A curious, if bland, process story ran in POLITICO Tuesday morning, appearing intended not to catch the eye of the average reader, but a small group of influential D.C. politicos tasked with harming President Trump’s reputation on the national stage.
The story—one of many regarding the implications of the guilty verdict against former President Donald J. Trump in the New York hush money trial late last month—contains substantial information that will doubtless inform the activities of Democrat-aligned SuperPACs supporting Joe Biden‘s re-election bid.
In essence, POLITICO ran a story that breaks down Biden‘s presidential campaign committee’s messaging, data, and advertising pitches regarding the Trump verdict, point-by-point.
The story was likely leaked to POLITICO by the Biden campaign as a workaround for federal campaign finance laws that bar direct coordination between a presidential campaign committee and partisan-aligned PACs.
The tell? It quotes generously from anonymous Biden campaign sources, including campaign pollsters.
“We’ve seen in polling since the conviction that the more the conviction is front and center in voters’ attention, the worse it is for Trump,” one anonymous source told POLITICO—signaling to aligned SuperPACs to focus future ads on the conviction.
Biden’s pollster elaborates further, noting to allies that the messaging should be tied to a broader narrative accusing Trump of “being self-centered and unwilling to take responsibility for his actions.” POLITICO then provides Biden-aligned SuperPACs a look at the 81-year-old Democrat incumbent’s internal polling, noting that it mirrors that of the outlet’s Ipsos-conducted survey.
A SHIFT IN MESSAGING.
Process stories, like the one published by POLITICO, often occur when a campaign wants to shift messaging and alert its allies without overtly breaking the law. After noting that the Biden campaign’s initial strategy was to remain hands-off following Trump‘s conviction, the outlet states: “But even then, Biden aides privately noted they could always readjust their hands-off strategy if the ruling served to be more damaging down the road.” The strategic shift appears to be now taking place, and the very story covering it is also serving as the vehicle to alert Biden’s non-campaign affiliated groups.
The story even serves as a mechanism for Democrat SuperPACs and political groups to signal receipt of the messaging shift.
POLITICO quotes Matt Bennett, co-founder of the center-left group Third Way: “What the polling clearly shows is there is a group of voters for whom the convictions matter and … it is the voters who are going to decide the election.” Ostensibly, this response came after the outlet approached Bennett with the Biden campaign data and news of its messaging shift.
ILLEGAL COORDINATION.
Federal Election Commission (FEC) rules make coordination between a campaign and aligned SuperPACs difficult—and illegal.
However, their three-pronged test to determine coordination does not include planting useful data or messaging instructions in media stories. Nor does it cover what can made to appear as an accidental leak.
The latter occurred when the Ron DeSantis-aligned SuperPAC “Never Back Down” leaked internal memos detailing attacks on their opponents ahead of a Republican presidential primary debate last year. Made to look “accidental,” the leak provided detailed lines for the DeSantis campaign to use during and after the debate.
