A political action committee (PAC) was created on Thursday with the express purpose of infecting President Donald Trump with the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19).
The group is named “10 Stacks to the person who infects Donald douchebag Trump with Coronavirus/Covid-19,” and the official paperwork was filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) establishing the organization as an entity legally entitled to raise and spend money in federal elections.
The group’s form text file elaborates on what it apparently hopes to achieve: “CORONAVIRUS PLEASE KILL DONALD TRUMP!!!!” This is likely the kind of thing that will get the FBI or some other law enforcement knocking on your door.
According to the FEC filing, the committee was started on March 1 and designates itself as a “separate segregated fund” connected to a separate “membership organization.”
An FEC information sheet explains:
[Federal campaign finance law] prohibits corporations (profit or nonprofit), labor organizations and incorporated membership organizations from making direct contributions or expenditures in connection with federal elections. These organizations may, however, sponsor a separate segregated fund (SSF), popularly called a PAC, which collects contributions from a limited class of individuals and uses this money to make contributions and expenditures to influence federal elections. As the sponsor of the SSF (i.e., its “connected organization”), the corporation, labor organization or incorporated membership organization may absorb all the costs of establishing and operating the SSF and soliciting contributions to it.
The group’s stated/alleged membership organization is the non-profit Safer Foundation—located in Chicago, Illinois—which works to provide employment opportunities exclusively for people with criminal records, according to their website.
The legitimate non-profit obviously did not create the PAC in question—the filing is clearly a troll of some sort but it’s unclear exactly why the Safer Foundation, a criminal justice non-profit that does real work—was lumped in with the filer’s hope that Trump take ill and die.
Law&Crime reached out to the the Safer Foundation for comment and clarification on this story. The non-profit appeared to be unaware of the FEC filing but repeat attempts to obtain an on-the-record response were unsuccessful.
The “10 Stacks” PAC’s treasurer of record is listed as one Joyce D. Williams. Law&Crime also reached out to the number associated with Williams’s name but the woman who answered hung up the phone when asked about the PAC filing.
“Creating a federal political committee that offers money to the first person to infect ‘Donald douchebag Trump’ with coronavirus — and wishes death on the president — is a good way to get an unannounced visit from the [Federal Bureau of Investigation],” noted the Center for Public Integrity’s Dave Levinthal.
“This is a good reminder that just about anyone can file any nonsense with the [FEC] and at least for a time, it’ll stand as a formally registered federal political committee,” he added—while sharing a story about an infamous presidential candidate from 2015 known only as “Deez Nuts.”
“The agency has no authority over and makes no judgement on an individual’s qualifications or eligibility to run for office or obtain ballot access,” FEC spokesperson Judith Ingram told Levinthal at the time.
As for the most likely outcome here? Typically there would be a fine for filing such a PAC. But, Levinthal noted that this was an atypical filing for two entirely unrelated reasons.
“FEC needs to have a quorum first, of course,” he said in an email to Law&Crime. “But the much bigger problem here for the person who created this PAC is that federal law enforcement officials don’t look kindly on any threat against a president of the United States.”
[Doug Mills-Pool/Getty Images]
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