Rachel Maddow highlighted the Giffords lawsuit that accused the NRA of constructing $35 million in unlawful contributions to Republicans like Josh Hawley and Trump.

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Rachel Maddow highlights the Giffords lawsuit exposing the NRA’s $35 million in unlawful marketing campaign contributions to Senators like Josh Hawley and former President Trump. pic.twitter.com/M8AnbNyRkS

— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) November 5, 2021

Maddow stated of the lawsuit:

A decide ordered the FEC to behave. The FEC didn’t act. When the FEC didn’t act, the decide stated, okay, you’ll be able to sue them privately, so now they have. This model new lawsuit names the NRA but in addition particularly Josh Hawley’s marketing campaign in addition to the marketing campaign of one other Republican they allege coordinated illegally with the NRA, a congressman named Matt Rosendale who misplaced his senate race in Montana to Jon Tester, the Democratic senator. 

Additionally named are the senate campaigns of Thom Tillis, Arkansas’s Tom cotton, Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson, and former Colorado Republican Senator Cory Gardner. The NRA has engaged in an ongoing scheme to evade marketing campaign finance contributions by coordinating promoting with at least seven candidates for federal workplace. 

By this scheme, two NRA associates made as much as $35 million in unlawful, extreme, and unreported marketing campaign contributions throughout the 2014, 2016, and 2018 elections, together with as much as $25 million to the Trump marketing campaign in 2016. $25 million in unlawful donations to the Trump marketing campaign in 2016? Plus, all these Republican senators? This seems like an enormous deal on a few completely different ranges. For one, it’s an enormous deal these teams might have discovered a method to truly perhaps implement marketing campaign finance regulation which has been the wild west for years now as a result of the federal company that’s imagined to police these items is functionally useless

. But additionally $35 million is numerous cash. That’s numerous allegedly unlawful cash washing round in Republican campaigns. That’s sufficient cash to probably have had a serious impact on the result of a number of elections.

The contributions had been clearly unlawful, and Republicans and the NRA thought that they’d by no means be caught. Claire McCaskill misplaced the Senate race to Josh Hawley, and whereas Hawley may need gained with out the unlawful NRA cash,  we’ll by no means know for certain how a lot the unlawful donations helped.

Republicans thought that they’d all of it found out and will break the regulation with impunity, however the Giffords lawsuit may need cracked the code.