A lawyer on Tuesday asked a judge to dismiss a complaint accusing former Utah Attorney General John Swallow of federal election fraud, contending the rule he allegedly broke violates the right to free speech.
That regulation “chills” fundamental election activity, according to attorney Allen Dickerson, of the Institute for Free Speech, a Virginia-based nonprofit that formerly was called the Center for Competitive Politics.
But Sana Chaudhry, an attorney for the Federal Election Commission — which sued Swallow and former Utah businessman Jeremy Johnson in 2015 for allegedly breaking a campaign finance law that bans the use of so-called straw donors to bankroll campaigns — said the regulation at issue is the permissible exercise of the FEC’s broad authority.