Lori Trahan and Frank Guinta have a lot on common. Aside from representing bordering House districts in Congress at different times, they found themselves caught in the sticky web of campaign finance rules in remarkably similar ways. Trahan and Guinta both suddenly found $300,000 (or so) in personal funds that they used to finance last minute campaign spending to win their first congressional elections. Both claiming the same basic excuse, “Oh, a relative was holding the money for me.”
Of course Guinta’s problem started in 2010 (he is no longer serving in Congress) and his excuse was throughly pulverized by the Federal Election Commission, who ordered his campaign to repay the money and fined them $15,000. While I’m certainly no lawyer, given the similar fact-patterns, I would expect a similar fate for Trahan.
But this post is not about political corruption from a Republican conservative spilling over into a neighboring CD district held by a progressive Democrat. No it is to ask, what will MA Democrats do when the obvious guilt of Trahan is finally publicly declared–probably well after Nov 2020 elections, God forbid the dysfunctional FEC render a decision before Trahan faces the voters again–guilty?
You see, after judgement was rendered regarding Guinta’s behavior, significant parts of the New Hampshire GOP establishment called for Guinta to resign, which certainly did not help his losing reelection effort. Could something like that happen in Massachusetts? Does the Massachusetts Democratic establishment have at least an equal level of moral civic values as the NH GOP can call for Trahan to resign? Would Senator Warren act in the same manner as Sen. Ayotte in suggesting Trahan should resign. (Which no doubt hurt her GOP support that may have contributed to losing reelection by slightly more than 1,000 votes.)
This post is not meant to praise the courage of the NH GOP, hardly. But it is to remind people that Trahan’s behavior is serious. Maybe before the Age of Trump, behavior like Guinta and Trahan was thought to be over the line and the big difference between the two is timing–Trahan seems to be getting a public relations pass because we are all fixated on everything Trump. On this issue, I guess I’m old fashion. I don’t want politicians to get a pass on lying to voters and not being held accountable (in the eyes of the public). So that is why I hope Massachusetts Democratic politicians and party activists speak out more about Trahan’s behavior. It was wrong. It tipped the balance in a very close primary race. Yet I get a sense that the Democratic establishment does not care. So hopefully the Democratic establishment can clear the same moral bar that the NH GOP set with Guinta. But I very much don’t think they will. But I can hope.
And to be clear, I was not involved with the 3rd CD race at all and never supported (or met) the candidates. This post was first motivated by the recent decision (10 days ago or so) of the House Ethics Committee to (finally) investigate this situation. (And never mind the slow roll to investigate ANY Congressional ethics issue). And after being prodded by Charlie, I wrote this post.
I’m not about to take ethics lessons from the NH GOP and I thought there was still an ongoing investigation into Trahan. This is one Mass Dem who will not call for her resignation. Let the voters decide if this is that important to them. Members of Congress are up every two years anyway, so it has to be a lot bigger than using funds transferred from her husband’s business to their joint account for campaign use. I have yet to see evidence that the allegations impacted either her voting record or the election results. This is much ado about not very much!
It appears to me that you’re taking your ethics lessons from Duncan Hunter, R-CA. I, frankly, suggest that in this case the NH GOP is a better example. The ethics investigation closed this September, and I cited the report of that investigation on the other thread. I see no indication in our exchanges about Ms. Trahan that you even read that report.
This comment conveys the head-in-the-sand attitude that makes voters despise politicians of any party.
Nobody suggests that anybody take lessons from the NH GOP. One of the outright fallacies that the GOP loudly repeats time and again is that behavior must be criminal — ie, illegal — in order to constitute an ethics violation. This comment embraces that cynical view and applies it to Democrats.
@it has to be a lot bigger than using funds transferred from her husband’s business to their joint account for campaign use:
We went over this at great length on the other thread. Your commentary there was as egregiously inappropriate there as it is here. You are arguing that it is perfectly OK for a Representative to use a family business and campaign organization to launder illegal contributions. You are defending the same fact pattern for Ms. Trahan that is landing Lev Parnas, Igor Frumin, and Dmitri Firtash in VERY deep felony waters.
I’m sorry, but this behavior is NOT ok with this Democrat.
I reject that she is deliberately using a family business to launder money and have yet to see evidence that this has resulted in favors. I even more emphatically reject that this comes anywhere close to equivalent of what Giuliani’s buddies have been up to. As for Hunter, his issues are on the other end in that he misused funds once he had them. If he were dipping into a joint bank account to help fund his campaign (ie the same set of facts) I would not have an issue. The only way I see fixing this is to make it illegal for a candidate to contribute more than the individual max to his/her own campaign, but that would be a tall order to enforce I think.
@ The only way I see fixing this …:
Wait — I thought this was fixable with a single “tweak”.
In fact, it doesn’t need “fixing”. The law we have is in place and works just fine. That law says that her husband is a contributor like anyone else (with the same limits). The laws says that financial information and filings must be complete and accurate.
There is no issue with the law here. The issue is that Ms. Trahan, her husband, and her campaign flaunted the law flagrantly and with what appears to be genuine content and intent. The various fraudulent filings were clearly made with intent to defraud the regulators. We are talking about back-dated checks, checks that would have overdrawn the bank accounts they were written on if they had actually been deposited when the accused parties claimed in signed forms.
@ I reject that she is deliberately using a family business to launder money and have yet to see evidence that this has resulted in favors:
The entire purpose of the law is to moot the essentially impossible task of proving a quid pro quo. Ms. Trahan, her husband, and her campaign committee clearly and apparently intentionally broke the law and then lied about what they did in numerous subsequent fraudulent filings. That is why the ethics committee issued their report — the report that you still apparently haven’t read (because the report clearly describes documentary evidence that the accused parties did what you say they didn’t do).
A reason the regulations are written as they are is to make MUCH more difficult to launder money #8212; because those regulations and reporting requirements result in providing the proof you demand. The accused parties flaunted those regulations. When a driver puts a radar detector in a car whose sole purpose is warn the driver of upcoming speed traps, it is perfectly reasonable to assume that the driver does so with the intent of speeding.
When an elected official, their spouse, and their campaign committee flaunt campaign finance laws, file intentionally fraudulent forms and paperwork, and then do everything in their power to cover up their behavior, it is perfectly reasonable to assume that they did so with intent of accepting illegal contributions.
As I said already, the law is just fine and doesn’t need fixing. What is needed are criminal prosecutions of Ms. Trahan, her husband, and her campaign committee together with her resignation from the Congress.
Ms. Trahan very much appears to be corrupt. I fully expect her to be indicted, prosecuted, convicted, and removed.
If it is found that she took money from an illegal source, I say just require her campaign to return the money and be done with it. Not sure what she has ever done to you. Your last sentence in particular IMO is over the top! The tweak I mentioned is to her particular paperwork. The law fix is to close the loophole about joint accounts. If she and her husband were not married, or at very least kept a firewall between their respective finances, then your arguments would make more sense and be easier to enforce. However, as long as they manage a JOINT bank account as many married couples do then his money IS her money and candidates are currently NOT limited on how much of their own money can be spent on their campaigns.
@However, as long as they manage a JOINT bank account as many married couples do then his money IS her money:
That is just not how it works, as any father who has been to court to set child support amounts will tell you.
When a married couple maintains a joint bank account, the focus changes to the source of the deposits to that account. Hence the focus on the business account of Ms. Trahan’s spouse.
You may be thinking of the various “community property” provisions in states like Massachusetts and New York. That’s something different, and maintaining separate bank accounts does not affect those provisions.
The campaign finance provisions very explicitly and purposely maintain a candidate’s finances and income separately from that candidate’s spouse. Changing that is no mere “tweak” — doing what you propose effectively guts the law.
At the risk of going on a bit of tangent isn’t the whole reason pre-nups exist is because once married the default assumption is that property is held jointly, including (and this part I never understood) resources that either party brought in from before the marriage?
That’s the special case of community property I spoke of. Certain states declare that marital property is divided equally upon divorce, regardless of who acquired the property. A prenup is often written to protect the assets of each spouse in the case of divorce, especially when the two partners have widely disparate net worth going into the marriage. Such a prenup is a valid contract that takes precedence over the default probate and family court provisions.
In my case, my current wife and I did a prenup in order to protect the assets she brought to the household and money she earned from my very greedy ex-wife. We wanted to ensure that my wife’s income was excluded from any child-support calculations.
Separating funds into personal and joint accounts makes tracking funds for such contracts more convenient. My understanding is that it has little or no legal significance beyond that.
You are perhaps referring to the legal framework of Probate and Family Court, which addresses the property issues associated with marriage, death, and divorce.
That’s very different from, for example, tax laws.
Tax laws allow the option for filing separately vs. jointly. Is that what governs here? In other words, if the Trahans file separately then her husband’s money is separate and subject to the legal contribution limits of anyone else, but if they filed jointly she’d be able to use the jointly held money as if her own?
No, the filing status (joint or separately) has nothing to do with it.
When a married couple files jointly, all their income from all sources is counted. If one spouse hides income in some manner, then both spouses are potentially liable (although see the “innocent spouse” options).
