There's been a lot of talk in the last few weeks and months about John McCain's ties to lobbyists. So here at TPMmuckraker, we decided to do a little digging to officially catalog the possibilities. What we came up with, we fondly call "John McCain's Lobbyist Universe," a working guide to the presidential hopeful's connections. Click on each of the familiar faces to get a synopses of their role in the campaign and their lobbyist ties. We expect to be growing and expanding this chart as more facts come in, and as always we welcome any tips or knowledge that you, our readers, have to offer.

The "Swift Boaters" from 2004 are back at it.

A group of top Republican contributors who financially fueled the famous "Swift Boat" campaign ads that helped sink Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaign back in 2004 are starting to regroup.

A story in today's Wall Street Journal reports on new Republican efforts to circumvent the landmark campaign finance laws named after their top candidate -- the McCain-Feingold Act of 2002.

The GOP is raising tons of cash for the Republican Governors Association, which is a so-called 527 group and permits donors to exceed the $2,300 individual cap that applies to presidential campaigns. Although these groups are barred from soliciting money for presidential candidates, the association is telling prospective contributors that money for the association will ultimately help out McCain at the top of the ticket.

Of course the association's fund is getting cash from big corporations like Pfizer, Bank of America Corp. and Travelers, which have given $150,000 or more. But that's not the main target of this fundraising effort.

Rather, the pitch is aimed at individuals, including many top contributors to the controversial Swift Boat group that targeted Sen. Kerry. Texas developer Bob Perry, the largest financial backer of the Swift Boat group, also is the largest individual donor to the governors group, at $250,000. Carl Lindner, a retired insurance executive in Ohio and another top Swift Boat financier, has contributed $100,000 to the governors' fund. The campaign-finance lawyer for the Swift Boat group in 2004 now serves the same role for the governors association. The McCain campaign and the individual contributors all declined to comment on their involvement.

Yet the whole situation is dubiously legal. In 2005 the Federal Election Commission banned such groups from soliciting donations by pledging help to a federal candidate. Even the McCain camp questions the pitch tactics.

"If it is in fact telling its donors their money will help elect McCain they are being inaccurate," said McCain spokesman Brian Rogers, told the Journal, noting the group cannot legally attempt to sway a federal race. But he said that because he had not yet seen evidence the group is campaigning on Sen. McCain's behalf, "It's not an issue."

We'll have to wait and see what kind of ads the association actually runs. But so far, they've seen a big uptick in donations, raking in $14 million during the first half of this year, compared to $3 million for the Democratic governors' group.

The governor's association is unique among the so-called 527 groups. Like its Democratic counterpart, it is the only 527 set up by the national party.

The McCain camp is also trying out some other tactics to get around McCain's 2002 law and rake in more money to match Sen. Barack Obama's massive money machine, according to the Journal.

They're leveraging a technique that establishes a joint fund-raising account allowing donors write checks for up to $70,100. The campaign pulled in $3 million for the fund in a matter of days in June.

Sen. John McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, took leave from his lobbying firm in 2006. He often reminds us that he derives no income from the firm these days.

Yet Davis derived financial gain from his relationship with McCain for years after running the senator's first bid for the GOP nod in 2000 -- and would likely garner similar benefits even if McCain loses this time around.

A story in today's Washington Post offers some details about that relationship throughout the past eight years.

In all, Davis, his firm and a company he helped start have earned at least $2.2 million in part through their close association with McCain, his campaign and his causes, according to a review of federal campaign, tax and lobbyist disclosure records.

Davis's lobbying firm, Davis Manafort, has a client list that has included Verizon and SBC Communications, a Ukranian holding company Systems Capital Management and Russian magnate Oleg Deripaska, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He has also worked as an uregistered lobbyist representing the interests abroad of foreign politicians and businessmen.

After McCain dropped out of the Republican primary in 2000, Davis continued to work for -- and fundraise -- for the senator.

When McCain started the Reform Institute in 2001 to promote campaign finance reform, he turned to Davis. Though still actively lobbying, Davis pulled in $120,000 as an institute consultant in 2002.

