During an FEC investigation sparked by CREW’s complaint that CHGO violated the law by failing to register as a political committee or report the millions of dollars it spent on television ads in 2010, the organization’s key players downplayed their involvement. A lawyer for Wayne Berman, now the national finance chairman for Sen. Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign, told the FEC’s investigators that Berman “only offered informal and infrequent fundraising advice strictly on a volunteer basis” and did no consulting work for CHGO. Former RNC executive director and current senior political strategist for the US Chamber of Commerce Scott Reed told the investigators “that he could not recall being involved in the formation of CHGO and could not recall having any contact with anyone involved with CHGO after its formation.”

CHGO’s General Counsel William Canfield, now General Counsel for the Carly for America super PAC, declared to the IRS under the penalty of perjury that CHGO spent no money related to fundraising that year, and told the FEC “that his role at CHGO was limited to legal compliance.”  However, others involved in CHGO, including Michael Mihalke, the principal at the vendor that produced CHGO’s ads, painted a very different picture of Reed, Canfield and Berman’s level of involvement in the enterprise.  Strikingly, Mihalke told investigators that under orders from Reed, $1.1 million dollars that had been paid to Mihalke’s group but that had not been spent was to be split between Berman, Reed and Mihalke and classified as a “fundraising commission.”

As such, CREW filed a complaint with the District Attorney’s office for the District of Columbia to investigate whether  Reed, Berman,  Canfield, officers, vendors, and/or consultants for CHGO violated federal law by making false statements to the FEC and the IRS and by obstructing an FEC investigation. On the same day, CREW filed a lawsuit against the FEC for failing to investigate CHGO’s violations of campaign finance law.

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