Courtesy of Pam Martens.
Brad Deutsch, Lead Counsel for the Bernie Sanders Campaign
Brad Deutsch, the attorney who authored the letter last week charging the Hillary Clinton campaign’s joint fundraising committee with dubious dealings that appear to violate Federal election law, isn’t just any ole lawyer. Prior to joining the law firm Garvey Schubert Barer in July 2014, Deutsch worked for more than a decade at the government’s top watchdog over Federal campaign financing – the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
Deutsch, now lead counsel to Senator Bernie Sanders’ campaign for President, would seem to be well qualified in defining what is and is not legal under Federal election law. From 2006 to 2014, Deutsch was Chief of Staff and Senior Legal Advisor to Commissioner Steven T. Walther at the FEC. Prior to that, he served as Assistant General Counsel at the FEC from 2004 to 2006 where he supervised a team of Federal election law attorneys.
The joint fundraising committee set up by the Clinton campaign is called the Hillary Victory Fund. Its Treasurer, Elizabeth Jones, doubles as the Chief Operating Officer for Hillary Clinton’s main campaign fund, Hillary for America. The joint committee was supposed to financially benefit the Hillary campaign, the DNC, and 32 state committees that agreed to come on board. The concept, in theory, is to raise joint funds to benefit the broader Democratic party and congressional candidates running for office. But by ramping up the joint fundraising committee before the primary races have concluded, before Hillary is even the party’s nominee, and with her own people in charge of the joint committee, it has created the growing perception that this so-called joint effort is really just a ham-fisted appendage of a political machine that wants to skip the quaintness of primary voting and let big donors install the Democratic party’s candidate.
The arrogance of this attitude has outraged Bernie Sanders’ supporters and piqued curiosity about what’s really going on inside the Hillary Victory Fund. The picture hasn’t been pretty to date and, unfortunately, it is adding to the negative public perception that Hillary Clinton can’t be trusted.
Under Federal election law, all that the Hillary for America primary campaign committee can accept from an individual donor is a maximum of $2700 for the primary election and an additional $2700 for the general election. But by setting up the Hillary Victory Fund as a joint committee between the DNC, 32 state party committees and the Hillary Clinton campaign, the super wealthy are able to contribute a whopping $712,200, with much of that finding its way into Hillary’s main campaign fund, Hillary for America.
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