Davis brought with him other McCain insiders, and fundraising took off. In 2003, tax filings show, Davis earned $110,000 in fees, and in 2004 and 2005, while he served as president of the institute, his salary totaled $165,000. Tax forms said he worked five hours a week or "as needed."

The Post profiles a few examples where Davis was raking in lobbying fees from companies that McCain was helping out on Capitol Hill.

In 2003, for instance, DHL Holdings (USA) and Airborne hired Davis to lobby the Senate to facilitate a merger. Hotly opposed by shipping giants FedEx and United Parcel Service, the merger encountered opposition from Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) on the commerce committee. McCain took steps that helped Davis's clients. He thwarted Stevens's effort to insert language into legislation that would prohibit foreign-controlled companies such as DHL from holding certain military contracts.

Davis's firm earned $125,000 from Airborne in 2003 and $465,000 from DHL parent company Deutsche Post World Net (USA) from 2003 to 2005, records show.

The Post also reminds us how Davis's outside business dealings have apparently caused tension inside the campaign, particularly last year when McCain was struggling with money and far behind in the polls. There was a lot of grumbling -- and still is -- about the firm 3eDC that Davis helped hire and also partly owned.

Davis has confirmed that he owns a stake in 3eDC. Over several months, McCain's campaign doled out payments to the firm approaching $1 million.

The 3eDC contract initially brought objections from top advisers, who argued that it smacked of self-dealing. After the summer campaign shake-up, it appeared that payments to the firm ceased.

Davis is not alone among those in the campaign who have recently shed their lobbying ties but may have banked some money in previous years.

Longtime fundraiser Carla Eudy earned $138,434 working for McCain's 2000 presidential bid. But she made far more -- $813,000 -- working for McCain's leadership committee, the Reform Institute, and another nonprofit McCain chaired, the International Republican Institute, tax records show. Some of the money has gone to her company. Trevor Potter, McCain's top lawyer, has brought in nearly $750,000 in fees for his law firms by working for such endeavors, as well as $949,000 in compensation over five years for the nonprofit he helped create, the Campaign Legal Center, which has defended in court the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, tax records show.
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Firms run by Rebecca Donatelli, McCain's Internet strategist in 2000, have since then done more than $700,000 in work for McCain-related endeavors, though the campaign notes that some of that money has gone to cover credit card transaction fees for money raised online.

After getting zinged for having a number of domestic and foreign lobbyists advising the candidate, the McCain campaign recently introduced
new campaign rules barring anyone currently employed as a lobbyist from serving on the campaign.

But they seem to have another new policy too: not telling anyone who the candidate's advisers are.

Until a couple weeks ago, JohnMcCain.com included a page with a long list of its advisers.

But they took it down right after TPM asked about an economic adviser who was linked to Jack Abramoff's lobbying scheme.

A McCain aide explained at the time that the list was outdated and did not reflect the new no-lobbyist rules that took effect in May. (Yes, the adviser we asked about, Carlos Bonilla, is both a lobbyist and a former White House official accused of taking favors from Abramoff's shop. He's no longer with the campaign, the aide said.)

We were curious about a handful of people with lobbying backgrounds who had been working for or advising the campaign. So we drew up a list and asked a McCain spokesman to tell us which ones remained with the campaign and which ones, like Bonilla, had been removed.

The spokesman refused to comment on the people individually and only reiterated the policy announced a few weeks ago, that no registered lobbyists work for the campaign and policy advisers can't be registered to lobby on issues they advise the campaign on.

It's been about a month since the campaign's new rules took effect, and the Web page we asked about is still blank.

When we asked today about the Web page that used to list advisers, the McCain aide told us they are "updating the page."

So how can anyone know who's on the McCain campaign, then?

The McCain spokesperson suggested that we go to the Federal Election Commission for information about staff and advisers.

Of course, that won't really tell us much. The FEC filings include expense records with outdated payroll payments for hundreds of campaign workers -- but without any indication of what the individuals actually do.

The McCain aide also responded: "Please show me a list of Obama campaign staff and advisers."

We asked the Obama campaign about that this morning and we haven't hear back from them. We'll let you know when we do.

