The winner of the 2019 Sand Sculpture in Texas pic.twitter.com/8PqLYYml1k
— Carleen Ceraldi (@ceraldi_carleen) May 6, 2019
It’s no longer Honest Abe’s party… of course, it hasn’t been for many years:
New: A political organization run by David Bossie, a top outside adviser to POTUS, has raised millions of dollars by saying it's supporting Trump-aligned conservative candidates — but has spent only a tiny fraction of that money supporting candidates. https://t.co/HzPOe6AT3Y
— Jonathan Swan (@jonathanvswan) May 5, 2019
… Instead, federal records suggest the Presidential Coalition has spent nearly all its money — raised mostly from small-dollar donations — on more fundraising, as well as administrative costs, which include Bossie’s salary, according to a new report produced by the Campaign Legal Center (CLC) in collaboration with Axios…
A senior Trump administration official told Axios: “The problem the president is going to have with this is 1) he does not like when people are perceived to be profiting off of him, and 2) these are not max out donors. This is money that many likely think is going towards the president’s re-election effort when it is not. So effectively every dollar groups like Bossie’s and similar groups raise is a dollar the campaign does not.”…
TL;DR from Vanity Fair:
… According to I.R.S. filings reviewed by Axios and the Campaign Legal Center, Bossie’s 527 political organization raised $18.5 million between 2017 and 2018, promising donors that the group was “dedicated to identifying and supporting conservative candidates running for office at the state and local levels of government.” …
But, shockingly, those claims were somewhat misleading. Of the $15.4 million that the Presidential Coalition spent during that period, only $425,442 (or 3 percent) was spent on candidates, political committees, or state and local ads supporting said candidates. (In contrast, the Republican Governors Association, a similar 527 organization, spent about 80 percent of its expenditures on those direct political activities.) As for the remaining 97 percent, the C.L.C. traced it directly into the pockets of the swampy, political-consultant class—including Bossie himself. According to I.R.S. documents, the Presidential Coalition spent millions of dollars on contracts with 14 direct-marketing firms to fuel fund-raising efforts, several million dollars more on postage to send said mailers and books, at least $1.1 million to telemarketing firms associated with InfoCision (which was previously accused by former employees of preying on elderly donors), and $1.2 million on donor-cultivation lists. (InfoCision has denied the allegations, but agreed to pay a $250,000 settlement to the Federal Trade Commission in 2018 over misleading practices.) Bossie himself diverted $659,493 to two of his other political organizations, Citizens United and Citizens United Foundation, from which he drew a $105,541 salary. (Incidentally, Citizens United is the group behind the Supreme Court ruling that corporations can spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns and messaging.)
“Unfortunately, these practices are not unique to the Presidential Coalition: there is a cottage industry of groups targeting vulnerable communities with self-serving borderline scams,” the C.L.C. report states. “What sets the Presidential Coalition apart is that it is explicitly—and successfully—capitalizing on Bossie’s connection with the President of the United States.”
The targets of this apparent effort were die-hard middle-class Trump supporters, many of whom happened to be elderly…
This is the sort of Mafia bust-out that usually happens when the reigning familia is tottering towards collapse. That an established professional ratfvcker like Bossie has decided it’s okay to cut into Donny Dollhand’s action is, IMO, at least a semi-silver lining for us Democrats. (Assuming we can rally enough to save our beleaguered democracy, come 2020.)
Grifters Gonna Grift Open Thread: David Bossie EditionPost + Comments (190)