Government

This Kanye West, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Milo Yiannopoulos Story Is The Best Crim Law Issue-Spotter Ever

Stranger than fiction.

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marjorie taylor greene

(Photo by Erin Scott-Pool/Getty Images)

Remember the fun law professors who eschewed “Polly Plaintiff” or “Timmy Trustee” in favor of inserting real pop culture characters into the final exam? It always dialed the anxiety down a notch when the exam provoked a couple of soft chuckles about John Wick suing a hotel for breach of contract or whatever. But reality just one-upped every law professor in the country with this campaign finance story and there’s at least one election law course — or crim law course — that should just use this without edit.

The Daily Beast has a deep dive into the storm brewing around three of the craziest people in politics getting together and making one big issue-spotter stew.

And it all begins with Milo uses Marjorie Taylor Greene’s campaign credit card, to buy Kanye’s campaign website. Take a second to soak that all in.

All right. Kanye hasn’t announced a 2024 campaign yet (more on that in a second!) so that’s probably why his campaign wasn’t buying “ye24.com.” But Greene’s staff got the $7,020.16 bill for it. That would be a violation inviting in-kind contribution if the campaign did that on purpose… though the Daily Beast’s sources say Milo actually quarterbacked the Greene campaign card’s purchase and couldn’t confirm if the Greene campaign even knew what was happening. And in that event, if Milo did this intentionally he opens himself up to having stole from them and potentially causing them to unintentionally file false reports to the government.

She must miss the days when she didn’t have any committee assignments and could keep on top of possible illegal activity in her own coffers!

For his part, Milo got $9,955 from Kanye’s 2020 campaign earmarked as “domain transfer” on the same day.

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Did we mention that all of this happened on the same day Ye took a white supremacist with him to dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago? Because all of this happened on the same day Ye took a white supremacist with him to dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. That’s neither here nor there as a legal issue, but any great exam includes an interesting but ultimately irrelevant red herring or two.

The transactions are coming to light after Ye’s latest treasurer, Patrick Krason, resigned on Monday—the second treasurer to jump ship within the last six months. A leaked internal email, first reported by Politico, shows Krason expressing concern that Yiannopoulos had “submitted falsified invoices for expenditures that would be deemed unlawful.” And the receipts were first published on Twitter by far-right activist Laura Loomer, though The Daily Beast obtained them from a different source. Treasurers carry personal liability for the accuracy and truthfulness of each report they submit to the government, under penalty of law.

Has the Treasurer done something to trigger personal liability? Do the internal emails amount notice? Does this say something bad about the campaign’s internal controls? Does any of this have any bearing on possible violations?

Circling back, Ye hasn’t announced that he’s running for president yet, but… maybe he needs to!

Paul S. Ryan, a campaign finance expert and deputy director of the Funder’s Committee for Civic Participation, told The Daily Beast that Ye’s campaign purchase of the domain would appear to officially establish him as a candidate for election, since the expense exceeded the $5,000 spending threshold that triggers a registration requirement. While Ye has in recent months used the context of his 2020 campaign to court media attention around a potential 2024 run—spending hundreds of thousands of dollars while raising none—he has still not declared his candidacy or registered with the FEC.

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He definitely spent more than $5,000 here. He also spent more than the $7,020.16 that the site apparently cost, with Milo receiving a premium on top of the cost of the domain according to the Kanye filings. This prompts Ryan to raise another issue:

“The law is broadly understood as preventing candidates from converting funds to their personal use, but the plain language of the statute suggests that this ban applies to anyone, not just the candidate,” Ryan said. “This is arguably Milo converting Greene campaign funds to his personal benefit—and for a profit on top of that. Was Milo stealing $7,000 from the Greene campaign for his benefit?”

And if Milo was trying to convert funds for personal use and the Greene campaign knew that, then it could be tagged with facilitating the conversion.

Milo told the Daily Beast his side of things which boil down to Greene’s campaign funds were used by mistake and that he’s refunded them:

“The truth is a junior staffer made an error with the stored credit cards on a third-party vendor GoDaddy account, picking the one ending 2032 instead of 2002,” the statement said. “The accident was quickly rectified and the correct card charged. I have apologized privately to Marjorie for the mixup.”

The transaction took place in November. I guess he has a different definition of “quickly” because MTG’s reporting as of March 31 does not reflect any fix. Though had Milo used his own funds to buy the domain and then passed that on to the Ye campaign, his profit would be for his time and effort as a vendor in setting things up and everything would be fine as far as conversion goes. But this hinges on refunding Greene’s campaign. There’s another filing due at the end of next month so… fingers crossed!

Just to add to another huckleberry to the mix, Milo claims part of the confusion stemmed from his independent political consulting work for the Greene campaign. Daily Beast notes that the Greene campaign’s FEC filings do not include payments to Milo for independent work.

“You understand how vendors work,” Milo told the Beast when they pointed this out. We do… not quite sure he does.

Anyway, there’s the story. This is a 48-hour take home test. Good luck.

Milo Yiannopoulos Caught in Marjorie Taylor Greene-Kanye West Campaign Cash Scandal [Daily Beast]

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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