Political Activity Law/Political Law/Election Law

Month: April 2010

  • Norm Eisen’s Friday dump

    Two blog posts on the White House ethics front today.  The first notes that another set of data of White House visitor information was released today.  As I noted earlier, some of the data seems to mask who visitors are actually visiting.

    The second post involves an ethics waiver for General James Jones.  (No, not a waiver for the “off-tone” joke he told recently.)  The (same day!) waiver is related to a speech he gave to introduce President Clinton on April 28th at an Atlantic Council event.

  • Texas Ethics Commission levies $100,000 fine

    Just a few days ago I noted that North Carolina sought a $111,000 fine in a lobbying disclosure case.  Today comes news that the Texas Ethics Commission has fined a judge $100,000 for failing to meet reporting obligations on personal financial disclosure statements.  The Final Order is available here.  A news report is here.

  • Palin hacker convicted

    The Department of Justice announced via press release that the man who broke into Sarah Palin”s Yahoo email account was convicted.

    After a week-long trial, a jury found [David C.] Kernell guilty of one count of misdemeanor unauthorized access to obtain information from a computer and one count of obstruction of justice. The jury found Kernell not guilty of wire fraud. The jury could not reach a verdict on the identity theft charge and the judge declared a mistrial as to that charge.