Watchdog groups ask Justice Dept to probe Jeb Bush's super PAC

Watchdog groups want the Justice Department to investigate whether Jeb Bush is improperly coordinating with his Right to Rise super PAC, launched with the goal of giving his campaign an unprecedented financial advantage once he makes it official.

Democracy 21 and the Campaign Legal Center, both of which track campaign finance law, sent a letter Wednesday to Attorney General Loretta Lynch alleging that Bush and the PAC “are engaged in a scheme to allow unlimited contributions to be spent directly on behalf of the Bush campaign and thereby violate the candidate contribution limits enacted to prevent corruption and the appearance of corruption.”


The groups, concerned about the Federal Election Commission’s limited ability to enforce campaign finance laws, are calling on Lynch to appoint an independent special counsel to investigate potential violations.

Bush, who reminds every audience that he is not officially a presidential candidate, is doing exactly what would-be presidential candidates do: speaking at cattle calls, restaurants and private board rooms in Iowa, New Hampshire and other early-voting states — and raising millions on behalf of Right to Rise, which will work separately but in tandem with his soon-to-be campaign.

Once Bush officially announces, which is likely to happen sometime next month after his trip to Europe, he’ll be barred from collecting unlimited funds from supporters, as he’s been doing — as a private citizen — for Right to Rise.

While federal law bars coordination between a campaign and any outside group, some of Bush’s top advisers, including media guru Mike Murphy, are likely to work for the PAC, not the official campaign, a sign that Bush is comfortable leaving certain core pieces of any traditional campaign to be run by an outside group he legally cannot communicate with.

“This has never been done before and will no doubt be illegal if and when it is done,” said Fred Wertheimer, the president of Democracy 21, about the connections between the campaign and super PAC activities.