, and this is a rare exception,” said Brendan Fischer, deputy executive director of Documented... Such tax filings are typically closely held, as donors contribute to nonprofit groups with the understanding that their names will be kept secret... POLITICO reached out to each donor named in this article prior to publication. They either did not respond or declined to offer comment. “This disclosure of a confidential tax return was clearly a corrupt violation of state and federal law to try to intimidate conservative donors,” Haley said in a statement. “Liberals have always weaponized government against conservatives, and Republicans have been too nice for too long. We will make sure the buck stops here.” ... “The reality is that some potential candidates are relying on a small handful of very wealthy donors as they map out their political future,” Fischer said. “And if those candidates win office, they’re going to owe an immense debt of gratitude to those secret donors.” Washington Post: A $1.6 billion donation lays bare a broken campaign finance system By Editorial Board .....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... 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. Philanthropy Roundtable: National Taxpayers Union Foundation Issues Strong Defense of Philanthropic Freedom By Brian Hawkins .....Our friends at the National Taxpayers Union Foundation (NTU) recently published a blog debunking many of the claims in the Institute for Policy Studies’ (IPS) July report entitled “Gilded Giving 2022: How Wealth Inequality Distorts Philanthropy and Imperils Democracy.” ... Senior Attorney Tyler Martinez goes on to make several points that are worth highlighting, citing IPS’ use of erroneous data, its “troublesome call for bigger government” and the harmful impact of its proposed policies on donor privacy and donor-advised funds... [D]onor privacy protections are integral to the health of private philanthropy. Martinez notes they also are a constitutionally protected right: Donor privacy is an important First Amendment right, particularly for those who give to controversial causes. For decades, the Supreme Court has consistently shielded organizational donors and supporters from generalized donor disclosure, and it continued to do so just last year. IRS Washington Times: Lois Lerner claimed ignorance of tea party in secret deposition By Stephen Dinan .....Lois Lerner claimed to have little knowledge of the tea party movement and what it stood for, even as she oversaw the IRS’s intrusive scrutiny of tea party groups’ applications for nonprofit status, according to newly released transcripts of a long-secret deposition she gave. In her 2017 testimony, given in a class action lawsuit brought by tea party groups whom the IRS admitted were wrongly treated, Ms. Lerner portrayed herself as a cog in the machine, trying to figure out how to process cases efficiently, rather than the anti-conservative crusader her private comments suggested... Previously released emails from her time at the IRS gave some insight into Ms. Lerner’s thinking, but the newly unsealed depositions go much deeper, putting her on the spot to defend and explain what she was doing and thinking at the time... At one point Ms. Lerner labeled the tea party cases “very dangerous.” She speculated that if a case reached the Supreme Court it could result in the 2010 Citizens United ruling, which extended political speech protections to groups that filed as political committees with the Federal Election Commission, being extended to tax-exempt organizations too. In one email to someone whose name is redacted from the deposition transcript Ms. Lerner, a former FEC employee, called Citizens United “by far the worst thing that has ever happened to this country.” She also said “We are witnessing the end of America” because of the influence of money. In the deposition she characterized those kinds of comments as jokes and characterized her support of stricter political speech disclosure requirements as a matter of cutting her workload. The Courts Wall Street Journal: Facebook Parent Meta Agrees to Settle Cambridge Analytica Lawsuit By Jennifer Hiller .....Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. agreed to settle a lawsuit that accused the social-media platform of allowing third parties, including Cambridge Analytica, to access private user data, according to a court filing on Friday. Meta and the Facebook users suing the company said in the joint filing that they had reached an agreement in principle but didn’t provide financial or other details. The two sides requested a 60-day stay of the lawsuit, which is being handled by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The suit followed revelations that Cambridge Analytica, a now-defunct British consulting firm that worked on former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, had improperly obtained and exploited Facebook user data. Tribune Chronicle: Federal judge rules against Newton Falls By Guy Vogrin .....A federal judge has issued a permanent injunction wiping out a Newton Falls village council rule that restrains free speech during council meetings. In signing off on a lawsuit settlement between the village and a former councilman, U.S. Judge Benita Pearson of Northern Ohio District Court on Thursday ordered village council not to enforce all rules preventing public participation that restrain a speaker from making accusations or suggestions of impropriety or illegal conduct and / or comments of attacks of a personal nature. The order also prevents the village from using police power to discourage citizens or retaliate against them for protected speech, according to the judge’s ruling. Online Speech Platforms Jonathan Turley: Zuckerberg Reveals the FBI Told His Company to be Wary of “Russian Disinformation” .....Recently, I wrote about the disclosure of an alleged backchannel between the CDC and Twitter on censoring critics of the agency and its recommendations. Now, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg discussed how the FBI warned Facebook about “Russian propaganda” before the Hunter Biden laptop story dropped in 2020... Zuckerberg stated on The Joe Rogan Experience that “The FBI, I think, basically came to us – some folks on our team – and was like, ‘Hey, just so you know, like, you should be on high alert… We thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election. We have it on notice that, basically, there’s about to be some kind of dump of that’s similar to that. So just be vigilant.’” It is not clear why the FBI considered this type of media outreach was part of its responsibility as a law enforcement agency. This was before the presidential election and actively discouraged a major platform to allow discussion of major allegations of corruption. The use of the FBI for such a role gave Facebook officials ample cover to expand their censorship operations. NBC News: FBI responds to Mark Zuckerberg claims in Joe Rogan show By Dennis Romero and Ben Goggin .....In an episode of the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast made available Thursday, Zuckerberg said that although the FBI didn't specifically name a New York Post article about Hunter Biden's laptop, it "fit the pattern" of what the FBI warned about. The Facebook cofounder said the FBI is a "legitimate institution" and that the warning prompted him to "take that seriously." The story was allowed to remain on Facebook, albeit with limited exposure, Zuckerberg said. In a statement Friday night, the FBI said it has provided companies with “foreign threat indicators” to help protect their platforms and customers, but that it “cannot ask, or direct, companies to take action on information received.” Washington Examiner: Social media, common carriage, and the First Amendment By Daniel Lyons .....AEI recently published a thought-provoking report by Professor Richard A. Epstein addressing censorship of conservative viewpoints online. Building on initial comments offered last year in the Wall Street Journal, Epstein identifies the problem as a systemic progressive bias among dominant social media companies, coupled with steep barriers to entry that reduce competition as a potential disciplining force in the short term. The solution, he posits, is a common carriage regime that would prevent digital platforms from abusing their positions in ways that distort public debate. I am sympathetic to Epstein’s concerns. As I’ve written elsewhere , social media is a volatile battleground, and any gatekeeper’s perception of particular content is likely to be informed at least subconsciously by one’s priors. While evidence of systemic bias remains unclear, high-profile anecdotal missteps (such as the Hunter Biden laptop story) certainly reinforce conservative grievances. But it’s not clear to me that social media platforms fit the common carriage paradigm, and even if they do, common carriage treatment likely violates the First Amendment. Read an article you think we would be interested in? Send it to Tiffany Donnelly at [email protected]. For email filters, the subject of this email will always begin with "Institute for Free Speech Media Update." The Institute for Free Speech is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization that promotes and defends the First Amendment rights to freely speak, assemble, publish, and petition the government. Please support the Institute's mission by clicking here. 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