Vehicles Designed to Launder

According to this New York Times editorial,

For the first time, this campaign will be dominated by political action committees that exist solely to promote specific candidates. While a candidate's campaign is limited to $2,500 per election from each donor, the PACs can collect unlimited amounts, and they plan to. Mr. Perry's super PAC, "Make Us Great Again," plans to collect $55 million. Mitt Romney's, "Restore Our Future," already has $12.3 million. President Obama's group of PACs, "Priorities USA," hopes to raise more than $100 million. (Many of the PACs also have affiliates designed to collect secret contributions.)

The editorial concludes, "The time has come for the Department of Justice to step in and pursue criminal complaints against the candidate PACs. Limits on spending used to prevent donations from becoming outright bribes, but now the limits are gone, and the path to corruption is clear."

Candidate-specific Super PACs are a dangerous fraud on the American people. These vehicles are designed to launder into a candidate's campaign the very kind of unlimited contributions that the campaign finance laws have long prohibited candidates from receiving because they are corrupting.

Candidate-specific Super PACs provide a false veneer of "independence" from the candidate's campaign when they are in reality affiliated with the campaign through close ties between the candidate and the leaders of the candidate's Super PAC.

Candidate-specific Super PACs are illegal in our view and we intend to pursue all possible steps to shut them down, including bringing this matter to the FEC and the Justice Department, before these vehicles for corruption destroy the integrity of our political system.