During his 2016 race against challenger Dr. Kelli Ward, Sen. John McCain used the loopholes he created in the McCain-Feingold Act to gin out one fearmongering ad after another. On Tuesday, McCain proposed new legislation, the Honest Ads Act, which “would help prevent foreign interference in future elections.”
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Critics say it is just more of McCain’s fearmongering.
McCain introduced the legislation “intended to “improve the transparency of online political advertisements,” with senators Amy Klobuchar (Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party) and Mark Warner (D).
“In the wake of Russia’s attack on the 2016 election, it is more important than ever to strengthen our defenses against foreign interference in our elections,” said McCain in a statement issued Tuesday. “Unfortunately, U.S. laws requiring transparency in political campaigns have not kept pace with rapid advances in technology, allowing our adversaries to take advantage of these loopholes to deceive millions of American voters with impunity. Our bipartisan legislation would address this serious challenge by expanding landmark campaign finance law to apply to internet and digital communications platforms that command a significant audience. I have long fought to increase transparency and end the corrupting influence of special interests in political campaigns, and I am confident this legislation will modernize existing law to safeguard the integrity of our election system.”
McCain has his own experience with foreign cash and questions. In April 2016, after Bloomberg reported that the McCain Institute for International Leadership failed to disclose a $1 million donation from the government of Saudi Arabia, his challengers Ward and Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick questioned the details about the donation. In February 2016, McCain had predicted foreign money would be the source of a scandal, and he was right. Yet, after the Saudi donation was made public, he claimed he had no connection with the McCain Institute and refused to answer any more questions about the donation.
McCain wrote McCain-Feingold Act which allowed corporations, and special interest groups to donate millions of dollars to his own campaign and its anonymous surrogates. Over the years, courts weakened the law. Combined with McCain’s loopholes, the law now does little to protect the public.
An investigation into the various PACs supporting John McCain through FEC reports conducted by Reality Check during the 2016 cycle brought to light some information about McCain’s machine and how it used the McCain-Feingold Act loopholes to his benefit.
It was discovered that the vast majority of McCain’s donations did not come from the Arizonans McCain is supposed to represent, but from people and corporations outside of Arizona with a vested interest in McCain’s continued support and votes for their interests. Secondly, several of the PACs supporting McCain were blatantly violating the very Federal Election Laws that John McCain wrote.
The ADI reported in May 2016:
McCain’s official campaign committee is Friends of John McCain. Through this Committee, his campaign pays for everything campaign related including: payroll, marketing, consulting, legal fees, and other miscellany.
“Arizona Grassroots Action” PAC is also listed with the FEC as an “unauthorized, independent PAC;” meaning it cannot (or isn’t supposed to) have any coordination or communication with the McCain camp or the Friends of John McCain Committee.
It is difficult to imagine that there is no coordination between both PACs given that they share the same Alexandria, Va. address on their FEC filings.
By the way, there’s also nothing “Grassroots” about Arizona Grassroots Action. Aside from the fact that it is a Washington D.C.-based PAC, over 85 percent of its money comes from out-of-state contributors.
Arizona Grassroots Action was created in 2014 to fund McCain’s purge of Arizona Republican Party officers after his embarrassing censure by them.
Now that McCain’s re-election bid is in full swing, Arizona Grassroots Action is currently running online ads and sending mailers that reach new lows in fearmongering even for McCain, in a desperate attempt to discredit his popular Senate Primary challenger Dr. Kelli Ward.
In the mailer, McCain’s surrogates attempted to link ISIS terrorists to her and the 4th Amendment Protection Act Ward sponsored.
When the issue of dark money first came up several years ago, Tte Arizona Republic blasted McCain saying, “Blame McCain-Feingold, not Citizens, for dark money” in their story, explaining the negative effect Senator McCain’s campaign finance reform law had on the American elections.
McCain’s Honest Ads Act would:
Amend the Campaign Reform Act of 2002’s definition of electioneering communication to include paid Internet and digital advertisements.
Requiring digital platforms with at least 50,000,000 monthly viewers to maintain a public file of all electioneering communications purchased by a person or group who spends more than $500.00 total on ads published on their platform. The file would contain a digital copy of the advertisement, a description of the audience the advertisement targets, the number of views generated, the dates and times of publication, the rates charged, and the contact information of the purchaser.
Requiring online platforms to make all reasonable efforts to ensure that foreign individuals and entities are not purchasing political advertisements in order to influence the American electorate.
In his article, Russian Trolls Would Love the ‘Honest Ads Act,’ Leonid Bershidsky notes, “under the Honest Ads Act, a troll cleverly disguised as Jane Doe or John Smith, and ostensibly based in Random Location on Google Maps, U.S.A., will still be able to buy and run any kind of political ad — all from the outskirts of St. Petersburg. The transaction will be clearly recorded under the fake name and stored in a vast archive in which no one but a dedicated investigator will be able to find anything of value.”