It's a long shot but here is a clever attempt to get around the laws preventing such civil fraud charges,
Politico reports:
A Republican donor in Virginia has filed a lawsuit against the national and Virginia Republican parties, accusing them of fraud and racketeering for raising millions of dollars in donations knowing they wouldn’t be able to repeal ObamaCare.-RW.
The Virginian-Pilot reports that Bob Heghmann, a retired attorney in Virginia Beach, filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court on Thursday. The suit blasts the Republican Party, saying it “has been engaged in a pattern of Racketeering which involves massive fraud perpetrated on Republican voters and contributors as well as some Independents and Democrats.”
The lawsuit’s defendants include the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the Republican Party of Virginia, as well as Virginia’s two members of the RNC and the chairman of the state Republican Party, John Whitbeck.
As part of his suit, Heghmann argues that the Republican Party does not hold the same protection that members of Congress have against being sued for failing to fulfill campaign promises. He wants the GOP to either threaten to withhold money from members of Congress if they don’t repeal ObamaCare, or return contributions to donors
This would be a great trend to start throughout the US. Hope it sticks. I'm curious to find out if something like this has been tried before. Is there a similar concept when it comes to outright charities? I imagine that since the donations are not provided as part of a formal contractual agreement that this means any campaign or platform promises used to solicit the donations are non-binding. Maybe another way to do this is for donators to start requiring binding contracts from their parties as prerequisite to donations.
ReplyDelete"knowing they wouldn’t be able to repeal ObamaCare."
ReplyDeleteCorrection: knowing they had no intention of repealing ObamaCare.