Then-U.S. President Donald Trump appears on stage with Charlie Kirk, head of Turning Point USA, before addressing the Turning Point USA’s Teen Student Action Summit in Washington, DC, on July 23, 2019. (Photo by NICHOLAS KAMM / AFP) (Photo credit should read NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images)
A pro-Donald Trump advocacy group was recently fined by the Federal Election Commission for failing to disclose some of its donors.
In 2021, the nonprofit government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a complaint against Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point Action for allegedly keeping regulators in the dark about donor information for a series of expenditures between Aug. 20, 2020, and Dec. 31, 2020.
The watchdog group’s complaint alleged the conservative group, which is affiliated with Turning Point USA, was unable to provide information for some $1.4 million in pro-GOP election spending.
In the end, however, FEC commissioners only issued a relatively small $18,000 fine – based on Turning Point Action’s inability to disclose $33,795 in reportable contributions from donors who gave more than $200, CREW announced in a press release issued on Friday.
Still, the watchdog hailed the decision as “a landmark win in the fight against dark money.”
“This decision is a significant win in the fight to ensure that groups like Turning Point Action follow campaign finance laws and disclose their donors to the public,” CREW President Noah Bookbinder said in a statement. “Voters deserve to know who is spending to influence elections, and all too often they are left in the dark. The fine imposed by the FEC should deter dark money groups from illegally hiding their funders in the future.”
Most of the electioneering funds at issue were used for ads – both online and social media – as well as for physical materials like door hangers, yard signs, billboards, and banners supporting Trump and other Republican Party candidates, according to the complaint.
CREW explained the legal backdrop of their complaint as follows:
The law requires any group making more than $250 in independent expenditures in a calendar year to disclose the identity of every person contributing more than $200 to the reporting entity to influence federal elections, as well as the identity of every person who contributed more than $200 for the purpose of furthering independent expenditures. The disclosure requirements stem from a landmark legal case, CREW v. FEC and Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, which threw out an illegal three decades old regulation that was used to avoid disclosure. CREW’s victory in the case changed the legal landscape for political spending and restored Congress’s intended full disclosure of those making contributions to groups that fund independent expenditures.
In the end, federal regulators could only come to an agreement on some $33,795 worth of undisclosed contributions. That information was required under the relevant federal reporting statute.
Most of the alleged undisclosed contributions at issue, however, were set to the side by the election-focused agency.
“The FEC commissioners deadlocked 3-3 along party lines with the three Republican commissioners blocking action on the vast majority of funding behind its electoral activity, allowing Turning Point Action to avoid disclosing not just the donors who gave under $200, but the ones who did so without clicking on online fundraising ads,” CREW said on Friday.
In two different statements of reasons, all five FEC commissioners said the statute in question simply did not apply to several contributions Turning Point Action received during the first two quarters of 2020.
“Congress could have written section 30104(c)(1) to require that every non-political committee reporting entity shall file a statement containing the identification of each contributor for all contributions received by the reporting entity,” one of the statements reads. “It did not.”
In a signed conciliation agreement, the FEC ordered Turning Point Action to pay the $18,000 civil penalty within 30 days of Oct. 2.
“CREW has long played a leading role in the fight against dark money, and we are proud to have laid the legal foundation for the decisions requiring Turning Point Action and other groups like it to make their donors public,” Bookbinder added. “We will continue working to ensure greater transparency of the donors who spend to influence our elections, and accountability for those groups that break the law.”
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