Speaker 1: In many ways. The fundraising letter from Congressman Rodney Frelinghuysen
Speaker 1: was typical the New Jersey Republican asked for money, of course,
Speaker 1: he also claimed that organized forces were working to thwart
Speaker 1: the conservative agenda. But when he sent the letter to
Speaker 1: a board member at a local bank, farreling Hysen did
Speaker 1: something unusual. Ps He hand wrote at the bottom, one
Speaker 1: of the ringleaders works at your bank. That was a
Speaker 1: reference to Saley av Linda, a senior vice president who's
Speaker 1: active in a group that was pressuring Frelinghuysen to hold
Speaker 1: town hall meetings. Avalenda has since resigned, and she told
Speaker 1: The Washington Post the letter was an attempt to intimidate her.
Speaker 1: The story was first reported by w NYC. With us
Speaker 1: to talk about the letter is Brendan Fisher. He is
Speaker 1: a lawyer at the Campaign Legal Center. We reached out
Speaker 1: to Congressman Frelinghuysen's office to invite the representative onto the show,
Speaker 1: but they have not responded to us. Brendan, thanks for
Speaker 1: joining us tell us. Does it seem as though Congressman
Speaker 1: Frelinghuysen might have crossed some ethical and legal lines here? Well,
Speaker 1: I think you can certainly say that he crossed some
Speaker 1: ethical lines. Um. It's not clear whether he necessarily violated
Speaker 1: a specific ethics law, but that doesn't mean that this
Speaker 1: activity was at all ethical. UM. I think this might
Speaker 1: be in the category of perhaps lawful, but but certainly awful.
Speaker 1: What in these fundraising letters? What is normally the the
Speaker 1: the thrust of them? I mean, is there a hard
Speaker 1: push to get money in in some way? A Are
Speaker 1: they normally more general than this? Um? I think, I
Speaker 1: mean you'll certainly see a broad range of a fundraising
Speaker 1: letters and the content of fundraising letters. UM. And I
Speaker 1: think there's there's two ways of there's two ways of
Speaker 1: viewing what the what the ask was here, what the
Speaker 1: suggestion was here with this handwritten note. One was that
Speaker 1: it was a way of the representatives suggesting to the
Speaker 1: banker that, uh, he should fire this employee for their
Speaker 1: political activity, which does implicate some some ethic clause which
Speaker 1: we can get into. But then the other the other
Speaker 1: is that it was a way of the representatives suggesting
Speaker 1: to the banker that that you're on my naughty list. Um,
Speaker 1: if you want to stay in my good graces, you'll
Speaker 1: give me you'll give me more money for my for
Speaker 1: my campaign. And this goes to the what might be
Speaker 1: described as the bribery versus extortion theories of money in politics.
Speaker 1: One is that under the bribery theory, donors would give
Speaker 1: the candidates because they want something in return. And then
Speaker 1: there's also the extortion theory that candidates shakedown donors for
Speaker 1: money with the threat of some sort of negative action
Speaker 1: if they don't give um. And this sounds a little
Speaker 1: bit closer to the to the latter theory. Um the
Speaker 1: representatives suggesting that you are you're you're on my naughty list,
Speaker 1: you're not in my good graces. One way that you
Speaker 1: can uh, one way that you can curry favor with
Speaker 1: me and get back on my on my nice list
Speaker 1: is by is by giving me money. And it appears
Speaker 1: that that is actually what happened here. So this woman's
Speaker 1: saiy of a Linda wasn't, as I understand it, kind
Speaker 1: of a household name in the eleventh District of New Jersey.
Speaker 1: What what if do we know about how the congressman
Speaker 1: might have made the connection between her as as an
Speaker 1: activist and this this bank that he was listening money from,
Speaker 1: or at least from a from a board member. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't know that that's been that that's
Speaker 1: been made public, and I don't know that the representative
Speaker 1: has has said how he found this out. Um. From
Speaker 1: from the reporting that I've seen, it seems like he
Speaker 1: must he or his someone on his campaign must have
Speaker 1: put some effort into tracking this person down. Um that
Speaker 1: they would have had to had to google her name,
Speaker 1: would have had to look at her LinkedIn, would have
Speaker 1: had to look at the uh look at the bank
Speaker 1: website to determine who she was and where she worked.
Speaker 1: So it does appear that there was some some level
Speaker 1: of effort put into this. Uh. And and really, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is this is this is incredibly problematic. It's not
Speaker 1: the role of a member of Congress to tell private
Speaker 1: employers in the district who they should and shouldn't hire.
