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MADISON, Wis. - Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, the Democrat who launched Wisconsin’s politically driven John Doe investigation into conservatives, appears to have broken state campaign finance law, according to state Attorney General Brad Schimel. "...(I)t does appear on its face that two maximum contributions were received (by Chisholm's campaign) from the same individual in the same election cycle," Schimel told Wisconsin Watchdog Thursday. Chisholm did not return a call seeking comment. He has not returned any calls from Watchdog. As Wisconsin Watchdog exclusively reported this week, Chisholm's campaign accepted donations in excess of single-contributor limits during the same...

MADISON, Wis. - Calling a politically driven investigation into conservatives a "long, unfortunate chapter in Wisconsin’s history," state Attorney General Brad Schimel on Tuesday released a statement reiterating what the state Supreme Court definitively declared last week: The dark John Doe is dead and buried. "The courts have unequivocally rejected the John Doe investigation, both in the manner in which it was carried out, as well as the legal arguments brought by the prosecutors. The Wisconsin Supreme Court has now ordered that the property seized be returned," Schimel, a Republican, wrote. "For everyone involved, the special prosecutor should end the...

MILWAUKEE. - The Milwaukee Democrat who launched Wisconsin's notorious John Doe investigation into conservatives on allegations of illegal coordination appears to have broken state campaign finance laws. Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm accepted donations in excess of single contributor limits, and failed to disclose who provided his campaign with a $38,000 loan, according to an amended petition asking Gov. Scott Walker to remove the district attorney from office. The diverse coalition of Milwaukee county residents seeking Chisholm's ouster also is asking state Attorney General Brad Schimel to file a criminal complaint against the DA. "As not only the top...

As Donald Trump leads yet another national poll, the New York Times' Jonathan Martin asks a question that has consumed the political world: Can anyone inside the Republican Party -- via negative TV ads or a scorched-earth campaign -- stop Trump? And if so, do they even have the will do it? "Almost everyone in the party's upper echelons agrees something must be done, and almost no one is willing to do it," Martin writes.*snip* The campaigns and allies for three establishment presidential candidates -- Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and John Kasich -- have spent a combined $47.5 million in...

Part 269 of 267 in the series Wisconsin's Secret War By M.D. Kittle | Wisconsin Watchdog MADISON, Wis. – Wednesday was old school “Back to the Future Day” in the state Assembly – the Huey Lewis and the News “Back in Time” kind. As their fellow Democrats in the Senate did in winter 2011, the minority party fled another vote on a controversial piece of legislation. Back then it was a temper-tantrum over Act 10, Gov. Scott Walker’s public employee collective bargaining reform bill that sent the Fleeing 14 over the border into Illinois in a failed attempt to stave...

Billionaire businessman Donald Trump is no longer self-funding his presidential campaign — at least for now. The Republican front-runner filed his quarterly campaign finance report Wednesday evening, and it is filled with eye-popping details. For example, he spent more than $500,000 just on hats and related apparel. Trucker-style hats bearing Trump's campaign slogan, "Make America Great Again," became a hit fashion accessory over the summer. To purchase the hats, people had fork over $25 or $30 to Trump's presidential bid. But even more striking, Trump received almost $4 million in what his campaign called "unsolicited donations." Trump frequently brags on...

California is considering some of the nation’s strictest campaign-finance rules, aimed at keeping candidates from coordinating with groups able to raise unlimited amounts of money on their behalf. The state’s Fair Political Practices Commission is scheduled to vote on the proposals Thursday. The rules would apply to statewide and local elections. The vote comes as outside groups are playing a central role in national campaigns since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010. That ruling led to the growth of super PACs, which can raise and spend unlimited amounts in support of candidates, or their opponents, but cannot legally...

Democratic presidential contender Hillary Rodham Clinton raced through millions of dollars over the summer as she expanded her campaign’s ground operations and launched a paid television campaign, spending around nine out of every 10 dollars she raised in the third quarter. Clinton pulled in more than $28 million and spent an estimated $24.8 million, for a burn rate of about 88.7 percent, based on early numbers released by her campaign. As of Sept. 30, she still had more than $32 million on hand, campaign spokesman Josh Schwerin said in a tweet Thursday. That gives her a small financial cushion over...

Over the last 20 years of talking about the problem of big money in politics, Congress hasn't actually voted to do anything about it, and it's unlikely that they will anytime soon. So Harvard University law professor Lawrence Lessig has cooked up a crazy plan to force some change: He's trying to crowdfund a presidential campaign focused on the single issue of campaign finance reform. If Lessig can raise $1 million by Labor Day, and if no other presidential candidates take up what he calls "citizen equality" as their first priority, he plans to run as the first ever "referendum"...

