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    Paul Blumenthal

    Paul Blumenthal

    Reporter, HuffPost

  • What A Year This Week Has Been. Here's What You Missed In The Impeachment Inquiry.

    Bill Taylor testified and then Trump obliquely called him "human scum." And that's just the beginning.

  • Democrats Finally Prepare Subpoena For Trump’s D.C. Hotel Documents

    The hotel occupies a federally owned building and has become a hot spot for lobbyists, foreign governments and others to put money in the president's pocket.

  • Trump Is Copying Richard Nixon’s Reelection Misdeeds

    Nixon’s dirty tricks helped take out his most feared rival Ed Muskie. Trump is trying the same with Joe Biden.

  • Appeals Court Rules House Democrats Can Subpoena Trump's Financial Records

    The 2-1 ruling went against the president, who was seeking to block a subpoena for documents, including tax returns, held by his accounting firm.

  • Republicans Start Giving Away Contributions From Trump's Indicted Ukraine Plot Associates

    Before being indicted, Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas worked with Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani on the plot to get Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden.

  • Giuliani Associates Who Targeted Biden Arrested On Campaign Finance Charges

    Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who helped Giuliani investigate Joe Biden, donated to Donald Trump's presidential campaign.

  • 226 House Members Have Called For Congress To Start Trump Impeachment Proceedings

    A majority of the House supports the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.

  • Jeb Bush Super PAC Reports Eye-Popping Fundraising Haul

    The key number in the Bush campaign's Thursday announcement that it raised a combined $114 million in the first half of this year was just how much of that total came from Right to Rise PAC. The super PAC created to support Jeb Bush’s presidential ambitions pulled in over $103 million. This immense haul was made possible by the former Florida governor's new approach to campaign finance.

  • How 2016 Candidates Are Pushing Past Campaign Finance Boundaries

    The 2016 presidential campaign is in full swing, and as the second national campaign since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, it's bringing a whole new dynamic favoring wealthy donors and big-monied interests. Its main difference from the 2012 campaign -- which featured the first single-candidate presidential super PACs -- is that candidates now have tossed aside the illusion of super PAC independence. Super PACs and other groups are ostensibly supposed to be independent from the candidates they support.

  • GOP Senator's PAC May Have Broken FEC Rules By Donating To A Super PAC Run By His Former Aides

    A leadership PAC controlled by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Penn.) may have violated Federal Election Commission rules by contributing to a super PAC that is likely to support his re-election campaign in 2016. According to FEC records, Toomey’s Citizens for Prosperity in America Today made a $50,000 donation on Jan. 28, 2015, to Prosperity for Pennsylvania, a super PAC launched by former Toomey aides. It is the first contribution from a leadership PAC controlled by a lawmaker to a super PAC whose apparent sole purpose is to support that same lawmaker’s election.

  • Hillary Clinton Raised $45 Million In Latest Quarter

    WASHINGTON –- Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign on Wednesday announced a massive fundraising haul in the quarter that ended on June 30, further cementing her status as the clear front-runner in the 2016 race. All told, the Democratic candidate and former secretary of state raised more than $45 million in primary campaign contributions between her campaign announcement in April and the end of June. That figure, according to a Clinton aide, is the most that any candidate has ever raised in their opening quarter, topping President Barack Obama's roughly $42 million in the first quarter of 2011.

  • Jeb Bush Tax Returns Reveal Almost Nothing About His Wall Street Connections

    Republican presidential contender Jeb Bush on Tuesday released 33 years of tax returns that reveal almost nothing about his controversial Wall Street business dealings since he left office as governor of Florida in 2007. Over those 33 years, Bush reported total income of $44.3 million in 2014 inflation-adjusted dollars, while paying $14.9 million in taxes -- a 34 percent tax rate. Only the financial documents dating from the end of Bush's tenure as governor are wholly new to the public.

