Prominent Hillary Clinton supporters privately voiced concerns over her presidential campaign's direct coordination with a super PAC, but at least one wealthy Clinton donor expressed interest in funding the group precisely because it was pushing the boundaries of campaign finance law, hacked emails show.
The campaign announced in mid-2015 that it would exploit an apparent loophole in campaign finance laws to coordinate directly with Correct the Record, a super PAC that can raise and spend unlimited sums from individuals, corporations, and labor unions.
Because Correct the Record engaged solely in online communications free of charge, the campaign said, prohibitions on coordination between the campaign and so-called independent expenditure-only political committees did not apply.
The arrangement drew skepticism from the Center for American Progress, a Clinton-aligned think tank founded and formerly run by campaign chairman John Podesta.
"This makes zero sense to me," wrote Judd Legum, the editor of the Center for American Progress Action Fund's blog ThinkProgress, in a May 2015 email to Center for American Progress president Neera Tanden. The email, which contained a link to the Washington Post story that broke the news of the campaign's coordination with Correct the Record, bore the subject line "Why?"
Tanden forwarded the message to Podesta. "This does seem shady," she wrote. Podesta replied, "Brock $ machine!" in reference to pro-Clinton operative and Correct the Record founder David Brock.
Tanden did not respond to a request to elaborate on what she found "shady" about the relationship between the campaign and the super PAC.
If some of Clinton's allies were skeptical of that arrangement, it piqued the interest of at least one deep-pocketed donor, billionaire hedge fund manager Jim Simons.
"He told me he is intending to call you on Monday to discuss the importance of CTR and their donation," Democratic fundraiser Mary Pat Bonner told Podesta after a meeting with a Simons adviser. "He is interested in the fact that CTR is a coordinated PAC that does not do any paid communication."
That coordination was central to the campaign's pitch to prospective Correct the Record donors, additional hacked documents show.
Bonner "asked [Simons] to consider a donation of 500K or 1M," she said. "As I am sure you know, Jim Simons just made a large commitment to Priorities (to be paid out in January and March)."
That commitment totaled $5 million. Though Priorities has passed along $1 million to Correct the Record, Federal Election Commission records do not show a Simons contribution to Correct the Record.
However, a $100,000 contribution to Correct the Record was made in February from the Heising-Simons Action Fund, a nonprofit run by Simons' daughter.
Correct the Record relies in large part on high-dollar contributions. According to FEC records, more than three-quarters of the $9.4 million it has brought in this cycle has come from donors of $100,000 or more. Nearly all of its contributions, 97 percent, have come from donors of $10,000 or more.
The emails were hacked from Podesta's email account and posted by WikiLeaks. The U.S. government has accused Russia of carrying out the hack in order to influence the presidential election.
Correct the Record and the Clinton campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment.