culpability for him or any of the other defendants who might have known that this was happening and knowingly benefited from this? so the case that we re bringing is the law that we have. we have the ability to bring civil enforcement. the main thing is a declaration by a court that this scheme was illegal and they have to stop doing it because they kept doing it. the nra has continued to do it. if there s not something done s g se the about it, i think these campaigns will continue to use these same techniques. the other available remedy is to give the money back essentially. you can t take back those ads but you can require the campaigns and the political committees to provide this money to the treasury. so potentially what we re looking at is an outcome of an order by the court for the nra to pay $35 million to the u.s. treasury to compensate for all e of that wrongful spending. david pucino, i appreciate you helping us understand this tonight, thanks. keep us apprised. thanks s
republican senate candidates and also potentially millions of dollars in illegal spending toward donald trump s 2016 presidential campaign. under campaign finance law the nra, any outside group, can t give millions of dollars to a political campaign. they can spend as much money as they want airing their own ads,n but they can t coordinate their ad strategy, coordinate their spending with the campaign because that would basically be the same bthing, giving illega contributions to the campaign. so this alleged scheme, the way it worked, is that the nra hired a company to buy ads supporting its preferred candidates, whether donald trump or josh hawley or these other candidates who are allegedly the beneficiaries of these schemes. but what the investigation turned up was that the company the nra hired to buy its ads was actually just a front group. it was the same media company ni that was doing all the ad buying for donald trump and josh hawley. they were just doing it with a different n
opportunity, potentially retake the senate for the democrats in that 2018 but wave election. one of the hardest fought and most closely watched senate races in 2018 was in missouri. incumbent moderate democratic senator claire mccaskill faced a challenge from josh hawley. everybody knew this was going to be a hard race for claire mccaskill no matter what. it s missouri. trump won missouri by nearly 20 points in 2016. two years later he s running to try to hold on to her seat as a democratic senator there. something came up right at the end of that campaign. reports surfaced that perhaps josh hawley had gotten some extra help in his campaign that might not have been okay.inoryeu a complaint was filed with the federal election commission jusc a couple of weeks before election day that accused the nra of having dumped a whole bunch of illegal money on josh l hawley during the campaign, supporting his campaign with illegal campaign spending through an elaborate scheme mp designed to evade
anti-freedom agenda. okay. but this is another huge scandal for the nra, which is already on the ropes, right? the new york attorney general i trying to dissolve them as an organization over their top o leaders allegedly raiding the organization s coffers for their own personal gain. the nra tried to declare bankruptcy in response, and a judge told them that they couldn t because it was a bad t faith effort to declare bankruptcy just to avoid accountability in that lawsuit.j they re also trying to claim bankruptcy while also bragging to their supporters that they w have just as much money as ever and just as much influence as ever.as an nra affiliate is the plaintiff in this major gun il right case argued before the supreme court yesterday, a case which if the court sides with the nra, way, way, way more americans will bey, allowed to carry concealed firearms in
it s literally one guy, the same guy doing the ads for both of them. if you re just one person, you are by definition coordinating with yourself because otherwise, see a doctor. is the guy trying not to coordinate with himself? does he think he has some sort of chinese wall within? it looked on paper like the nra and these campaigns weren t coordinating. in fact the nra was essentially just giving money, illegally huge amounts of money, to trump s and hawley s ad guy and saying have fun. if that was how it worked, that would be illegal. a former chair of the fec said don t think i ve ever seen a situation where illegal coordination seems so obvious. it s so blatant, it doesn t even seem sloppy.