This file contains archived live captions of the open meeting of the Federal Election Commission held on November 15, 2018. This file is not a transcript of the meeting, and it has not been reviewed for accuracy or approved by the Federal Election Commission.


Good morning and welcome to the open meeting of the Federal Election Commission for Thursday, November 15 2008 on a snowy morning in Washington. Delaying the start of the meeting a little bit, so the first item on the agenda is the correction approval of minutes by the vice chair do you have a motion? 

I do. I move approval of the minutes for the meeting of October 25, 2018 set forth in agenda document 18-49-A -- 18-46-A. The motion passes unanimously. The next item on the agenda is draft advisory opinion , request from Senator Ron Wyden. The deadline for this request was December or is December 3. My understanding is my colleague would like a little more time to think about this request and ask some questions from the senator's office? 

Yes that would be nice if we came back with the request to be answered. In person, if not of course by email or whatever is fine. 

Okay so with that in mind since the deadline is December 3 and the next public meeting is after that we should be willing to ask the senator if he would grant an extension. 

Sure, we can ask. 

Okay and then discuss which open meeting we would like to discuss at the office would care to join us that would be great, if not please let the Commissioner know so he can email questions to the Council office. Thank you very much. Any other questions or comments on that advisory opinion request? Okay, so we will discuss it at the next open meeting. Unless we don't get an extension. The next item on the agenda is also being held over. OsiaNetwork LLC, document was submitted on the public record and following that the requester asked for additional time to consider the document and they have requested to discuss that as well on the December, the next open meeting in December. So that brings us to the next item on the agenda audit division recommendation memorandum on friends of Erik Paulsen A 17 -06. 

Good morning. 

The audit division recommendation memorandum on friends of Erik Paulsen. The memorandum contains one recommendation pertaining to our receipt of contribution in excess of the limit finding. Thank you, we are here to answer any questions you may have. 

Thank you. Commissioner Petersen. 

This comes down to the issue of whether or not retribution letters were sent and there is some , the committee acknowledges they did not have copies of the letters but they did provide a statement indicating that these letters were sent. I believe the copy of the letter that I had was a little bit faded so one of my staff did their best to kind of type it up. So some of these portions of the letter I was responsible for sending redesignation letters on behalf of the committee for the time period covering the dates of contributions on the attached spreadsheet after reviewing the spreadsheet I can state with great certainty that I sent redesignation or re-attribution letters to all of the individuals identified on the spreadsheet. I recognize each of the names listed on the spreadsheet as the names of individuals to whom I sent letters during the 2015-2016 cycle. If the letters sent to those individuals are not contained I believe it is because they were among letters I inadvertently saved over when drafting the new letters to be sent over to be sent to other contributors. If necessary I would assert the ongoing information in a sworn letter to the FCC --FEC. Do we have other evidence that letters were sent? When I look at the report there were presented letters sent with respect to $50,600 worth of excessive contributions. 

That is correct. Yes we did a review where we reviewed 100% of certain portions of the letters or the contributions in a sample for the rest so projection is $185,000 for the total finding. To $1000 of that was for contributions that were reviewed 100% and the remaining , I believe 15 to 20 resulted in a projection to $153,000. 

So I know in other matters we have and this has been an issue that obviously we have addressed in a number of audits over the years and knowing the best way to handle them is sometimes a little sticky. I know there have been other situations and other audits were receiving some sort of a statement from someone who was in position to have been sending these out and some other evidence indicating these letters were sent out, is there evidence they did receive refunds for excessive's? 

For these contributors? 

Did the committee send out refunds at all during the audit? >> The committee sent out new letters and they were all dated January 4, 2018. 

Okay is their contention that we sent these out before out of caution or what is it, 224 letters I believe at issue the ones you mentioned were dated January 4, 2018? Okay is it the committee's contention that we sent out these letters but in order to try to address this fully we will send them out again? 

That is what the treasurer stated in one of the emails and in response actually. 

They provided copies of those letters? Okay. Like I mentioned before I know there have been other matters where statement and some other corroborating evidence letters were sent out even if they were not maintained in accordance with the regulations that we would accept that without making a finding. I just wanted to get audits thinking about why the letter is not sufficient or consistent with what we have done in others ? 

From the auditor 's perspective I'm just there to find if they have the letters. Timely dated letters so in this place --is they did submit a letter from the committee representative and we took that into consideration and we mentioned in the committee also provided untimely letters so we considered the contributions untimely resolved and I think maybe the committee heard resolved and thought everything was okay. It did not appear in the report but we were clear everything was untimely. 