Rush has said repeatedly that the reason Bush is the presumptive nominee is that he has "all the money." Well, I think it was in the Hannity interview that Trump said Bush has raised $114m. (Can anyone verify this number?) Trump said Hillary had raised $60m (really low). By my calculations Cruz has raised about $65m. (Again, can anyone verify?) But Trump said his annual income is $400m. So he can outspend Bush, Hillary, and Cruz put together and still have just under $200m for his jet.

Nothing surprising happened in Grand Rapids last week. Simply stated, Michigan’s campaign finance laws are now being enforced against two powerful, well-connected interest groups that failed to report large, late contributions to a 2014 ballot measure campaign until well after the votes had been counted. But the lesson to be learned is not “the system works.” Last year, Rina Baker and Bonnie Burke launched a grassroots petition drive collecting the signatures of nearly 10,000 registered voters to place on the ballot a two-term “eight is enough” limit on election to the Grand Rapids City Commission. The two women worked day...

The long unraveling of the so-called “John Doe II investigation” convened by partisan district attorneys in Wisconsin is now complete. This case was about using vague campaign-finance rules to intimidate conservative groups and smear Republican officials, including Gov. Scott Walker. No charges were filed in the John Doe II investigation and it was halted by both the state and federal courts.Today, the Wisconsin Supreme Court releases its final disposition in the case: To be clear, this conclusion ends the John Doe investigation because the special prosecutor’s legal theory is unsupported in either reason or law. Consequently, the investigation is closed....

Inside the marvelous life of a first amendment celebrity.By the time Shaun McCutcheon arrives at the main event, all the good seats are taken. It’s day two of the 2015 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)—the annual pilgrimage that right-wing die-hards make to Washington each winter—and 51,000 square feet of ballroom are bustling with would-be presidential candidates and conservative activists: old men in tricornered hats, soldiers in uniform, and women in big government sucks buttons. McCutcheon takes the only empty chair he can find, way in the back behind a college-age woman texting a picture of Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal. While...

So there are around 20 Repubs running for President all raising money. What happens to their money when they stop running? Does it go to the Clinton Fund?

Hillary Clinton has been calling for sweeping changes in the way that private citizens choose to get involved in the political process. Yes, I know, the term is “campaign finance reform.” She went so far as to say that she’d be willing to support a Constitutional amendment to “reform” the way voters spend their money in political campaigns. She’s not the only Democrat who feels this way. Their concerns are real. How can a Democrat candidate expect to run an effective campaign when voters have the power to determine the outcome? Hillary and others on the Left get especially nervous...

"............“I am concerned because I think, you know, we should have been alerted,” Cummings said. “I’m telling you whenever anything happens around here, I get about 20 alerts, but I didn’t see anything on this, which is amazing.” Whether the Oversight committee will hold a hearing on the incident remains unclear. A spokeswoman for Chairman Jason Chaffetz told CQ Roll Call staff is in the process of putting together a letter to the Secret Service to try and understand the circumstances surrounding the incident. At least one public official was warning against overreaction. “The gyrocopter incident yesterday was not a...

Major contributors like the Koch brothers and Tom Steyer would get a break on gift taxes to secretive non-profit groups. The House on Wednesday with little fanfare passed legislation that would protect major donors like the Koch brothers and Tom Steyer from having to pay gift taxes on huge donations to secret money political groups. The legislation, which now heads to the Senate, is seen by fundraising operatives as removing one of the few remaining potential obstacles to unfettered big-money spending by nonprofit groups registered under a section of the Tax Code — 501(c) — that allows them to shield...

For months, White House hopefuls from both parties have been raising millions in unlimited contributions at upscale fund-raisers from Manhattan to Palm Springs, Calif. — all without officially declaring themselves candidates and becoming subject to federal caps on contributions. Only a few of some 20 would-be presidential candidates have even bothered to set up the exploratory committees that were once a time-tested way to declare interest in the White House — and that set off their own fund-raising restrictions. But two leading campaign finance groups charged on Tuesday that the spread of these unofficial campaigns in recent months was not...

(CNSNews.com) -- The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is holding a hearing today to receive public feedback on whether it should create new rules regulating political speech, including political speech on the Internet that one commissioner warned could affect blogs, YouTube videos and even websites like the Drudge Report. The hearing is a response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in McCutcheon v. FEC last year, which struck down the FEC’s previous cap on aggregate campaign contributions from a single donor in an election cycle. Before the decision, individuals were limited to a combined total of $46,200 in contributions to all...

Earlier this week, my website Right Wing News put out a report called 50 Million Down The Tubes: How 17 Conservative PACs Are Spending Their Money. That report was based on 170 pages of research I had commissioned into how conservative PACs are spending their money and the numbers of the 10 groups on the bottom were so bad that I was genuinely shocked, which doesn’t happen very often. Just in case you’re wondering, those bottom 10 PACs you’re looking at spent $54,318,498, but only $3,621,896 of that money went to candidates via direct contributions or independent expenditures on their...