The chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee on Wednesday brushed off the suggestion from Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) campaign that rival Hillary Clinton may have skirted campaign finance rules through her joint fundraising account with the DNC.
“Both candidates have a joint fundraising agreement that is exactly like the joint fundraising agreements that we’ve had with our previous candidates for president,” DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz said in an appearance on Fox Business Network. “There is absolutely nothing different in the way that we have spent money and raised money with Secretary Clinton.”
Brad C. Deutsch, counsel to Sanders’ campaign, wrote Monday in an open letter to Schultz that the campaign had “extremely serious concerns” about the Hillary Victory Fund, a pool of money jointly fundraised by the DNC and Clinton’s campaign. Deutsch alleged that Clinton had inappropriately used the money solely for the purposes of her own campaign, with none of the funds going to benefit the party itself.
Sanders’ own account with the DNC was characterized in a February Washington Post report as not yet active. Wasserman Schultz seemed to echo that description in her interview Wednesday.
“Senator Sanders has chosen not to exercise the use of his joint fundraising agreement, but we have absolutely no violations and we are running the joint victory fund with the Clinton campaign exactly according to the way we are supposed to,” she said.
Wasserman Schultz, who hadn’t previously responded to the letter, said that her response on Fox Business should be considered her reply to the Sanders campaign.
Watch below:
How dare anyone criticize joint funding on 4/20!
Comedy gold, baby! I’m lighting one up tonight just for you!
This joint fundraising “scandal” was one of the lamest Hail Mary plays of the Sanders campaign. Of course, the casual dismissal of the complaint from the Bernie campaign was by DWS so…BURN THE WITCH!
I’ve seen people on Daily Kos actually arguing that Bernie has a point here. It’s completely delusional considering that Bernie was presented with the exact same agreement and fundraising scheme and he signed a contract to participate in it.
Just like the 1994 Crime Bill that he voted for and then touted in 2006 as making him “Tough On Crime”, his campaign has exposed him as a hypocritical and dishonest person.
Throughout this campaign, Sanders has not taken advantage of the joint fundraising because he has been campaigning on the issue of getting big money OUT of politics, not encouraging it. The DNC and the Clinton Campaign thrive on the deep pockets of Wall Street, wealthy private donors, SuperPACs and corporate donations to raise money. That Sanders does not means merely that he is being ethical, something that Debbie Wasserman-Schulz is not by any definition, any more than the Clintons.
If the DNC were to reject corporate and wealthy donors, perhaps Sanders might have been willing to engage with them, but they did not. That most of their tactics have been to benefit Clinton, to use Clinton associates in creating questionable software, and to denigrate Sanders at every turn through surrogates, it is not surprising that Sanders would have problems with DWS and the DNC. To say that Sanders is wrong in challenging the close financial dealings of the Clinton campaign and the DNC is in keeping with his insistence that the playing field in politics is tilted in favor of the wealthy at the expense of the rest of us, and if anyone sees it differently, then they are not really looking very closely.
The fact that the nominee will be decided by the Superdelegates who want a chunk of the DNC financial pie shows just how little the actual voters impact the election process, a fact that Sanders has been telling people for years. “Don’t look behind the curtain” should be the mantra of the DNC, Third Way, and the Clinton Campaign. It certainly seems to be working well for them for the last two decades - but for the average voter, not so much.