John McCain's campaign has taken down a web page that listed lobbyist Carlos Bonilla as an economic advisor.

Bonilla, a former special assistant to the president for economic policy, was included in today's report about White House ties with Jack Abramoff as one of the White House officials who received tickets from convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff's firm.

A McCain aide said Bonilla was dropped from the campaign a few weeks ago when McCain implemented a tougher conflict-of-interest policy barring most active lobbyists from his team. Bonilla is a senior vice president with the Washington Group.

Campaign workers thought they had already removed the web page, the aide said. It was removed after the page was brought to the campaign's attention by TPMmuckraker.

Bonilla joined the McCain campaign in July 2007. He did not return a phone call for comment today.

Before Rick Davis began serving as John McCain's campaign manager, his lobbying firm had a pretty cosmopolitan set of clients.

For example, Ukranian billionaire Rinat Akhmetov, who has several business links to Iran.

To be sure, there's a good crowd of lobbyists in Washington who work for international firms with ties to Iran.

But Davis isn't just any lobbyist. He's a lobbyist-turn-presidential campaign manager who just a couple weeks ago was drawing up rules on how to build a wall between lobbyists and McCain's political operatives. And McCain has been more hawkish than most of his colleagues about confronting Iran.

And, interestingly, Davis' lobbying shop, Davis Manafort, was doing work for the Ukranian oligarch about the same time that Davis was serving as the president of McCain's Reform Institute.

Davis Manafort was helping Akhmetov's conglomerate, System Capital Management Holdings, to develop a "corporate communications strategy" between the beginging of 2005 through the end of summer 2005, the company said.

The company's subsidiary, Metinvest, a steel company, has one of its 11 offices in Tehran. And another subsidiary, Khartsyzsk Pipe Plant, sells large pipes to Iran.

Those business ties go back to at least 2005, when Davis Manafort was working for the company, according to a handful of stories in business publications like the Russia & CIS Metals and Mining Weekly and the Mining and the Metals report, which we found on Nexis.

A McCain aide told us Davis did not work on that account while he was heading up the firm. And he was unaware of the company's ties to Iran.

John McCain's go-to economics adviser isn't holding up very well under close scrutiny.

Phil Gramm, the former Texas senator and economist, is taking a lot of heat after reports that up until April 18 he was a registered lobbyist for UBS, the Swiss bank that is the world's largest manager of private wealth.

A former economics professor at Texas A&M, Gramm has long advocated for tax cuts, supply-side economics and less government regulation. But as David Corn over at Mother Jones reports in "Foreclosure Phil?" Gramm also played an integral role in the financial scandal commonly known as the "subprime meltdown."

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Federal prosecutors questioned staffers of Sen. John McCain as part of their corruption investigation of Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ).

U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona Diane J. Humetewa and fellow prosecutors disclosed the interviews with aides for McCain and fellow Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl in a written response to Renzi's attorneys, who asked for the contents of the interview to help prepare for Renzi's upcoming trial, which is scheduled for October.

The aides were interviewed about land exchanges, according to an April letter from Humetewa filed with the U.S. District Court of Arizona late last week. The letter did not indicate when the interviews occurred.

A federal land swap critical to developing a $3 billion copper mine southeast of Phoenix is at the heart of the case against Renzi, who is facing 35 public corruption charges, including conspiracy, money-laundering, extortion and insurance fraud. Renzi is retiring at the end of this session.

The feds have also requested some documents from McCain, which as of April 14 they had not received.

McCain is rolling out a new way of doing things -- instead of reacting to news stories that point out the fact that his advisors are lobbying for clients in opposition to his stated policies, he's going to root such contradictions out himself:

Sen. John McCain said today that his campaign will do a better job scrutinizing the people who work for it, given the resignation of two officials who had ties to a firm representing Myanmar's military junta....

"People will be thoroughly, more thoroughly, vetted and we'll make sure that that is the case."

He specifically referred to the two people who were tied to Myanmar--Doug Davenport, a regional campaign director for Mid-Atlantic states, and Doug Goodyear, who was slated to run the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., this summer.

