CONVICTIONS UPHELD. WTOP. “A federal appeals court on Friday upheld the convictions of three top staffers on Ron Paul’s 2012 presidential campaign who were found guilty of arranging for money to be funneled through a vendor to an influential Iowa state senator who dropped his support for another Republican candidate in favor of Paul.” The opinion is here.
USE OF FUNDS APPROVED. CNN. “The Federal Election Commission on Thursday approved a New York congressional candidate’s request to use federal campaign funds to cover the childcare expenses for her two children incurred while she is campaigning.”
SUPER PACS IN. CNN. “This past Thursday, the Democratic Coalition, a liberal super PAC, announced it would be launching an initiative to support O’Rourke’s Senate campaign.”
AZ: TARGETING MEASURE. AZC. “The group responsible for forcing a public vote on the future of vouchers will now help a bit to block ‘dark money’ in future political campaigns.”
IL: REFORM NEED. STLT. “The small-donor matching program won approval in the Illinois Senate last year but its chances are bleak in the state House, despite the attention given to two inordinately wealthy candidates who are financing their campaigns with millions of dollars of their own money.”
NY: GUILTY CONVICTION. WSJ. “Sheldon Silver, former longtime speaker of New York’s Assembly and once one of the state’s most powerful lawmakers, was convicted Friday of all counts after his retrial on public-corruption charges.”
NY: GUILTY CONVICTION II. NYT. “Mr. Silver’s retrial was widely watched as a test of the government’s ability to prosecute official corruption under the narrower definition. But from the outset, prosecutors this time seemed to hold an upper hand: The original verdict was only thrown out because the judge’s jury instructions were too broad, as defined by the Supreme Court decision.”
HAVE A GOOD DAY.