Dodgy Group That Targeted Gigi Sohn FCC Nomination Now Under IRS Inquiry For Lying About Ad Spending
from the this-is-why-we-can't-have-nice-things dept
You might recall how popular telecom and media consumer advocate Gigi Sohn saw her nomination to the FCC scuttled after a variety of right wing and telecom-tethered lobbying groups ran a successful, year-long public smear campaign.
The campaign tried to frame Sohn as an unhinged radical extremist, giving corrupt Republican and Democrat lawmakers the flimsy justification they needed to scuttle the nomination. Attacks ran the gamut from homophobic efforts to frame her as deviant for simply being on the EFF’s board, claims she hated cops, and attacks insisting Sohn (long an advocate for rural broadband) secretly hated rural America.
One of the groups behind those attacks, The “American Accountability Foundation,” has suddenly found itself under IRS inquiry after it previously bragged about how much money it had spent to scuttle Sohn’s nomination. The organization, which has tethers to telecom and media giants looking to lobotomize the FCC, reported no spending on lobbying or advertising in 2021 and 2022.
Yet research shows the organization spent nearly a quarter a million dollars buying ads on Facebook alone that attacked Sohn in 2022:
“According to data obtained by the ad analytics company AdImpact, AAF spent over $230,000 on Meta ads alone that year to oppose Biden’s FCC nominee, Gigi Sohn. Data from Meta also confirms that the ad spending to target Sohn in 2022 was around that figure. That figure does not include other means of advertising, nor does it include spending on other issues.”
U.S. lobbying and financial disclosure laws are the technical equivalent of damp street corner cardboard, so if you’re violating them and encouraging inquiry by feckless U.S. enforcers, you’re truly screwing up.
The American Accountability Foundation calls itself a “nonprofit government oversight and research organization that uses investigative tools to educate the public on issues related to personnel, policy and spending.” But it’s the exact kind of Conservative dark money group companies like AT&T and Comcast like to use to seed lies in the discourse and scuttle any effort at consumer protection.
The New Yorker profiled the group back in 2022, noting it was a key player in numerous attacks on Biden regulatory and judicial nominees. By the time it faces anything vaguely resembling accountability, its crafters will have already moved on to creating numerous new, similar sleaze merchants.
The Sohn thing was quickly forgotten by the AI and crypto obsessed news cycle, but it really was a new high water mark for U.S. policy corruption. Sohn is broadly experienced, fiercely intelligent, and popular across both sides of the aisle; yet faced a year-long relentless assault at the hands of telecom and media companies whose lobbying tendrils extend into every last crevice of corrupt U.S. policymaking.
Filed Under: ad spending, broadband, corruption, gigi sohn, irs
Companies: american accountability foundation
Comments on “Dodgy Group That Targeted Gigi Sohn FCC Nomination Now Under IRS Inquiry For Lying About Ad Spending”
Of all the stupid things to get caught by ‘Pay no attention to that time we bragged about spending a bunch to tank the nomination of a competent candidate for the FCC, we in fact spent zero money that year’ has got to be near the top.
Either they royally screwed up and forgot to file some basic paperwork or they figured that admitting where they were spending their money and to what extent would in fact be worse for them than opening admitting both. Given the smear campaign regarding Sohn could go either way I imagine.
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Given that one dude who claimed he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and keep going, in how the current legal system is dealing with him he could keep going down the street with no one delaying him… I can totally see why they don’t think the rules would apply to them.
Re: Re: 'Now let this finger wagging be a lesson to you, don't get caught next time!'
I can totally see why they don’t think the rules would apply to them.
Or potentially worse: They understand that even if the rules do apply to them the punishment for blatantly violating the law is less than what they can gain from ignoring it so long as they fall into the category of ‘having enough money/clout on your side.’
The only thing worse than someone who believes the law doesn’t apply to them but still worries, if ever so slightly that it might be applied to them at some point is someone who knows that the costs for breaking the law are less than the gains from doing so, as the latter has no real check on their actions.
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Its not like there has been a secretive shadowy group packing the courts with ‘jurists’ who have no problem allowing their personal beliefs to overcome the clear letter of the law… ut oh…
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He actually said he could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody, and he wouldn’t lose any voters, and with the selective defense of minority groups across websites, including this one, that’s another 20% of the US population that might vote for him in the upcoming election, forgetting how he mocked Serge Kovaleski in 2015. Basically, general ableism may be the thing that sees Trump back in the Oval Office next year.
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Now watch this comment get flagged until it’s hidden, just like your previous comment defending people with disabilities was.
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and with the selective defense of minority groups across websites, including this one,
[Citation Needed], be specific.
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Techdirt commenters will happily defend homosexual and trans people along with specific individuals on the autism spectrum, yet at the same time, fling around the R-word, the I-word, the M-word, and other old terms for intellectual disability as well as implying mental illness on the part of individuals that are just malignant. This has the effect of indirectly attacking people on the basis of disability, and at 20%, disabled people are a minority group. I don’t need to link to any specific examples as they’re littered throughout the comment threads for every article on this site.
Oh the hubris of the right wing these days.
Wait til you find out how many sub-corporations Comcast and AT&T own that pay zero tax.
They ‘funnel’ money to the shell, then vaporize it just before a tax return is due. “oh dear, it looks like has disappeared abroad” etc
Comcast and AT&T are two of the largest tax-evading shitbag companies on Earth (and I’m counting politicians in that). They collectively own several hundred BILLION dollars in fraudulently avoided taxes.
These sound a lot like the botspam accusations against Techdirt authors that appears under most Techdirt articles.