"We found out that these two individuals had represented that country and so they left. We will vet everyone very seriously to make sure there's not a repetition," McCain told reporters.

The McCain campaign has provided an ongoing tutorial in the subtle ethics of lobbying. For instance, you might think that a politician who professes to be abhorred by special interests would not surround himself with lobbyists. Not so. What a politician can be drowning in lobbyists -- what matters is his integrity. And for that, you'll just have to take his word.

Charlie Black, McCain's campaign chairman and a veteran lobbyist, provides another tutorial today. Some have criticized the McCain camp for keeping Black while other McCain campaign officials have had to resign for their lobbying on behalf of Myanmar's ruling junta. Black lobbied for plenty of shady characters, they say, including Ferdinand Marcos and Jonas Savimbi. But Black has an answer for that. He has a code:

Black said he never took on work for foreign figures "without first talking to the State Department and the White House and clearing with them that the work would be in the interest of U.S. foreign policy."

For instance, he said, the U.S. considered Marcos an ally when his firm took on work for his government, and "when the White House pulled the plug on Marcos, we resigned the account the same day," Black said. He said his firm was hired to help show [Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire] how to form political parties and conduct elections, and when Mobutu canceled the results of the parliamentary election, "we quit."

This rule would surely also cover Black's work for Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, which provided much of the dubious evidence that formed the administration's case for war with Iraq, and the Lincoln Group, the State Department contractor that was hired to plant stories in the Iraqi press. So I guess there's no problem with that.

Back in February, the Democratic National Committee filed a complaint against the McCain campaign for violating the spending limits for the primary public financing system (explanation of that mess here). Since the FEC is defunct, the DNC then had to go to court to get some action.

Today, the district court in D.C. came to its decision -- for now, at least. The court has ruled that the law is clear that the DNC must wait 120 days after filing their FEC complaint before going to court. So this suit was dismissed, and the DNC must wait until June before they can go back to court. The judge didn't even consider the merits of the case, which will have to wait until June. Meanwhile, McCain continues to spend far beyond the spending limits of the program.

Once again, Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) invulnerability to the charms of lobbyists and his campaign supporters is put to the test.

This time it's The Washington Post going front page with the tale of McCain's role in a major Arizona land swap in 2005.

The basic thrust is this: a rancher owning 250 acres that intermingled with federally owned forest started pushing for a land swap that provide him with federal land in exchange for his own -- land that he could develop. Such land swaps are fairly common, though obviously easily abused. He was able to get the support of ex-Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ), but without McCain's backing the bill died in 2002.

After that, he decided to get smart and retained a number of lobbyists with connections to McCain. That, after all, is the way Washington works:

[The rancher Fred Ruskin], who is a pediatrician by training, said he realized he needed to hire lobbyists "to open communications with McCain's office."

He turned to some of McCain's closest former advisers. In 2002, he sought out Mark Buse, McCain's former staff director at the Senate commerce committee, which the senator chaired.

"I had gone to him to see if he had any advice as to how to deal with McCain," Ruskin said. "We had a couple of meetings and I paid him a little bit." Buse's federal lobbying records do not list the ranch as a client.

That year, lobbying records show, Ruskin also paid $60,000 to Michael Jimenez, another former McCain aide. Wes Gullett, who had worked in McCain's Senate office, managed his 1992 reelection bid, and served as deputy campaign manager for his 2000 presidential run, also lobbied on the bill, documents show. The watchdog group Public Citizen lists Gullett and his wife, Deborah, as bundlers who have raised more than $100,000 for McCain's White House bid. Ruskin also hired Gullett's partner, Kurt R. Davis, another McCain bundler and member of the senator's Arizona leadership team, to work with local officials and "to help with McCain if we needed help." Buse, Jimenez and Gullett did not return calls seeking comment.

With that sort of help, McCain became much more engaged. But McCain spokesman Brian Rogers "said that McCain does not recall being lobbied by his former staff members on the land swap and that 'no lobbyist influenced Senator McCain on this issue.'"