  • It Only Took 5 Months For Billionaire Donors To Set New Records

    It only took five months before the top donor to candidates, political party committees and political action committees in 2015 surpassed the giving of all top donors from the previous election cycle. This radical change in the amounts a single donor can give is all thanks to new contribution limits Congress slipped into the end-of-year omnibus budget legislation passed in December. Warren Stephens, the owner of the Arkansas-based investment firm Stephens Inc.

  • Marco Rubio's Dark Money Group Enters 2016 Race With Ad Slamming Iran Deal

    The “dark money” nonprofit group supporting Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-Fla.) presidential campaign on Thursday launched an issue advertisement touting the senator’s opposition to a deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program. The ad from the Conservative Solutions Project, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that is not required to disclose its donors, says the Obama administration is pursuing a “bad deal” with Iran.

  • EMILY's List Already Raising Big Bucks For Hillary Clinton

    Hillary Clinton is already seeing a windfall in contributions from EMILY's List, a group dedicated to electing pro-choice Democratic women that endorsed her campaign in April. EMILY's List donors donated more than $200,000 to Clinton during the first month and a half of her campaign, according to Federal Election Commission filings. The donations to Clinton's 2016 campaign were split close to evenly between contributions of $1,000 or more, which totaled $111,400, and those of $500 or less, which added up to $84,356.

  • Federal Election Commissioners Welcome Each Other's Hate

    Nobody thought the monthly meeting held Thursday by the Federal Election Commission would turn one commissioner to ponder the existential question of whether she was, indeed, a real person. The commissioners were supposed to address an unusual petition filed by commissioners Ann Ravel and Ellen Weintraub to tackle the issue of undisclosed “dark money” in elections -- unusual because no petition had ever been filed by a sitting commissioner acting in her role as a private citizen.

  • Hillary Clinton Relies On Her '08 Donors In Early Campaign Days

    In the nearly three months since announcing her presidential bid, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has leaned heavily on her past network of well-heeled donors to help her raise campaign cash quickly. While the first campaign disclosures won’t be filed until July 15, a review of publicly available fundraising events and media reports shows that of the 160 known Clinton donors who have hosted or appeared at fundraisers this year, nearly 60 percent gave to her last presidential campaign. While Clinton’s old network has stepped up, few of the 800-plus bundlers who helped President Barack Obama break fundraising records in his 2012 re-election campaign have hosted events for Clinton -- at least so far. The Wall Street Journal suggests that many more top Obama bundlers are signed up to raise money for Clinton.

  • Russ Feingold Proposes Anti-Super PAC Pledge

    Wisconsin Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Russ Feingold has asked incumbent Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis. to join him in pledging to keep outside money from super PACs and nonprofits out of their campaign. If Johnson agrees, the so-called Badger Pledge would require the candidates to pay out half of the cost of any independent expense by a supportive group intervening in the race to a charity.

  • Lobby Firm Worked For And Against Japanese Interests

    Ahead of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s state visit to Washington this spring, the government of South Korea hired a lobbying firm to try to sully his trip with some bad PR. On March 18, the South Korean Embassy hired BGR Group to “[f]acilitate communications between [Korea] and news outlets, academia, think tanks, and other individuals within the United States,” according to BGR's foreign agent registration form. The lead lobbyist for BGR’s effort is Frank Ahrens, a onetime PR executive with the Korean car maker Hyundai and a former journalist with The Washington Post.

  • Sean Fieler Is Out And Proud About His Anti-Gay Marriage Donations

    In an era when opponents of gay marriage have less and less political power, Sean Fieler has staked out a position as the leading funder of efforts to turn back the tide of marriage equality. Fieler, president of the hedge fund Equinox Partners and the Kuroto Fund, has spent more than $4.6 million on state and federal political campaigns and super PACs since 2010, and millions more on anti-gay marriage groups and organizations that produce questionable studies of same-sex relationships. A devout conservative Catholic, Sean Fieler is unabashed in his opposition to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.