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A group of political action committees affiliated with plaintiff-side trial law firms donated $17.5 million to left-wing candidates and causes after those firms received lucrative government contracts, according to a recent report by Alliance for Consumers.
Alliance for Consumers calls this web of PACs the “Shady Trial Lawyers PAC,” and it involves “politicians handing out lucrative public contracts to trial lawyers who give millions of dollars to liberal political campaigns.”
“There’s a game that’s being played here, where these law firms swoop in, sign themselves up to sweetheart deals that feed the political money machine,” Alliance for Consumers executive director O.H. Skinner told Breitbart News. “And at the end of the day, the people who get the most hurt are everyday consumers and everyday taxpayers who are footing the bill for a political money game.”
At the center of the Shady Trial Lawyer Pipeline is AAJ PAC, an organization tied to the American Association for Justice, a trial lawyers advocacy group. AAJ PAC, the Truth and Justice Fund Company, and various Justice PACs, are closely tied to plaintiff-side trial firms fueled by money the firms get from contracts with state or local governments.
Alliance for Consumer’s previous report focused on the “shady eight” law firms that donated $15 million to pro-Democrat groups after securing contracts with state governments.
Between 2017 to 2022, these Shady Trial Lawyers PACs reportedly donated $17.5 million on behalf of Democrat organizations, with $2 million spent in the last 15 months alone.
“One hundred percent of the independent expenditures that they recorded with the FEC went in support of Democratic candidates for the US Senate. Ninety-nine percent of the overall money went to left wing committees, Democratic committees,” Skinner said. “And to locate where that money went is equally as telling.”
The PACs’ money went to far-left groups like America Votes, which prides itself as “the coordination hub of the progressive community.” The abortion advocacy group Emily’s List also received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Shady Trial Lawyer PACs.
Another beneficiary of the PAC is the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, which is led by former President Barack Obama’s former Attorney General, Eric Holder. Finally, the Shady Trial Lawyer PACs reportedly donated more than half a million dollars to Priorities USA Action, a nonprofit organization that focuses on mobilizing progressive voters.
“Ninety-nine percent of the money goes to democratic causes, left wing causes, super ideological causes, that would really be, I think, offensive and upsetting to your everyday consumer, your everyday citizen who’s getting a bad deal and probably doesn’t have values that align with where this money’s going,” Skinner said.
“This partisan political giving is supported by law firms that hold lucrative public contracts and get big money as a result, money that really belongs in the pockets of taxpayers and consumers,” the report said.
Consumers and taxpayers are harmed by the one-sided nature of these contracts between governments and law firms. As Skinner explained to Breitbart News, most of these contracts do not protect state governments and can lead to a state being usurped by a left-leaning city that provides the law firm a better deal.
Skinner said:
So sometimes these law firms can get a contract that says, any settlement that relates to prescription drugs, you know something very broad, we get paid, even if the law firm doesn’t work on the case, even if the attorney general or whoever it is, finds a way to get money coming back to the state because the company did something wrong and the law firm wasn’t involved.
“So the punch line is there’s long, there’s these contracts that cover millions and millions of dollars, and they have no end date,” he added. “You don’t have conflicts protections to make sure that the state isn’t getting taken advantage of if the law firm has a city or a town like a leftwing city.”
Source: Breitbart