An example that’s closer to what I mean is when one or both sides of a married couple also own a pass-through company such as an LLC. If Mr. Random chooses, he can ask a third-party to write a check to “Random Associates, LLC”. He can deposit that check into the corporate bank account for the company.
It is still joint income for tax purposes. It makes no difference whether the third party writes the check to “Random Associates, LLC” or “John A. Random”, it is taxed the same way.
A separate bank account for the LLC is a book-keeping convenience, especially helpful when preparing the annual tax filings for an LLC. An LLC pays no corporate taxes (that’s why they exist). Instead, the LLC files a “K-1” statement each year that reports the income passed through to each member. A K-1 is very much like a W-2.
Campaign finance laws are carefully written to describe mechanisms for attributing income to individuals in situations like this.
The best analogous example are the child support guidelines for states like Massachusetts and New York. They clearly identify individual income and attribute it to the parent in question. Things get dicey when parent chooses not to collect outside income and instead draws funds from a joint checking account where all the income is provided by a spouse. In that case, courts will sometimes say that 50% of the deposits into the joint account are imputed to the parent in question, regardless of income. Sometimes the court will also impute whatever income the parent in question could earn from a third party. The child support award is then calculated on that imputed income. As a parenthetical note, at least as recently as the 1990s the Court frequently applied imputed income conventions like this only to fathers. The Court was typically silent about mothers, even mothers with advanced degrees.
A purpose of the campaign finance regulations is to prevent unscrupulous candidates from exploiting the complexity of family finances to hide otherwise illegal campaign contributions.
Regarding the radar detector metaphor, some states ban them for that reason, but we all exceed the limit from time to time. If you want to extend the analogy the worst that can happen if you get caught speeding is a ticket, but there’s a decent chance you get let off with a warning. OTOH, you want to throw the book at Trahan.
You really should read the report. If you did, you would know that the committee gave multiple warnings to Ms. Trahan, her husband, and her campaign committee over the course of nearly a year. Their response was to redouble their efforts to obscure the actual source of the funds.
If you get caught at 90MPH in a 20MPH zone, have a radar detector on your dash, and have been given a half-dozen warnings about speeding in the past six months, you’re likely to pay a significant fine and more.
I was OK with a warning at the first apparently inadvertent violation. That’s not the fact pattern here.
I think a big reason this impeachment is not going to result in justice and accountability for President Trump is partisanship. Time and time again I’ve seen morally or legally corrupt individuals defended by progressives. The Clintons, Franken, Conyers, Wilkerson, DiMasi, Walsh, various Kennedys, Hunter Biden, Deval Patrick, Tim Murray, Martha Coakley, and now Lori Trahan.
This culture of partisan tribalism is what now enables Trump to stay in office without any GOP opposition. If we want to restore civility and decency to our politics we should be willing to exile the members of our own side who fail to live up to those universal values.
No, I’m not equating those individuals with one another or with the President whose actions are far worse than all of them combined. But these are all individuals who fell short of what progressives should espouse. A commitment to personal ethics and public service. A denial of self enrichment and avoidance of abusing power. All of those individuals fell short and have their defenders on this site and throughout the progressive movement. Times up for them. Times up for Trahan. If we want young people to believe in government again, we need to elect and promote leaders worthy of their votes.
We all sin and fall short of the glory of God. If you insist on saints you will be disappointed and will only result in increased cynicism. A cynic, after all, is a disappointed idealist in disguise. I don’t get cynical because I don’t start as an idealist. Your protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, it does sound like you’re making an equivalence argument. There’s also quite a gap between condoning behavior and saying it’s absolutely disqualifying.
BTW, I’m pretty sure I have been consistent with similar sets of facts without fear or favor as to party.
I don’t know much about her. I’ve just always assumed that she beat at least one candidate that was more progressive than her. On her Wikipedia page, it says that she’s part of the ghoulish New Democrat Coalition (so, I guess I guessed correctly).
I also see that she beat the even more ghoulish Rick Green, for which I believe we should all be happy.
She’s being investigated in the chamber that is controlled by her own party. I don’t see any reason that people should publicly call for her to step down before the investigation is complete. TBH, I’m much more concerned about what happens when people allow themselves to get overwrought about appearances of corruption and finding witches.
As you observe, the existing complaints come from an ethics committee controlled by Democrats. In such cases, the usual motivation for providing a window between an ethics committee report and subsequent prosecutions is to allow the subject to leave office with a minimum of personal disgrace.
I suppose that some prefer a full-blown indictment, prosecution, and high-profile trial — during a presidential election campaign with the GOP already making alleged corruption a pillar of its campaign.
I do not.
I still favor neither at this point.