revealing Trump campaign consultant Patrick Mauldin as the digital guru behind JoeBiden.info, a website"parody" of the Biden campaign that was designed to highlight unfavorable quotes and notable gaffes from the former vice president.
Federal campaign finance rules generally permit any domestic entity to make unlimited political expenditures as long as they aren't coordinated with a campaign. If a political activity is undertaken"in coordination" with a campaign, it would no longer be independent and would be subject to contribution limits or may need to be reimbursed as a campaign expense.
"It was not instigated, directed, paid for or worked on with anyone in the campaign," he said."This was entirely done 100 percent by me on my own time." If Mauldin's colleagues discovered the website's origins by themselves,"then they might have a stronger argument that it was independent." A review of the early iterations of the site using the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine shows that, after the site's creation, content was likely sparse. A website header memorialized by the Archive read:"Joe Biden Gaffes >> A Collection of Joe's Most Embarrassing Moments." The source code included tags to help it rank well in search results, including"Biden 2016,""Joe Biden Gaffes" and"creepy.
Part of the success in overtaking the Biden campaign website is owed in part to the social media platform Reddit, where, as theJoeBiden.info earned 230,000 visits that originated from various social media websites from April through June, nearly 55 percent of which were referred from Reddit, according to SimilarWeb. On the other hand, Biden's campaign website earned only 210,000 social-generated visits for the same period of time, and over 62 percent of these came from Facebook users.
Yes
Yep.
No
As much as your softball questioning/coverage of Dems should be considered in kind donations?
realDonaldTrump is laughing at you Left Wing clowns! The fact that a PARODY site of The D’s leading Presidential candidate can be misconstrued as a real site says EVERYTHING you need to know about Democrat Party. 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡
Can we believe anything from Democrat Fake News Newsweek?
More corruption from the trump crime family. That includes the entire Republican congress that looks the other way while trump and his gang of criminals break our laws and ignore our constitution.
What if it is? What's going to happen? Nothing that's what.
Oh please... remember he can stand in the middle of 5 th Ave and shoot someone not loose 1 vote. Unfortunately nothing changed since that day
Would it matter if they did? Nothing happens when they do wrong...ever...
Does it really matter?
Thank you Robert Johnson!
It doesn't matter. Trump and his cronies will continue to break the law because no one is holding him accountable. He is truly above the law right now.
You’re pathetic. What people do on their own time for fun is their concern. We just love our president so much we do it for free!!!
If it’s not now, it needs to be.
How long until they claim it was 'opt-research' ... any bets?
TrueFactsStated Yes but do the laws apply to Individual 1’s campaign? They should.
He doesn't care
TrueFactsStated Does it matter? Consequences - strongly worded rebuke. 😡
PamKeithFL Another bad apple is...citizens united
PamKeithFL if we lived in a fair time yes
TrueFactsStated Yes
PamKeithFL Yes. And we know it’s just a drop in his bucket of unethical actions.
PamKeithFL Yes. Yes it does. Add it to the list with thousands of violations.
If the people of the USA do not reign in their president soon, he'll be too far out of reach to be stopped.
Lock them up!
was they paying for the parody site ?
'Multiple members of Trump's re-election campaign knew that one of their colleagues was the creator of the Joe Biden parody site before his identity was disclosed last week, a campaign source familiar with the matter told Newsweek.'
2havefun72 Yes the hell it does!!!
Don't miss out to catch the turkey Trump for next Christmas..
I dunno maybe this is a campaign finance violation... but it’s not as big a campaign violation as when the National Enquirer’s Editor, Pecker paid to keep Trump’s Affairs from coming to light.
Desperate Reeeeeach
It should. It won't, this 'Reality Show President' gets away with everything .
there's not a campaign finance law Trump hasn't broken and gotten away with it. according to bill barr, being president means he's above the law.
Hillary smashed her cellphones after being subpoenaed. Does that make it a crime?
I saw the site. It was actually quite funny as parody and never pretended to be anything other than what it was. It was pretty obvious it was parody.
What’s another campaign violation between friends?
Of course.
libs at Newsweek reaching... is this Newsweek or ancient aliens... perhaps fire the libtard employees would be a good start
Doubt it. It just shows how Trump can't win on merit and has to cheat. TrumpIsAMoron
Grasp at those straws....
Yes!
Where was all this financial sleuthing by the media for the past 25 years?