NPR Quotes Scott Nelson on Campaign Donation Disclosures
By Nina Totenberg
“But Sullivan, the lawyer for Americans for Prosperity, says there are alternatives to what she calls California’s ‘sweeping’ demand for donor information.”
“They can use targeted audit letters or subpoenas if they ever need that information for a legitimate investigation,’ she says, adding that ‘where the government doesn’t need to know the names of your donors, it shouldn’t be allowed to under the First Amendment.”
“That’s nonsense, replies Scott Nelson, of the the nonprofit watchdog group Public Citizen.”
“The idea that an investigator can start a full-blown investigation and issue a bunch of subpoenas completely blinks the reality of how bureaucracies work,’ he says. Regulators ‘have to get some kind of a red flag before they know which charities to pick out for that kind of investigation.”