Speaker 1: She was a senior vice president at this local bank,
Speaker 1: so pretty high up in the bank, and yet she
Speaker 1: resigned shortly after this. Were her reasons for resigning this letter?
Speaker 1: Was she afraid she was being targeted? Uh? That's my understanding. Um.
Speaker 1: It does appear that after after her boss received the letter,
Speaker 1: that she was called into his office, showed her the letter,
Speaker 1: and then she had to write a statement explaining what
Speaker 1: she was involved in and and oddly declaring that she
Speaker 1: was she was a friend of the bank. UM and
Speaker 1: and then reportedly the pressure became worse and she eventually
Speaker 1: she eventually resigned. UM. And it does appear in in
Speaker 1: large part of the problems that that arose in her
Speaker 1: appoyment situation did appear in in large part as a
Speaker 1: result of her political activities, and at least in part
Speaker 1: because a member of Congress UH informed her boss about
Speaker 1: her political activities and put some some level of pressure
Speaker 1: on her boss to to retaliate against her. UM. Don't
Speaker 1: point out we we brushed over this earlier, but there
Speaker 1: is actually a criminal provision at eighteen USC to seven,
Speaker 1: and there's also an analogous provision and how the House
Speaker 1: Ethics Code that prohibits a Member of Congress from influence
Speaker 1: influencing a private entities employment decision on partisan grounds by
Speaker 1: offering or threatening to take or withhold an official act. UH.
Speaker 1: So I think the representative does come close to violating
Speaker 1: this this provision, both this criminal law provision and this
Speaker 1: how the House Ethics provision. UM. The question here, though,
Speaker 1: is whether the representative offered or threatened an official act
Speaker 1: like a vote on legislation or some formal exercise of
Speaker 1: governmental power. Uh. Certainly we can say that the representative
Speaker 1: was attempting to or there's an appearance of representive the
Speaker 1: representative attempting to influence the bank's decision to employ this
Speaker 1: woman based on her partisan political activities. Uh. The question
Speaker 1: is really whether he had offered to make or withhold
Speaker 1: some sort of an official act um And from the
Speaker 1: context of the letter, I don't I don't know that
Speaker 1: that's clear. But we also don't know whether there were
Speaker 1: additional conversations or interactions between the representative and the banker,
Speaker 1: or or if there was additional context here that we
Speaker 1: don't know about. Just from uh that that we just
Speaker 1: don't know about yet, it sounds like there's an awful
Speaker 1: lot we don't know. Let me read. Although we did,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned, invite the congressman or one of his
Speaker 1: representatives onto the show and didn't hear back from them,
Speaker 1: he did provide a statement to w n y C.
Speaker 1: And this is what the statement said. The Congressman wrote
Speaker 1: a brief, an innocuous note at the bottom of a
Speaker 1: personal letter in regard to information that had been reported
Speaker 1: in the media. He was in no way involved in
Speaker 1: any of the bank's business and is unaware of any
Speaker 1: particulars about this employee's status with the bank. Brandon anything
Speaker 1: in there that you hear that that changes the situation
Speaker 1: for you, UM I I don't think so. UM. I mean,
Speaker 1: certainly the Congressman was intending to communicate some sort of
Speaker 1: a message by by taking the time, first of all,
Speaker 1: to apparently conduct research into this uh into this individual,
Speaker 1: and then to put a handwritten note on the bottom
Speaker 1: of this of this fundraising appeal. I would gather that
Speaker 1: that's not standard practice, that the that the Congressman is
Speaker 1: not writing a handwritten note on the bottom of every
Speaker 1: single fundraising appeal that he that he sends, and the
Speaker 1: message was was clearly sent, according to according to reports,
Speaker 1: the as a result of this UH what what the
Speaker 1: Congressman calls an innocuous and brief handwritten note at the
Speaker 1: bottom of this personal letter, um, the recipient of the
Speaker 1: letter called the employee into his office and eventually the
Speaker 1: and eventually the the employee UH quit was pressured was
Speaker 1: apparently pressured into quitting as a results of her political
Speaker 1: activity and as a result of this note from her
Speaker 1: from her elected official Brandon, We're gonna have to leave
Speaker 1: it there. Thank you very much, Brendan Fisher of the
Speaker 1: Campaign Legal Center for joining us on Bloomberg law.