Nevertheless, somehow, some way Ruskin eventually ended up with his swap. And the company that's been hired to develop his new property is run by Steven A. Betts, "a longtime McCain supporter" who's raised $100,000 for McCain this election. (McCain's camp says that Betts' involvement was never discussed prior to the bill's passage.)

Now, is this is a major scandal? No. But like The New York Times' story last month, it shows McCain delivering for a campaign contributor in a way that belies his claim that he underwent a Road to Damascus conversion after the Keating Five scandal.

Well, that was quick.

As I noted yesterday, the White House offered a "compromise" to the FEC deadlock -- except that they refused to withdraw the centerpiece of the conflict, Hans von Spakovsky. Oh, and the offer also included replacing the sitting Republican commissioner David Mason, who's been creating trouble for the McCain campaign. The only aspect of the offer that could be characterized as a compromise was the promise from White House officials that Senate Republicans would now agree to have a vote on Spakovsky separately from the other uncontroversial FEC nominees.

But now Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says they won't. It's either a vote on all the nominees together or nothing. So... no progress has been made. The FEC will remain shut down.

Nobody does compromise quite like the Bush administration.

If you're a regular reader of TPM, you're familiar with Hans von Spakovsky and in particular, Spakovsky's remarkable track record at the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. It is because of that record -- one of ignoring, marginalizing, and intimidating career lawyers in order to institute restrictive voting laws all over the country, a pattern amounting to "institutional sabotage" as one former career attorney there put it -- that Senate Democrats (Barack Obama and Russ Feingold in particular) opposed his nomination to the Federal Election Commission.

Spakovsky was one of four nominees -- two Dems and two GOPers -- to the commission. The other three were uncontroversial. Senate Republicans insisted that all nominees be voted on together, and the Democrats objected: Spakovsky would have to get his own vote. The Republicans refused, and there things have stood for more than four months. Without the necessary number of commissioners, the FEC has essentially shut down.

It is a problem that has a relatively simple solution: if the White House were to submit another nominee, that nominee would more than likely be quickly confirmed without much trouble.

Instead, the Bush administration proposed something different yesterday.

Spakovsky remains a nominee. Instead, the administration has submitted a new nominee to replace the current chairman, David Mason. Mason is one of the only two seated commissioners, and it just so happens that he's been creating a whole lot of trouble for John McCain lately.

In February, the McCain campaign notified the FEC that it was withdrawing from the public financing system for the primary. Although McCain had once opted in, his campaign said that it had never received public funds and so could opt out. The move meant that McCain would not be bound by the $54 million spending limit for the system.

But Mason balked. McCain couldn't just opt out -- the FEC had to approve his request before he could. And Mason also indicated that a tricky bank loan might mean that McCain had locked himself in to the system. That would be disastrous for the campaign, since the Dem nominee would have a tremendous spending advantage through August. So McCain's campaign has continued to spend away, far surpassing the limit already. The Democratic Party has filed a complaint with the FEC and has also taken the matter to court.

And now Mason is getting the boot.

So where's the compromise, exactly? A White House spokeswoman tells The New York Times that Republicans are now willing to have a separate vote for Spakovsky. Whether that actually is the case, we shall see. If so, that means Democrats will have the chance to actually vote down Spakovsky once and for all.

But there is no shortage of cynicism about the White House's move. As Fred Wertheimer of Democracy 21 put it: "The only apparent reason for President Bush to drop Commissioner David Mason at this stage, an FEC candidate he had twice proposed for the Commission, is to prevent him from casting an adverse vote against Senator McCain on important enforcement questions pending at the Commission. The questions deal with Senator McCain's request to withdraw from the presidential primary public financing system and the consequences of a loan the McCain campaign took out and the collateral provided for the loan."

You know the story: after surviving the Keating Five scandal, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) vowed to be incorruptible. Sure, he surrounds himself with lobbyists, but that is only to test his vigilance.

The New York Times tests the limits of McCain's vigilance in a piece today about McCain's decades-old ties to a wealthy Arizonan developer named Donald Diamond.

