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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 27, 2024

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You’ve ignored the mixed motives question which is the whole ball of wax here.

According to the jury instructions, the way the law handles mixed motives is as follows:

Under federal law, a third party’s payment of a candidate’s expenses is deemed to be a contribution to the candidate unless the payment would have been made irrespective of the candidacy. If the payment would have been made even in the absence of the candidacy, the payment should not be treated as a contribution.

Citing that as the law is fucking hilarious. Dude is a lowly biased state trial judge. Scalia made the comment that FECA is the most highly complex law that is hard for SCOTUS justices to parse.

So here we have a biased judge who never in his life had to look at this law (ie is a complete noob) and who is a trial judge in general (ie not appellate and therefore not probably the best person to articulate the law) in one of the hardest areas in US law, but you are citing his fucking jury instructions as if that sheds any light on the law? Especially when a former head of the FEC (appointed by Bill Clinton) is saying otherwise.

I don’t know if you are doing that because you are just naive here because you’re Australian or otherwise but it just shows such a lack of knowledge.

I'm most certainly ignorant, so please, educate me. What is the governing case law on this topic, and how does it differ from Merchan's instructions?