(Headline USA) A super PAC affiliated with President Joe Biden may have violated campaign finance law by failing to disclose the identities of donors connected to a large cash transfer from a liberal dark money group.
Future Forward, a super PAC supporting Biden’s reelection efforts, failed to reveal the donors behind a $3.4 million it pocketed from Future Forward USA Action, a dark money advocacy organization affiliated with Future Forward.
Political action committees are required by law to disclose contribution sources. The Federal Election Commission has cracked down on a number of right-leaning organizations for failing to abide by these rules, including in 2017 when the FEC slammed the American Conservative Union with a $350,000 fine for failing to properly disclose a $1.71 million super PAC donation.
“Future Forward USA Action admitted to making over $3 million in earmarked political contributions, where they apparently obscured the true super PAC donor’s identity by routing the money through the nonprofit,” Republican election lawyer Charlie Spies told the Washington Free Beacon. “The U.S. DOJ has sent people to prison for this sort of illegal activity, and the FEC has imposed major fines on conservative organizations accused of less blatant earmarking.”
Future Forward seems to have used this strategy repeatedly over the past several years. The group’s latest FEC filing, for example, shows it raised just $67,000 from identifiable donors in the first half of 2023. But weeks earlier, the group told the New York Times it had raised $50 million for Biden’s reelection campaign during that same time frame.
The report comes about a year after Biden pushed Congress to restrict the use of dark money in federal elections.
“There’s much too much money that flows in the shadows to influence our elections. It’s called dark money. It’s hidden,” Biden said last September. “Ultimately this comes down to public trust. Dark money erodes public trust. We need to protect public trust and I’m determined to do that.”
