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@smcphail.bsky.social
68 followers 93 following 190 posts
Director of Campaign Finance Litigation at Citizens For Responsibility and Ethics in Washington
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Will the Court that has adamantly insisted any incidental inhibition on spending on electioneering is unconstitutional agree Americans cant be taxed to watch, e.g., "Life is Beautiful"?
September 29, 2025 at 2:05 PM
Speaking of instigating political violence, Colorado Supreme Court had some thoughts (based on actual evidence and after adversarial proceeding):
supporters to march to the Capitol to prevent what he falsely characterized as an alleged fraud on the people of this country were indisputably overt and voluntary. Moreover, the evidence amply showed that President Trump undertook all these actions to aid and further a common unlawful purpose that he himself conceived and set in motion: prevent Congress from certifying the 2020 presidential election and stop the peaceful transfer of power. "violent far-right extremists understood that [President] Trump's calls to 'fight,' which most politicians would mean only symbolically, were, when spoken by [President] Trump, literal calls to violence by these groups, while [President] Trump's statements negating that sentiment were insincere and existed to obfuscate and create plausible deniability," id. at 9 84; and that (2) "[President] Trump's speech took place in the context of a pattern of [President] Trump's knowing 'encouragement and promotion of violence' to develop and deploy a shared coded language with his violent supporters," Pur independent review of the record in this case brings us to the same conclusion: President Trump incited and encouraged the use of violence and lawless action to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. The tenor of President Trump's messages to his supporters in exhorting them to travel to Washington, D.C. on January 6 was obvious and unmistakable: the allegedly rigged election was an act of war and those victimized by it had an obligation to fight back and to fight aggressively. And President Trump's supporters did not miss or misunderstand the message: the cavalry was coming to fight. In conducting our independent review of the district court's factual findings, we agree that President Trump intended that his speech would result in the use of violence or lawless action on January 6 to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. Despite his knowledge of the anger that he had instigated, his calls to arms, his awareness of the threats of violence that had been made leading up to January 6, and the obvious fact that many in the crowd were angry and armed, President Trump told his riled-up supporters to walk down to the Capitol and fight. He then stood back and let the fighting happen, despite having the ability and authority to stop it (with his words or by calling in the military), thereby confirming that this violence was what he intended.
September 15, 2025 at 11:34 PM
A court had this to say about those who attended the January 6 insurrection when disqualifying a state official under the 14th Amendment. www.citizensforethics.org/wp-content/u...
August 14, 2025 at 1:28 AM
Notable that permanent residents are entitled to *contribute to political campaigns*, which even then judge Kavanaugh recognized.
March 12, 2025 at 8:46 PM
Part of the gall here is to create a false equivalency - that Trump was found by a court to have incited violence, but to pretend it was just because he used tough sounding language (e.g., that he used "fight like hell" when lots of politicians say that). Ignored is:
February 21, 2025 at 5:44 PM
It’s worth noting, nonetheless, that notwithstanding their zealous defense of their patron, the republican commissioners didn’t claim Trump was innocent. Rather, they said the public’s interests in enforcement was “vindicated” because Michael Cohen was punished. www.fec.gov/files/legal/...
January 10, 2025 at 3:41 PM
Because the FEC is a commission evenly split between the parties. At least one commissioner must cross the aisle. That means a party that wants to protect its allies from the law can do so. And that’s what they did here, splitting along partisan lines.

www.fec.gov/files/legal/...
January 10, 2025 at 3:41 PM
But the DOJ isn’t the only agency with jurisdiction over the campaign finance laws – the Federal Election Commission could also have pursued charges, at least civilly. It was the FEC that fined AMI $187,500 for its role in the hush-money scheme.

www.fec.gov/files/legal/...
January 10, 2025 at 3:41 PM
First, the federal DOJ could have prosecuted, as it did other members of the conspiracy, if Trump committed a “knowing and willful” violation of federal campaign finance laws—basically he knew he was breaking the law. There’s evidence to support that.

www.citizensforethics.org/wp-content/u...
January 10, 2025 at 3:41 PM
Want an illustration of what's broke with our campaign finance laws. Two republican FEC commissioners are out berating the DOJ for enforcing the law against bribing voter registrants.
October 28, 2024 at 4:53 PM
SCOTUS denies cert in latest pro-corruption challenge seeking to block voters from knowing and talking about big money donors who seek to influence our elections.
October 7, 2024 at 2:43 PM
Reviewing Adam's indictment and can't stop thinking how SCOTUS insanely said paid-for "influence" isn't corruption.
September 26, 2024 at 6:33 PM
Apropos of nothing, here's the Colorado trial court's decision, after five days of trial, on Trump's Charlottesville "fine people" speech.
September 13, 2024 at 2:51 PM
Cooksey suggested there was a first amendment right to use AI to do what you can't do without AI: defraud contributors and falsely represent campaign authority.

We're lucky Cooksey has no responsibility enforcing anti-child pornography laws.
September 11, 2024 at 1:56 PM
Bipartisan FEC pushes back on Comm'r Cooksey's suggestion he wouldn't enforce current law if AI is used as a means to break it.

www.fec.gov/updates/fec-...
September 11, 2024 at 1:55 PM
It's hard not to read this in any other voice than a B-move villain: "Why, the President isnt 'above the law' if the law doesn't apply to him at all" [evil cackle]
July 4, 2024 at 4:01 PM
Chevron is dead, long live Chevron? But seriously, how is this different than Chevron?
June 28, 2024 at 4:50 PM
Worth recalling that the Colorado trial court, in deciding Trump incited the January 6 insurrection, found that he knew his supporters would use violence to attack his enemies and encouraged them to do so.
June 4, 2024 at 12:27 AM
Fmr FEC Cmr and Trump apologist Brad Smith apparently wanted to tell the jury that campaign finance laws are just too complicated to understand and that no one could therefore intend to violate them.
May 21, 2024 at 7:29 PM
Session's protected Trump and his friends from criminal prosecution for violating campaign finance laws.

But what about the FEC, the principal agency tasked with enforcing campaign finance laws? ....
May 14, 2024 at 3:23 PM
It's me. Because everything one does has both expressive elements and non-expressive elements, its not useful to classify something as "speech" and another thing as "not." What matters is whether the harm the government seeks to regulate is the expression or not.
April 30, 2024 at 8:06 PM