The main thrust is this: on a number of key occasions, McCain played a key role in helping Diamond, a major campaign contributor, make deals that made him millions of dollars. The piece focuses on three deals in particular: two of those involved bills (in 1991 and 1994) co-sponsored by McCain that swapped public land for Diamond's land, and the other involved McCain doing a couple personal favors in order to help Diamond land an incredibly lucrative piece of land owned by the Army. In each of those cases, Diamond was able to secure the assistance of other members of the Arizona delegation, and it's crystal clear from the piece that Diamond knows how to work his lawmakers.

Part of what makes the piece so amusing is that while the McCain camp was obviously keen to minimize McCain's assistance -- pointing out, for example, that McCain refused a number of Diamond's requests -- Diamond doesn't seem to have much patience for pussyfooting. For example:

Mr. Diamond is close to most of Arizona's Congressional delegation and is candid about his expectations as a fund-raiser. "I want my money back, for Christ's sake. Do you know how many cocktail parties I have to go to?"

To raise money for Mr. McCain, Mr. Diamond invites local Republicans to make fund-raising calls from his Tucson office. Ray Carroll, a member of the council that controls zoning in Pima County, Ariz., said Mr. Diamond followed up on one fund-raising session with a thank-you note "on behalf of Mr. McCain," sending a copy to the senator.

"To reciprocate, if you need any zoning in the county, let me know," Mr. Diamond wrote. (Mr. Diamond said it was the kind of joke he often made.)

The most delicate of the three transactions for the McCain camp is undoubtedly the Army deal: an old base in Monterey County, California called Fort Ord. Helped along by a meeting with an Army official set up by a McCain aide, Diamond got the inside track on the land, which ultimately made him a $20 million profit. McCain had also written a letter to the city of Seaside, California, enthusiastically recommending Diamond, who was making a bid to buy Fort Ord's two golf courses that had been acquired by the city.

Sound like some pretty special treatment for a multi-millionaire campaign contributor? Not so, says the McCain camp. Any average Joe Arizonan making a bid for a luxury resort in another state would be sure to get the senator's assistance:

A spokeswoman for Mr. McCain, Jill Hazelbaker, said the senator, now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, "had done nothing for Mr. Diamond that he would not do for any other Arizona citizen."...

For the California projects, the campaign said the McCain aide arranged the introduction to an Army official for Mr. Diamond's team as "a constituent matter." The campaign said it had no knowledge of the aide helping to expedite the sale.

In Mr. Diamond's other project at Ford Ord, the campaign initially said that the senator "would not have issued" the letter vouching for Mr. Diamond "if he knew at the time it would be used to favor any particular party in the course of a pending competition." Later, the campaign described the letter as "a character reference" and said it was included only at a "pre-competition" stage in the selection process. The campaign also noted that two other members of the Arizona Congressional delegation provided similar letters.

And Diamond, typically, doesn't see why there would be any fuss:

Mr. Diamond, for his part, said Mr. McCain had only done his job. "I think that is what Congress people are supposed to do for constituents," he said. "When you have a big, significant businessman like myself, why wouldn't you want to help move things along? What else would they do? They waste so much time with legislation."

It's a pretty little mess. Despite being warned by the chairman of the FEC that he could not withdraw from the primary public funding system without the FEC's say-so, McCain, claiming to have withdrawn, has continued to spend away, by now far exceeding the spending cap. And the FEC remains powerless to act. (Here's our rundown on the whole thing.)

Today, the Democratic National Committee filed suit in federal court, seeking to force the FEC to action. The DNC filed a complaint with the FEC back in February, but since the FEC does not have enough commissioners to officially open an investigation, nothing has happened. The suit asks that the judge order the FEC to act, and if it doesn't, clear the way for the matter to be resolved in court. The soonest that could happen, DNC lawyers say, is June.

Here's a copy of the suit filed today.

Senate Armed Services Committee Ranking Member John McCain's (R-AZ) opening statement was no surprise (except for a brief interruption by protestors in the audience).

Here's video:

Because the U.S. did not "choose to retreat," we now have a successful strategy in Iraq, the surge. And although "much more needs to be done... today it is possible to talk with real hope and optimism about the future of Iraq.... Success is within reach."

