In a statement issued to the Post-Dispatch, Todd said that “firewall policies were utilized as prescribed by federal election regulations.”

Todd called Friday’s story “fiction” that “was written not by a journalist but by an anti-gun liberal activist on the payroll of Michael Bloomberg’s outfit.”

But Campaign Legal Center spokesman Brendan Fischer said the Mother Jones-The Trace report bolstered its complaint against Hawley and the NRA.

“Here you have the exact same person buying ads on behalf of both the NRA and the Hawley campaign, in some instances on the same day, so it is impossible to understand how that vendor could have established a firewall,” Fischer said.

“This piece shows that the NRA’s pro-Hawley’s ads and the Hawley campaign’s own ads were placed in a very complementary fashion, in some instances running shortly after one another,” he said. “Political advertisers would say that that is a useful strategy because (listeners) are bombarded with consistent messages within a short period of time.”

The NRA did not respond by late Friday to verbal and written requests for a comment. The NRA endorsed Hawley in September.

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