Trevor Potter Speaks to Washington Post on Campaign Finance Violations

Paul Manafort’s multiyear tax fraud and Michael Cohen’s ability to easily arrange campaign contributions as hush money could have been intercepted sooner based on existing tax and campaign rules.

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Trevor Potter, a former Republican FEC commissioner and founder of the campaign-finance advocacy group Campaign Legal Center, said the FEC could be a powerful deterrent if it were aggressively pursuing enforcement action and referring more potential criminal cases to the Justice Department.

“Every few years, there’s a sort of scandal like this with criminal penalties, and people going to jail,” Potter said. “That reminds campaigns and their lawyers and accountants that these are laws that have serious teeth, and that even though the odds of a violation being discovered may be small, the effect of discovering a criminal violation is life ruining.”

Mr. Potter also leads the Political Law Group at Caplin & Drysdale.

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Excerpt taken from the article “Manafort, Cohen Cases Reveal Weaknesses in Enforcement of Tax and Election Laws” by Damian Paletta, Robert O'Harrow Jr., Michelle Ye Hee Lee for The Washington Post.