Okay. At this point it probably is in the hands of the commission to determine how best or what weight to give to the information that we have before us. My thought is the statement , the earlier presumptive letters that were sent out combined with the later ones that were sent out, to me probably satisfies me sufficiently that while they may have had an issue as they say the employee may have written over the electronic copies of the letters that were sent out. For purposes of this audit, I think that satisfies me in terms of not finding an excessive contribution finding. If there were a finding that they did not comply with records, the maintaining of records or as they suggest and this be more of a technical records retention issue if we want to recast the finding in that form I could be persuaded but I think in light of the information provided that I am not comfortable finding that they received over $150,000 in excessive contributions. 

Thank you. Any other questions or comments ? Madam vice chair? 

Why is there not a records finding in here? It seems on its face like they don't have the records. 

In this case they were not required to keep a record. When I went into it I was looking to see if there was excessive contribution or not and not having a re-attribution or redesignation letter they are not required to have that so the next thing is excessive contribution. 

Do we have, when you say they submitted late letters that mean late after the audit? 

They were right before the response so I believe they were in response to the audit. 

So when you are using the sampling method , do you have identified contributions that you cannot match up , that they have not been able to write any kind of letter for? 

Yes. >> Any timely letter, and these are the errors we present to the committees and if the committees are able to show the letters were not sent timely these are forever removed from any kind of error list. However if the committee is only willing to come back to show untimely letters this is how we write the finding. 

Were there any responses? Did they submit any response to the untimely letters? 

From the contributors, no. 

Well, I think this is a close call. I hear what my colleagues are saying but, we don't have the documentation that we would need. To establish that the excessive's were cured. In the future, I would suggest that if somebody offers an affidavit, I would personally be more persuaded by a sworn affidavit more than just a letter. I think , I understand the person offered to submit the affidavit and I give that little bit of weight but sometimes people don't follow through. Is not the same way as if I had the actual affidavit in front of me because sometimes people say they will amend something and then they don't and without casting any aspersions on anybody, I just don't have anything under oath so that makes it a little harder for me. I will, I think it is a close call but I will support the recommendation. >> Madam chair, if I may. One clarification about, I am on page 7 of the draft. Under the heading interim audit report and audit division recommendation. In the second paragraph. It says in response to the exit conference the treasurer submitted presumptive re- attribution and redesignation letters that were sent to all the contributors identified by the audit staff. Many timely presumptive letters were also submitted in response to the exit conference. The excessive contributions resolved are not included in the announced report so they did present some timely attribution or designation letters so does not like we had no evidence of any letters of any sort sent out by the committee during this audit period. 

Yes, we did have plenty of documentation. 20 of timely letters and so during the fieldwork, we had I think it was 10 zip files and by month they were labeled re- attribution or redesignation. And at the end of the fieldwork, we were missing three zip files that they gave back to us so at the end of the fieldwork at the initial exit conference when we left we had a much larger finding and then they were able to locate these three extra files and send them. They were filled with timely letters and at the end of the day we had 19 contributions with no letters. That is what resulted in the provision of the January 4 2018 untimely re-attribution and redesignation letters. 

Okay I appreciate that clarification. So I think I will stick with my position. Again, the combination of the statement with evidence it looks like there was a system in place for sending out these letters. We don't have all the letters for the reasons stated. I think I can understand my colleague that this can be a bit of a close call. For me I think that gives me some satisfaction. That they did have this in place, that the letters were more likely than not to have been sent even if they had some snafu that caused them to lose some copies of the letters. So I will support moving that into additional issues. 

Thank you. I will support you on that for the same reason. Thank you. 

I'm trying to recall. That is the only finding. Have we produced a report where it is just an additional issue? Additional to what? 

That's right. 

We will research that and get back with you. 

Okay I'm not sure what happens next. 

All right I suppose it would be in order for me to move approval of the recommendation. Okay. So I will do so. With respect to the audit division recommendation memorandum on friends of Erik Paulsen, I move approval of the recommendation in the memo. 

Thank you all those in favor? Opposed? The motion vote 2-2 . Commissioner Petersen. 

I don't know if I should turn to General Counsel or do I need to make a further motion? The fact that a failed would mean it would go automatically to the additional issue. 

That is correct it automatically does so under the directive. 

Okay thank you for that verification. 

Any other questions or comments? Okay are there any management or administered matters we should discuss today? 

There are none thank you. 

Okay this meeting is adjourned. Thank you. >>>