Foreign Money Is Flowing Into U.S. Elections, Alito’s Lying Lips Notwithstanding

IN HIS 2010 State of the Union address, Barack Obama attacked the then-new Citizens United Supreme Court decision for making it possible for U.S. elections to be bankrolled by “foreign entities.”

Justice Samuel Alito, part of the Citizens United majority, was in the audience, and shook his head and seemed to mouth “not true.”

But a member of the Federal Election Commission sounded the alarm Wednesday, explaining that it is indeed true — and quixotically calling on her chronically deadlocked colleagues to make it stop.

Alito was right to the extent that Citizens United didn’t change the law that forbids political spending by “foreign nationals” (which covers foreign governments, corporations, and individuals). Federal contractors also may not engage in such spending.

But what Citizens United did do was make it possible for U.S. corporations to spend unlimited amounts directly from their corporate treasuries on electioneering — and the money in corporate treasuries belongs to the company’s shareholders.

“Arguably, then,” wrote Ellen Weintraub, one of the six members of the FEC, in a New York Times op-ed, “for a corporation to make political contributions or expenditures legally, it may not have any shareholders who are foreigners or federal contractors.”

More