Following today’s breaking news that a federal grand jury indicted 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities for interfering with U.S. elections and political processes, End Citizens United President Tiffany Muller released the below statement.
“President Trump has dismissed Russia’s meddling in our elections as a hoax while his Republican colleagues in Congress have opposed reforms to safeguard our campaign finance system from attacks, such as the one confirmed today.
“The most troubling part of today is that this may be just the tip of the iceberg. Without adequate campaign finance disclosure laws, we might never know how much the Russians have spent to interfere with our elections. It could be in the tens of millions of dollars.
“Republicans need to decide whether giving their mega-donors outsized influence in our elections is worth allowing Russian agents a backdoor loophole into manipulating our elections.”
While it is illegal for foreigners to donate to American elections, loopholes in our campaign finance system provide the potential for foreign countries to spend unlimited money in secret to influence them. ECU has warned foreign governments and agents could exploit a system of shell corporations, political groups that do not report their donors, and Super PACs. In fact, some foreign agents have already done so.
ECU has called on Congress to pass a number of bills to close these loopholes including, the Honest Ads Act, the By the People reform package, the Get Foreign Money Out of U.S. Elections Act and the 2017 DISCLOSE Act. ECU has also called on Congress to protect the Mueller investigation.
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