If we pull out, he said, Iraq might descend into genocide and become a haven for terrorists and even "draw us into a far more costly war" as a result. "Congress must not choose to lose in Iraq," he concluded, we "should choose instead to succeed."

Update: The full statement is below.

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Just a refresher that John McCain's tangle with the FEC has yet to be resolved:

Sen. John McCain has officially broken the limits imposed by the presidential public financing system, reports filed last night show.

McCain has now spent $58.4 million on his primary effort. Those who have committed to public financing can spend no more than $54 million on their primary bid.

So has McCain broken the law? The answer is far from simple.

Remember that the FEC chairman has written McCain's campaign to tell them that McCain has not withdrawn from the public funding system, because the FEC hasn't approved his request to withdraw -- and can't approve it until there are four commissioners. To which McCain's lawyers have replied, nuh uh.

For now, the McCain campaign will continue to spend away. Whether this will come back to haunt him somewhere down the line (assuming the FEC is functioning again someday)... well, who knows.

It's a free country, damn it, and the FEC ought to quit hasslin' John McCain.

That, at least, is the shorter version of the letter the McCain campaign's lawyer Trevor Potter (a former FEC chairman himself) sent the FEC yesterday. In the letter, Potter argued that the campaign didn't need the FEC's say-so to opt out of the public financing system. As the AP reports:

...Potter said the Supreme Court concluded that public financing for campaigns is constitutional because it is voluntary. "As a result, candidates have a constitutional right to withdraw from the program."

To recall the stakes: the public financing system for the primaries entails a $54 million spending limit, an amount that McCain has pretty much already spent. If the FEC were to decide that he could not leave the program, it would be an incredible problem for his campaign.

Of course, the chances of the FEC of doing anything are zilch right now, because David Mason, the Republican chairman, is one of only two commissioners. Four nominees are stuck in the Senate because of the fight over Hans von Spakovsky. But Mason has written the McCain campaign to tell them that McCain cannot withdraw from the program without the FEC's say-so, since McCain effectively entered into a contract when he opted in to the program last year.

Potter, as you can see above, doesn't think much of that argument. But then there's the other problem: the McCain campaign's creative financing, the very clever $1 million bank loan last December. The burning question for Mason is whether the loan was just clever enough or too clever by half.

We outlined the deal in detail here. But the basic idea is that McCain's lawyers knew he could not use the $5.8 million in public matching funds the FEC had certified for his campaign as collateral for the loan, since that would have effectively locked him into the program. So the campaign promised the bank that if he lost the primary, he'd opt out of public financing, but stick in the race, and then opt back in, get those matching funds, and then pay off the bank. That way, voila! he wasn't using that prior certification as collateral. If you're confused, you're not the only one.

The bank's lawyers (one of them another former FEC chairman) laid it out in a letter which also made its way to the FEC:

"The bank does not now have, nor did it ever receive from (McCain's campaign) committee, a security interest in any certification of matching funds," [Scott] Thomas and lawyer Matthew S. Bergman wrote....

The loan documents specifically state that the collateral did not include McCain's right to the public funds. But the agreement with Fidelity & Trust Bank of Bethesda, Md., required him to reapply for matching funds if he withdrew from public financing and lost early primary contests.

"It is our understanding that, to date, none of those events have occurred," the bank lawyers wrote.

Very clever.

So now we'll see if the FEC's current chairman buys all this. And no matter what he says, it seems likely this issue is far from resolved.

The Democratic National Committee filed a complaint (pdf) today with the FEC concerning Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) campaign financing problem. So where do things stand then? Keep in mind this is an unprecedented situation, so it's not really clear where things will go next.

The main problem remains: FEC Chairman David Mason says that "a candidate enters into a binding contract with the Commission” when that candidate opts in to the public financing system, so McCain will just have to wait until the FEC is up and running again to be formally released (remember that a logjam in the Senate over four nominees for the FEC has tied its hands). To which McCain and his lawyers say phooey: It's a candidate's "constitutional right" to opt out.

Very soon, the McCain campaign, already spending its way past $50 million, will be in violation of the public campaign financing system's $54 million spending limit for the primary (that cap lasts through the party's convention). Barring a miracle in the Senate, the FEC will remain unable to act officially with only two commissioners.

