BUSTED: Leaked docs show GOP is selling monthly meetings with House leadership staff for just $5,000

[kpete]

Link to tweet

Congressional Republicans are baldly enticing donors with the promise of meetings with senior legislative staff, effectively placing access to congressional employees up for sale to professional influence peddlers and other well-heeled interests.

Documents obtained by The Intercept and the Center for Media and Democracy show that the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee are both telling donors that in exchange for campaign contributions, they will receive invitations to special events to meet with congressional staff including chiefs of staff, leadership staffers, and committee staffers.

While selling donors access to senators and representatives and their campaign staff is nothing new, the open effort to sell access to their legislative staff — the taxpayer-funded government employees who work behind the scenes to write legislation, handle investigations, and organize committee hearings — appears to be in violation of ethics rules that prohibit campaigns from using House and Senate resources in any way.

Congressional ethics rules flatly forbid Capitol Hill employees from engaging in fundraising activities as part of their official duties. Any explicit fundraising work must be done strictly as a volunteer, and there must be a clear firewall separating government work from campaign work.

MORE:
https://theintercept.com/2017/04/20/staff-for-sale/

[vlyons]

1. so are any Dems going to file complaints

with the House and Senate Ethics committee?

[burnbaby]

2. I doubt it nt

[loyalsister]

12. It would backfire

Selling meetings is not unique to the GOP.

[cstanleytech]

19. If they did couldn't the Repugnants simply obstruct it like they are doing

with investigating Russia and if Russia was colluding with anyone in the US during the election?

[Hortensis]

20. Sure, if it fits their strategy. My response to this juicy

bit was immediately that there's just too much scandal flying everywhere to pay proper attention. And that's their problem--how to choose which weapons to use, and which to discard as counterproductive distractions.

Most people will only take in so much before they turn off -- emotional and literally. Turn away and turn off the TV.

[old guy]

3. I could say they are going to send a strongly worded letter,

but that would be just picking low hanging fruit so I won't.

[Faux pas]

4. The swamp is

REEKING!

[lark]

5. Can they file a complaint in court?

Repugs sure used the court system against Obama, can we turn the tables on this one?

[NewRedDawn]

6. Price for whoring is coming down.

Bunch of cheap traitorous whores the whole lot of them.

[hughee99]

21. On the bright side, at least the price has come down far enough

That it's not just the super wealthy that can afford to buy access.

[Delphinus]

7. What the ...

We have got to stop them!

[Blue_Tires]

8. This is one of those "keeping up appearances"

stories from the Intercept...

Yeah, tomorrow they'll go back to smearing Chelsea and Hillary for the next six months; but don't ever accuse them of bias!

[0rganism]

9. way too much for your average constituent, bargain rates for the owning class

how nice for the wealthy to have such excellent access to representation.

[dixiegrrrrl]

16. Here's a nice article how the super wealthy get access to Trump every damn weekend.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/02/18/us/mar-a-lago-trump-ethics-winter-white-house.html

they had to pay $250,000 to do it, but pay they did.

[NewJeffCT]

10. we should take up a collection

and send Elizabeth Warren to meet them as our representative.

[MrScorpio]

11. The best government that money can buy

What a great day to be an American.

[gratuitous]

13. Remember when "pay to play" was the scandal du jour in the 2016 campaign?

Oh, it was horrible, it was! That dastardly, lying, woman Hillary Clinton had been doing favors for donors the whole time she was Secretary of State. In fact, she was doing so many favors, that's why we got Benghazi-ed! Okay, so there weren't any actual, you know, instances of someone getting favorable consideration from the State Department because they were a big-shot donor, but dammit if it didn't sound like a juicy scandal if it was true.

Yeah, that's not scandalous anymore. So the House leadership can sell meetings, Rex "Wayne Tracker" Tillerson can try to get around sanctions with Russia for his former company ExxonMobil, and Scott Pruitt can shred the EPA's own studies so that Dow Chemical can keep poisoning the environment.

Too bad this year's Pulitzers were just handed out. Nobody in the popular media is going to be interested in any of this.

[mikehiggins]

14. You can't be shocked at ethics violations among people who have NO ethics whatsoever.

Please don't call these people whores. Whores generally don't deny who they are or what they do.

[zentrum]

15. Why is this news?

I thought this had been going on for years.

[ancianita]

17. What's the worst that can happen to them? That's what I thought.

[Angry Dragon]

18. it seems that republicans live in the swamp