Democrats Persist in Illegal Use of Capitol Visitor Center

I wrote here about Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi’s bizarre plan to team up with Robert Greenwald, a far-left video maker in screening Greenwald’s “Koch Brothers Exposed.” The film, which we have written about several times, contains little or nothing but misinformation. The screening is scheduled for tomorrow evening at the Visitor Center of the Capitol building.

The affair is in grotesquely bad taste. Greenwald is a low-rent purveyor of hard-left internet videos. It is remarkable, and disgusting, that the Senate Majority Leader and House Minority Leader would get involved with a trashy product on the order of “Koch Brothers Exposed.” This is the invitation that Greenwald emailed to cronies. Click to enlarge file size:

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In addition to being tasteless, the event is illegal for the reasons we stated here. Today, Candice Miller, Chair of the Committee on House Administration, wrote a polite letter to Nancy Pelosi pointing out the legal issues with the Democrats’ use of the Visitor Center for a partisan political event. Here are some excerpts; click to enlarge:

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As reported by Politico, Nancy Pelosi blew off the legal issues raised by Miller:

A spokesperson for Pelosi said the rules cited by Miller don’t apply to rooms in the House side of the visitor center.

“As Chairwoman Miller acknowledges in her letter, the room in question is not governed by the rules she cites. Regardless, this film was created by a 501c3 nonprofit organization, and this event is neither a fundraiser or a screening, but a press conference in which clips from the film will be shown,” Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said.

Pelosi’s spokesman mischaracterized Miller’s letter, and the fact that Greenwald’s organization is a 501(c)(3) entity is irrelevant. But when have Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid ever cared about legal niceties? Pelosi must have contacted Greenwald immediately after receiving Miller’s letter, because he promptly removed the materials that Congresswoman Miller cited from the Brave New Films web site.

Greenwald’s evite says that the screening of his video will be followed by “statements from several members of Congress who will share their plans to overturn Citizens United.” This is a reference to the constitutional amendment, now backed by Harry Reid, that we discussed here. The proposed amendment would do far more than “overturn Citizens United.” It would empower Congress to dictate how much money (if any) can be spent by anyone on a political campaign.

The amendment would give Congress the power to make it impossible, if not illegal, to challenge an incumbent Congressman or Senator. The amendment is so poorly worded that it would allow Congress to enact a law providing that there is no limit on how much an incumbent can spend on a re-election campaign, but all challengers, and all independent groups supporting challengers or opposing incumbents, are barred from spending any money at all on their campaigns. This is what passes for “campaign finance reform” in today’s Democratic Party.

Tomorrow evening’s event promises to be a clown show, and an illegal one, at that. The fact that the Democrats have sunk this low is one more sign of how intellectually bankrupt the party has become.

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