The DNC's complaint adds another variable to the mix. After receiving the complaint and giving two weeks for a response from McCain's campaign, FEC staff will ultimately give a recommendation to the commissioners whether to initiate a formal investigation. But ... since the FEC doesn't have a quorum, i.e. the four commissioners needed to act, the FEC could not approve an investigation.

From there, things could find their way into court. “The DNC may simply be setting the stage for a federal lawsuit to make John McCain obey campaign finance laws,” observed David Donnelly of Campaign Money Watch.

The McCain camp has said that they will respond to Mason's letter from last week. They'll do their best to explain why the campaign's very clever bank loan did not lock McCain into the system by using promised federal matching funds as collateral. But even if Mason were to conclude that McCain should be able to opt out (a big "if"), he's made clear that McCain cannot opt out without the FEC's say-so. So things seem likely to continue to get more and more interesting regardless of what happens.

From Reuters:

But at a campaign stop in Indiana, McCain replied with a dismissive "no" when asked if he was concerned by the FEC's letter.

"It's not a decision. It's an opinion, according to our people," he said.

See my rundown of the issue here. Essentially what McCain is saying is that since the FEC is effectively shut down, a letter from its chairman carries no weight.

It's a take that drew a sharp analogy from Republican election lawyer Jan Baran, who was quoted by The Washington Post as saying that McCain's position ""is like saying you're going to break into houses because the sheriff is out of town."

As we mentioned earlier, Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ) is one of two dozen co-chairs of John McCain's campaign in Arizona. When reporters asked him today what he thought about Renzi's indictment, he seems to have gotten a little tongue-tied. From the AP:

McCain seemed surprised when asked in Indianapolis for his reaction to the indictment, choosing his words carefully, shaking his head and speaking slowly.

"I'm sorry. I feel for the family; as you know, he has 12 children," McCain told reporters on the presidential campaign trail. "But I don't know enough of the details to make a judgment. These kinds of things are always very unfortunate. ... I rely on our Department of Justice and system of justice to make the right outcome."

While the timing of the indictment might have been a surprise, it should not have been unexpected. The federal investigation of Renzi was first reported in the fall of 2006. The FBI raided his wife's office in April of 2007.

Back then, as Renzi was pressured to resign from all three of his committee assignments. He did. He was also pressured to resign. McCain refused to join in those calls -- and also expressed a similar ignorance about the case, the details of which had been widely reported:

When asked Wednesday if the embattled Renzi would continue to play a part in his campaign, McCain said: "Look, Rick obviously has got great difficulties now. I know nothing about his case. He's in my prayers. He's in my prayers. And that's all I'm going to say. All this stuff will come out."

Well, now it's finally come out. And it's still unclear as of right now whether Renzi will continue to play a part in the campaign.

We noted this yesterday. But The Washington Post does a good job today in sizing up the situation and its possible mammoth consequences for McCain's campaign.

There are really two completely separate issues here.

First, McCain opted in to the public finance system for the primaries last year. It meant that his struggling campaign would get $5.8 million in public matching funds in March. Now that he's effectively the Republican nominee, he wants out, because the system entails a spending limit of $54 million through the end of August. He's almost spent that much already, according to the Post.

So the McCain campaign sent the Federal Election Commission a letter (pdf) earlier this month saying that he was opting out. But there's a problem. And FEC Chairman David Mason, a Republican, made it plain in his letter (pdf) yesterday: McCain can't tell the FEC that he's out of the system. He can only ask.

And the FEC, which normally has six commissioners, can't give him an answer until it has a quorum of four commissioners. It currently only has two. That's because the Senate has been deadlocked over four nominees; Democrats insist on a separate confirmation vote for vote-suppression guru Hans von Spakovsky, and Republicans insist on a single vote for all nominees.

The second issue has to do with McCain's tricky loan and whether the FEC will conclude that it locked him into the system. But for now, that's really ancillary to the first issue.

It is a serious issue. As the Post reports, "Knowingly violating the spending limit is a criminal offense that could put McCain at risk of stiff fines and up to five years in prison."

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