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kris kobach
DOJ and FEC Complaints Filed Against Kris Kobach and We Build the Wall, Inc. for Illegal Campaign Solicitation
Aug 02, 2019
Today, Common Cause filed complaints with the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Election Commission (FEC) alleging reason to believe that solicitations for campaign contributions to former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach's Senate campaign distributed by We Build the Wall, Inc. violated multiple campaign finance laws. The email solicitation appears to violate the ban on corporate contributions to a federal candidate and the prohibition on candidates spending "soft money" in connection with their election. The email also lacks the "paid for by" disclaimer required by federal law when candidates solicit political contributions.
The Daily Beast reported last night that, earlier in the day, We Build the Wall, Inc., a the 501(c)(4) nonprofit corporation attempting to build a wall on the United States-Mexico border, sent a fundraising solicitation to its email distribution list, written as a personal appeal from Kobach for contributions to his Senate campaign and linking to the campaign website. Kobach serves as general counsel to the organization and sits on its advisory board.
"One way or the other Kris Kobach appears to have violated federal campaign finance laws through this solicitation for contributions to his U.S. Senate campaign," said Paul S. Ryan, Common Cause vice president for policy and litigation. "This looks like an illegal in-kind corporate contribution from We Build the Wall, Inc. to the Kobach campaign. But even if the Kobach campaign paid fair market value for distribution of this fundraising email, it neglected to include the 'paid for by' disclaimer required by law."
To read the DOJ complaint, click here.
To read the FEC complaint, click here.
To view this release online, click here.
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Fresh off 'MAGA Field Trip,' Steve Bannon, Erik Prince Among Right-Wing Crew Plotting Out Privatized Border Wall
New reporting by Politico sheds light on big players behind anti-immigrant effort
Feb 05, 2019
What brings together the likes of the president's former chief strategist Steve Bannon; voter disenfranchiser Kris Kobach; notorious Blackwater founder Erik Prince; controversial former sheriff David Clarke; immigration hardliner and former Congressman Tom Tancredo; and offensive meme spewer and former baseball great Curt Schilling?
A move to supplement President Donald Trump's proposed "wall" on the southern border with a privatized wall.
According to new reporting by Politico, the right-wing crew got together--though Prince just phoned in--for the first time last week at the border town of McAllen, Texas for "a kind of #MAGA field trip."
The New York Times reported on the privatized wall effort late last month, but Politico is the first to report on Bannon's involvement.
"Do we have a billion dollars right now? No. But can we raise one- or two-hundred million dollars? No doubt about it," Bannon told the news outlet. As of this writing, the new GoFundMe page has raised a little over $20 million of its $1 billion goal.
Trump has given the effort his "blessing," Kobach asserted to the Times.
The project reportedly got its start in Iraq war veteran Brian Kolfage's GoFundMe page for wall funding. That evolved into a new fundraising effort and the formation of the nonprofit "We Build the Wall."
A FAQ page for new group asserts that it is "presently working with U.S. Customs and Border Patrol experts and other U.S. border security service professionals" to target areas for a wall, which would rely on consenting landowners. "The company will build the wall mile-by-mile in strategic locations based on a variety of factors. We will build as much wall as we can based on feasibility, land use, and funding," it continues.
That company is reportedly the Israel-based Magal Security Systems, which is behind apartheid barriers that besiege Palestinians.
The crew is getting ready to tout their project as soon as Friday at a town hall in Tucson, Arizona and later this month at the upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
Kolfage, who's listed as a key part of the We Build the Wall team, told Politico, "we're going to give it our all."
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'Smoking Gun': White House Finally Admits Bannon and Kobach Were Racist Minds Behind Scheme to Rig 2020 Census
"Big big deal," said journalist Josh Marshall, in reaction to the news. "So the white nationalists—Bannon and Kobach—are the guys behind the plan to rig the census to disenfranchise blue state voters."
Oct 11, 2018
Despite earlier saying he knew nothing about how the effort was orchestrated within the White House, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has revealed that he does remember putting Steve "Let-them-call-you -racist" Bannon, the white nationalist former top advisor to President Trump, in touch with then-Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach in order to provide guidance about adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census--an effort that drew outrage from voting rights advocates when it was introduced by the administration earlier this year.
"It's obvious that the administration hates immigrants and wants to deny big, blue states federal resources and political power by undercounting them in the Census. This is a perversion of the Constitution for partisan gain and a direct attack on anyone who doesn't meet Steve Bannon's warped approval." --Steven Choi, NYIC
"Big big deal," tweeted journalist Josh Marshall, in reaction to the news. "So the white nationalists--Bannon and Kobach--are the guys behind the plan to rig the census to disenfranchise blue state voters."
"Trump wants to distract us with Kanye West in the White House, while news leaks that his Commerce Secretary conspired with a white supremacist to rig the Census," said Steven Choi, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition. "It's obvious that the administration hates immigrants and wants to deny big, blue states federal resources and political power by undercounting them in the Census. This is a perversion of the Constitution for partisan gain and a direct attack on anyone who doesn't meet Steve Bannon's warped approval."
Journalist Ari Berman, called the revelation--contained in a filing by the Department of Justice as part of an ongoing lawsuit against the administration--a "smoking gun" in proving that the origin story of the policy spun by the White House was false and that it was, as many critics assumed, conceived as a conscious effort to impact future redistricting of communities by suppressing participation in the next census by immigrants and others:
\u201cThis is smoking gun showing that Steve Bannon & Kris Kobach pushed citizenship question on 2020 census. It had nothing to do with Voting Rights Act & was all about suppressing immigrant participation & shifting political power to GOP\u201d— Ari Berman (@Ari Berman) 1539283338
In the filing by the DOJ, obtained by The Hill, as the outlet reports:
Ross recalls Bannon calling him in the spring of 2017 to ask if he would be willing to speak to then-Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach about Kobach's idea of adding the potential question to the upcoming census.
The document is a response to written questions from the New York Attorney General in the discovery phase of a lawsuit New York and 16 other blue-leaning states have brought challenging the administration's decision to ask about citizenship.
As Talking Points Memo reports, Ross' admission in the filing "is contrary to previous testimony he gave to Congress in which he said he was not aware of being contacted by anyone in the White House about adding a citizenship question."
\u201cWilbur Ross has repeatedly lied to Congress about Census citizenship question, claiming DOJ requested it to enforce Voting Rights Act when in fact Ross added question after consulting with Bannon & Kobach\u201d— Ari Berman (@Ari Berman) 1539290211
In fact, Ross was so bent on avoiding the questions demanded by the lawsuit that he, as the Washington Post earlier reported, went to the U.S. Supreme Court "just days before his deposition was to have taken place" to demand reprieve. While the court declined to block Ross' deposition, he was granted a delay -- an extension that ended at 4:00 pm on Thursday.
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