Leftist Lawfare Group Looks To ‘Silence’ Political Speech

A leftist lawfare group previously bankrolled by disgraced crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried is suing to overturn Federal Election Commission rules on coordination between campaigns and like-minded outside groups. 

The timing is ripe for the Campaign Legal Center (CLC), which knows the FEC can’t defend itself as the Senate dithers on confirming President Donald Trump’s nominees to fill two vacancies and give the commission a long-lapsed quorum. 

‘To Win by Default’

On Monday, the Republican National Committee intervened in CLC’s lawsuit, which seeks to knock out the FEC’s 2024 Advisory Opinion allowing federal candidates to work with third-party groups in coordinated canvassing campaigns. CLC claims the opinion unlawfully enables candidates to “outsource and conceal untold millions of dollars in campaign spending through overtly coordinated canvassing.” 

Of course, CLC’s left-wing pals didn’t think so when they were pushing for the opinion in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election. 

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, asserts the FEC’s opinion violates the Federal Election Campaign Act and is in “brazen defiance” of the act’s requirement that campaigns “treat all ‘expenditures’ coordinated with federal candidates as in-kind contributions.”

RNC Chairman Joe Gruters said the Campaign Legal Center “twiddled their thumbs for two years, waiting to sue over an opinion they don’t like, and now they’re trying to win by default because the FEC doesn’t have enough commissioners to fight back.

“The RNC isn’t going to let that happen,” the chairman vowed in a statement. “This advisory opinion lets parties and grassroots groups work together to knock on doors and talk to voters — exactly the kind of engagement our elections should encourage.” 

The FEC, which has lost three members during Trump’s second term and a fourth at the end of Joe Biden’s presidency, has consented to the RNC’s participation in the lawsuit. 

‘Suing to Silence’

In March 2024, the election commission issued its opinion at the request of Texas Majority PAC (TMP), a Democrat political action committee launched by former staffers of failed Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke. The PAC’s goal, according to its website, is “to permanently flip Texas blue, thus releasing our state from Republican control and delivering two Democratic Senate seats and 40 Democratic Electoral College votes.” Democrat Party sugar daddy George Soros and his Democracy PAC have pumped millions of dollars into Texas Majority’s political op coffers, according to tracker InfluenceWatch.  

TMP proposed hiring vendors to canvass potential voters. PAC officials wanted to know “whether canvassing literature and scripts, and their associated costs, are public communications, coordinated communications, or coordinated expenditures, and whether TMP can provide data acquired during the canvass to a federal candidate or party committee at less than fair market value.”

The FEC opined that political parties may legally coordinate with outside groups on get-out-the-vote materials without triggering the federal campaign finance contribution caps. Supporters of the opinion included the AFL-CIO, DNC official Neil Reiff, and Russia collusion hoax peddler Marc Elias’ lawfare group. Two years later, the FEC’s coordination opinion presents a problem for the left. 

The writing is on the wall. 

A recent ruling by the Supreme Court struck down federal limits on coordinated expenditures between political party committees and campaigns. In the 6-3 ruling, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that the long-standing limits — in place since the Nixon administration — “directly abridge the freedom of speech of political parties.” 

“The Constitution’s text matters,” he wrote. 

“Two years ago, the FEC said political parties like the RNC and our candidates can work directly with grassroots groups to knock on doors and talk to voters,” Gruters said. “Now, because they lost, left-wing groups are suing to silence the RNC and conservative groups from working together. We won’t allow that to happen.”

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.