The Sanders campaign also signed a joint fundraising agreement with the DNC last fall, though it has not used it in the same way Hillary Clinton's team has. | Getty Expert: Clinton joint fundraising effort falls into 'gray area'

Experts are divided over whether Hillary Clinton campaign's joint fundraising arrangement with the Democratic National Committee violates election law, as Bernie Sanders' campaign is alleging.

The joint account, Hillary's Victory Fund, is split among the Clinton campaign, 32 state Democratic committees and the DNC. A recent Federal Elections Commission report showed that Clinton raised $33 million through that account, with donations from some Democratic donors topping $350,000. Until 2014, when the Supreme Court struck down aggregate campaign donation limits in McCutcheon v. FEC, the checks donors wrote to joint fundraising committees were subject to overall aggregate limits.


The Sanders campaign also signed a joint fundraising agreement with the DNC last fall, though it has not used it in the same way Clinton's team has — and now the Vermont senator's team is crying foul. On Monday, his campaign lawyer Brad Deutsch sent a letter to the DNC alleging that the Clinton campaign is using the money to pad its own coffers in violation of federal election law; the Clinton campaign denies any wrongdoing, and says she is merely helping down-ballot Democrats get election, unlike Sanders.

Campaign finance and election law experts disagree over who's right.

"It clearly goes against what was intended for the joint fundraising committees," said Larry Noble, the general counsel of the Campaign Legal Center, who served for 13 years as general counsel at the Federal Election Commission.

Looking at one example of a joint fundraising appeal, Noble remarked, "This is clearly a solicitation for Hillary Clinton," and not in the way joint fundraising committees were intended to be used.

Nothing in Deutsch's letter is on its face incorrect, Noble said. Whether it's illegal? It's a "gray area," he added, warning that these sorts of arrangements would only grow unless they are stopped.

Others were not sure. Bradley Smith, a law professor at Capital University who served on the FEC for five years in the early 2000s, said the letter from Sanders' campaign does not give him enough information to make an assessment.

Rick Hasen, a professor of law and political science at University of California Irvine, wrote on his Election Law Blog on Monday that "legally," Sanders' case "seems weak."

"And politically, it is quite odd for Sanders, who would need the DNC’s support to win the presidency should be be the Democratic nominee, to be attacking the DNC," Hasen wrote, pointing to his post when asked for comment on the Sanders campaign's letter.

Sanders' complaint, Stanford professor Nate Persily argued, "is more about sounding the alarm about money in politics than it is about any illegality committed by Clinton."

"In fact, what it should also highlight is that Clinton, unlike Sanders, is actually doing a lot work for the party itself and therefore down-ballot races," Persily said. "She has the top election lawyers in the country working for her and they appear to have complied with the letter of the law — even if there is broad agreement, probably even from Clinton herself, that these laws should be changed."

Clinton's team fired back Tuesday, after Sanders' rival campaign filed a lawsuit against the Democratic National Committee and released Deutsch's letter to the public.

The Clinton campaign vigorously denied any wrongdoing, blaming Team Sanders' attack as the stratagem of a floundering effort in New York and elsewhere.

"What I know is this is the same agreement that was signed by Senator Sanders, signed by President Barack Obama, signed by the nominee before President Barack Obama, John Kerry," Clinton's chief pollster and strategist Joel Benenson said in an afternoon segment on MSNBC. "These agreements to raise money to help the state parties and candidates up and down the Democratic ticket, something Hillary Clinton feels passionately about, is -- has been done the same way for all these years."

Minutes earlier on the same network, Sanders senior adviser Tad Devine slammed the Clinton campaign's initial response, which came in the form of a statement Monday evening from campaign manager Robby Mook, in which he wrote that it "is shameful that Senator Sanders has resorted to irresponsible and misleading attacks just to raise money for himself."

"It's not a false attack, it's absolutely 100 percent correct," Devine said Tuesday. "They are misleading the public when they say they're creating these vehicles to raise money for the Democratic Party and for state parties."

By Tuesday afternoon, the Clinton campaign itself was fundraising off of Sanders' allegations.

"While his team gets desperate and tries to poison the well, we’re staying focused on how we can make life better for American families," deputy communications director Christina Reynolds wrote in an email to supporters asking for a $1 donation.