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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday May 06 2018, @03:05AM   Printer-friendly
from the you-scratch-my-back dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow3941

Republican FCC commissioner Michael O'Rielly broke a federal law preventing officials from advocating for political candidates when he told a crowd that one way to avoid policy changes was to "make sure that President Trump gets reelected," according to a newly released letter from government officials. O'Rielly was warned by the officials about making similar comments in the future.

The Hatch Act bars many federal employees from using their offices to influence an election. During the conservative CPAC conference in February, which was also attended by FCC chairman Ajit Pai, O'Rielly was asked about how to avoid rapid swings in policy ushered in by a new administration. "I think what we can do is make sure as conservatives that we elect good people to both the House, the Senate, and make sure that President Trump gets reelected," he responded, adding that there would also be a fight in the US Senate over net neutrality rules.

[...] The office said it has sent a warning letter to O'Rielly this time, but will consider other infractions "a willful and knowing violation of the law" that could lead to legal action.

O'Rielly's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the letter.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/1/17308418/fcc-commissioner-orielly-trump-law


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  • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday May 07 2018, @06:24PM

    by urza9814 (3954) on Monday May 07 2018, @06:24PM (#676722) Journal

    Accepting massive donations while quite freely giving their opinions on all things campaign-related.

    This is precisely why they're two separate organizations. Donations go into two separate accounts. Most of those donations are *not* tax exempt, because they aren't going to the charity. But if you want you can specify that your donations must go to the charity arm of the organization at which point it then becomes tax exempt.

    They don't hide this, they don't try to deceive people as you imply -- it's literally written in plain black and white on every single donation request they ever post. That's how I know. If you look on their website you'll find two separate donation forms along with an explanation of exactly why they do this:
    https://action.aclu.org/content/giving-american-civil-liberties-union-and-american-civil-liberties-union-foundation-what?redirect=node/4577 [aclu.org]

    Not like they're pretending to be non-profit either -- I literally can't find the word "profit" anywhere on their page. Your post implies it pretends to be a non-profit but you have to dig around to find out it's actually not...but in reality it's the opposite, they never claim to be a non-profit until you dig around and find that they do actually have a non-profit component.

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