General Betray Us Ad may Have Violated Campaign Finance Law

  A group has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission saying that the moveon.org ad that ran in the New York Times on September 10th violate campaign finance laws. This is the now famous General Betray Us ad. The group (American Conservative Union) claims that the discount the paper gave moveon.org amounts to a soft money contribution that exceeds campaign donation laws.

The American Conservative Union (ACU) complaint filed last Friday noted that “MoveOn’s acceptance of the discount constitutes acceptance of a soft money contribution from a prohibited source … in excess of federal contribution limits.”

Contributions to political committees are restricted by federal law to $5,000 a year, and corporations are prohibited from making any contributions to a federal political committee, said ACU Chairman David Keene in the document.

“MoveOn clearly thought it was running a political message that might influence the ’08 elections – paying for the ad via its Political Action Committee and even including a disclaimer like those mandated by federal campaign-finance law that the ad was ‘not authorized by any candidate,'” the authors stated.

  I doubt anything will come from this, but you can read the whole article here.