Gideon Resnick
Daily Beast
Trump sent a cease and desist letter to the Club for Growth with his corporate letterhead from his corporation’s lawyer which, experts say, might qualify as an illegal corporate contribution.
When Donald Trump gets annoyed with something, he has his crack team of lawyers handle it. Case in point: his current issue with the Club for Growth’s negative attack ads airing in Iowa, which use actual quotes from Trump in the past to paint him as supportive of national health care, imposing higher taxes, and his infamous 2004 line, “in many cases I probably identify more as a Democrat.”
Despite the fact this is probably one of the more common practices in American politics, Trump decided to threaten a lawsuit, but it’s who made the threat and how it was delivered that may have run afoul of the rules, according to campaign finance experts.
On Monday, Alan Garten, who describes himself as general counsel at the Trump Organization, penned a cease and desist letter to the political advocacy group claiming defamation, despite the fact that the ad has Donald Trump quotes said by Donald Trump.
“Simply stated, your Attack Ad is not only completely disingenuous, but replete with outright lies, false, defamatory, and destructive statements and downright fabrications which you fully know to be untrue, thereby exposing you and your so-called “club” to liability for damages and other tortious harm,” Garten wrote.
Here’s the problem: The missive was written on letterhead with “The Trump Organization,” which is the corporate entity attached to Trump that is and should not be not at all related to his presidential campaign.
The issue is that Garten is the Trump Organization’s general counsel, meaning he’s on the company dime, and corporations are expressly prohibited from contributing to campaigns by the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
“If I were his lawyer, I would have advised him to send this thing from his campaign committee,” Paul Ryan, senior counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, told The Daily Beast. Ryan reviewed the letter and said he had “a hard time believing” it could be unrelated to influencing the outcome of his presidential campaign.
More:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/23/did-trump-violate-fec-rules-with-lawsuit-threat.html
